Loading summary
Transcript35 lines
- [00:16]
A
They may be watching you, but I'm watching them. This is Gabriel Custodiet. Just to let you know that the episode you're about to listen to is going to be great, but it's only one piece of the puzzle. If you're new to privacy or looking for a clear vision of next steps, start by going to escapethetechnocracy.com all our cutting edge analysis about escaping the surveillance grid occurs exclusively on our paid newsletter, Watchman's Torch and in our world class video tutorials. This podcast is just a preview. This is not some game for us. We live this stuff and we consult on it. Your support means we have no sponsors and can speak the unmitigated truth as we see it on this show. Check out the show notes and escapethetechnocracy.com welcome to the Psychopath Duology. This is Gabriel Custodiet. I am re releasing with remastered audio two articles, two episodes that I did on psychopaths. You'll be hearing them in Succession. The first one was episode four, Privacy and Psychopaths, and the second episode was episode 143, Psychopaths and the World Order. Now I enjoy these episodes quite a lot. In fact, these are easily my 2 favorite. I enjoyed writing them, researching them, and if people don't find out anything else about Watchmen privacy, I hope that they listen to to these two episodes which are now conveniently combined into a single episode. And the reason why I'm so interested in psychopaths is because when I first discovered them, okay, I was reading some books in the library a long time ago and there are very few books or ideas that changed my perception of reality at that sort of level. It altered what I thought of evil, of human nature. I realized now that there were human faces that did not actually house human souls in them. It was very revelatory. So I hope you enjoy these two essays, which I now call the Psychopath Duology.
- [02:41]
B
Today we talk about psychopaths, but why are we talking about a personality disorder and what does it have to do with privacy? In the last couple of years I've devoured books on privacy, preparedness and other books of this kind, and I've come
- [02:54]
A
across many sections about psychopaths and sociopaths,
- [02:57]
B
which are the same thing, by the way. One privacy book spent an entire 35 page dedicated chapter discussing psychopaths. Unfortunately, few people know about psychopaths, and those who know something don't always know
- [03:09]
A
the entire brutal truth.
- [03:12]
B
Years ago, when I read my first book on psychopaths I was shocked and terrified and enlightened to discover their existence. At that very moment, I was sharing a library with an interspecies predator that wore the face of humans and that saw them as means to an end, as prey. I was shocked to learn that many of the politicians who told me what to do and the CEOs who had ruthlessly etched their way into my life were psychopaths. It was, in short, a wake up call.
- [03:39]
A
And if you want to understand how
- [03:41]
B
the world works and have the faintest possibility of privacy and freedom, you need to know about psychopaths. A psychopath or sociopath and someone who,
- [03:50]
A
for reasons of different brain chemistry, is
- [03:53]
B
incapable of experiencing empathy. That's basically the full definition. But you would be surprised how completely and utterly a lack of empathy changes a creature. Without empathy, you do not have a conscience. The author of the sociopath next door, Dr. Martha Stout, puts it this conscience is a creator of meaning as a sense of constraint rooted in our emotional ties to one another. It prevents life from devolving into nothing but a long and essentially boring game of attempted dominance over our fellow human beings.
- [04:25]
A
And for every limitation conscience imposes upon
- [04:28]
B
us, it gives us a moment of connectedness with another, a bridge to someone or something outside of our often meaningless schemes. Empathy involves stepping outside of your own subjective experience to imagine what it is like to be someone else and experience their discomfort and pleasure. Think of Christ's golden rule, do unto
- [04:46]
A
others as you would have them do
- [04:48]
B
unto you, and its many variants across religions. Think of the social contract. Think of the non aggression principle which says that you should not use force against anyone except in self defense. All of these philosophies have in common the fact that you must be able to recognize other people as things in themselves. By contrast, expert Dr. Dr. Robert Hare notes such as psychopaths have a callous disregard for the rights of others. Psychopaths literally cannot consider others as anything but objects. The feelings of other people are of no concern to psychopaths, nor is this speculation. Ample interviews with psychopaths have evidenced these facts, as have empirical measurements. Tests have been performed where people sit awaiting an electrical shock. Regular people have measurable anxiety, but psychopaths have none. Leading up to this moment, other studies have found that psychopaths have no difference in neural response to emotional words compared to neutral words. Their brains are fundamentally and physically different from the rest of us by virtue of altered processing of emotional stimuli at the level of the cerebral cortex. To put it in religious terms, a psychopath is a non human creature in the guise of a human that is devoid of a soul, without the ability to step beyond one's own experience. A number of things follow for the psychopath. Psychopaths cannot comprehend and plan for the future. They have very little imaginative capability at all. They live entirely in the moment and for pleasure. They are narcissistic and entirely self absorbed. They have no commitment to others. They are more likely to take up extreme drug use, sexual promiscuity, childhood violence and adult violence to violate others. They are drawn to power and enjoy control. You might be shocked by what I've just described. You might think that a psychopath is someone who is simply misguided or who does bad things now and then, if not evil. But surely they can be corrected or saved. Others will say that psychopaths must be seriously demented, at least the ones who take to violence. They must be totally disconnected from reality. None of this is true. A psychopath is biologically disposed to prey on others. They cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be treated, and they have nothing in common with you except a human face. Would you call a wolf evil, misguided, or curable for killing a deer? Furthermore, psychopaths are not psychotic. They're not schizophrenic. They're not bipolar. They see the world as it is. In fact, they see the world in some ways more clearly than normal humans because they carefully observe human emotion and behavior dispassionately. They are incredible chameleons, capable of shape shifting and lying and faking in the extreme. They find human emotions puzzling and alien since they cannot feel themselves. But they recognize that it drives humans and can be used to manipulate them. They simply must put on a face, read their lines, and with any luck, they might convince someone that they have feelings too. Astute observers, Dr. Hare notes, often get the impression that psychopaths are play acting mechanically, reading their lines. Make no mistake, a psychopath only desires personal gain and has no problem with harming others. Indeed, psychopaths believe that they see the world more clearly than humans do. Despite being a personality disorder, psychopathy is simply a human invented term. In fact, psychopaths believe humans to be the ones with the disorder of overemotionalism. In interviews, psychopaths argue that regular people, whom they might trendily call neurotypical people, are irrational for letting empathy and conscience guide them, Dr. Hare notes. Psychopaths don't feel that they have a psychological or emotional problem, and they see no reason to change their behavior to conform to societal standards with which they do not agree. Psychopaths often believe they are superior to humans, that humans deserve to be manipulated by them, and that emotions are an evolutionary hindrance that they, in their superior biological form, have jettisoned. As psychiatrists have noted, they have no desire for change. It follows that psychopaths have a great capacity to prey on humans. Here are some important statistics which you need to etch into your brain. Psychopaths, people born biologically without a conscience, make up around 1% of the population. They make up 20% of the prison population. They commit 50% of serious crimes, all according to Dr. Hare and reiterated by other experts. Let me rephrase and reiterate. Psychopaths commit 50 times as many serious crimes as regular humans. But psychopaths are obviously not all murderers. Dr. Stout notes that though they are horrifying when they occur, brutal murders are not the likeliest result of consciencelessness. Rather, the game is the thing, the prize to be won can run the gamut from world domination to a free lunch. But it is always the same. Controlling, making others jump, winning. Evidently, winning in this fashion is all that remains of interpersonal meaning when attachment and conscience are absent. Not surprisingly, psychopaths are drawn to government and other cutthroat leadership positions where they can control others. In fact, they're very good in these roles and ascend quickly. It's entirely possible, though, here we get into speculation that around 10% of government leaders are psychopaths.
- [10:20]
A
Give or take, it could be much higher.
- [10:23]
B
Think about what this means for your understanding of the world. Many people think that the government exists to help them. They say to themselves that surely people wouldn't do something like that. They wouldn't try to take advantage of us. They at least have some greater good in mind. What they miss, besides the entirety of history, is that these people are not actually people, but psychopaths whose entire motivation is power and control. And they could not care less about you and your well being. As Dr. Hare has remarked, serial killers ruin families, Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies. I know this is a lot to take in, but let's continue anyway. A psychopath in a high up position can absolutely scar the world. Hitler may have been a psychopath, and certainly the brutal people directly beneath him who ran his programs were. Imagine in wartime, the person who was able to take orders and kill without questioning, or sacrifice armadas without batting an eye, or authorize bombings of cities where civilians are. For a psychopath, this is easy. And in fact he will be applauded for having composure to make the Tough decisions. Likely historical psychopaths were Stalin, Cambodian mass murderer, dictator Pol Pot, and Romanian maniac Nicolae Ceausescu, who Dr. Stout theorizes in her book may have actually created psychopathic children and exported them to the West. That's a story for another day. Today, many psychopaths rule countries. I'm not going to list who I think they are, for obvious reasons, but you can tell by their actions and their words that they are soulless. Look at their reptilian, predatory eyes, and that they have no genuine interest in others. I speak often of the impending socioeconomic collapse, the signs of which are all around for anyone with eyes to see. During times of chaos, psychopaths always rise to the top. If there are roving hordes during times of lawlessness, they will include and be led by psychopaths. They will kill, rape and destroy countless lives with utmost efficiency. They will be experts. One observer of psychopathy leaves us with these words about a patient of the most salient thing about Earl is his obsession with absolute power. He values people only insofar as they bend to his will or can be coerced or manipulated into doing what he wants. He constantly sizes up his prospects for exploiting people and situations. Okay, so what can we do? Well, here's a few things. 1. Start to notice and understand psychopaths. I just explained to you that a portion of the population views you as prey. I would hope that you would want to know more. Start with Robert Hare's book Without Conscience. You can also try the Sociopath Next Door, the Bad Seed, Shakespeare's play Othello, Doug Casey's High Ground Novels and Silence of the Lambs. There's all kinds of examples out there. Psychopaths can be recognized by the following characteristics which come from Dr. Hare's book without glib and superficial, egocentric and grandiose lack of remorse or guilt, lack of empathy, deceitful and manipulative shallow emotions impulsive, poor behavior controls need for excitement, lack of responsibility, early behavior problems, adult antisocial behavior. Obviously, be very cautious about pronouncing people in your life as psychopaths. That's a dangerous thing to do. People who play psychiatrists can have others institutionalized prisoners for life. But seek out confirmation of your assumptions. Especially watch out for government leaders. They'll favor war and chaos, encourage strife and division among their own citizens, which gives them pleasure. They won't think twice about passing laws that harm people whose own subjectivity they literally cannot conceptualize. They'll tell you that privacy is for them and not for you. They'll laugh and relish the power that they have over you as they systematically
- [14:23]
A
break or bend the laws supposedly there
- [14:26]
B
to keep them in check. They'll play the game according to their own whimsical Recognize that not every human face houses a human soul. Anyone who inserts themselves into your life should be treated with some amount of skepticism. Ask them difficult questions about emotions and morality. Get them to do things for which they receive no benefit except to help you. Speak softly but carry a big stick. Two Avoid psychopaths and understand your role in the food chain Psychopathy is incurable. Move away from them as best you can. It doesn't matter if that is your friend, your boss, or your grown up child. Once you accept this brutal fact, you have no reason to keep them in your life. Just be careful not to offend them. If you were a fish living in a shark tank, would you go out of your way to antagonize sharks? Or would you keep your distance and always keep them in mind? Know that if a psychopath turns violent, there is nothing on earth save boredom that will stop them from coming after you. Seek out help when you need it. 3 Limit the influence of psychopaths in your life. I'll remind you of Dr. Hare's corporate and political and religious Psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies. There are countries on Earth whose leaders I look at and can tell immediately this is likely a psychopath. You do not want to live in these places. Powerful governments are the feces to the psychopathic fly. It is in your power to seek out a weaker government. Broadly speaking, the west tends to foster psychopaths more than anywhere else. Ethical cohesion has evaporated, removing any check that would slow down a psychopath. By contrast, Asian countries, which expect communal submission and beat ethics into their citizens, are believed to have many fewer psychopaths. The Asian psychopath is confused by a world in which he is not the center of attention and which demands him to participate in a group rather than as an individual. Put this as one more checkmark in the pro category for living in places like Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Though groupthink has its own dangers, the philosopher investor Doug Casey, in his High Ground book series, describes psychopaths in great detail. One of the recurring creatures is Sabina, a highly attractive and intelligent psychopath who
- [16:48]
A
carves her way through Washington by manipulation,
- [16:51]
B
sex, violence, and pathological lying. She exhibits no emotions except frustration and anger, and as the book progresses, makes decisions that destroy millions of lives in her quest for power, such Lives mean nothing to her. Our protagonist, Charles Knight, fights against psychopaths in various ways. He hops from country to country, makes allies, earns money to aid him, and defends himself when necessary. You don't have to stay in the country you were born, be international. Places in Central and South America have a very desirable residency process. Many options exist.
- [17:26]
A
You could simply keep traveling and work online.
- [17:29]
B
Always stay one step ahead of the next tyranny and war zone. 4 Practice privacy when you know that psychopaths are walking the streets, you start to understand why I advocate privacy methods. By withholding your home address, phone number and email, anyone upset with you, online or otherwise cannot track you down. When you have your Tinder date, pick you up and drop you off far from your house or drive yourself, you're not risking as much when you use private messengers. Your psychopathic rulers don't know about you and what you're saying. When you diversify your finances, put them behind trusts and LLCs, and store some physical gold in an offshore vault, it becomes more difficult for the psychopath to hunt it down, legally or otherwise. Privacy is the greatest protection you have. Foster it, practice it, live it. And remember that it is your first and greatest protection against the interspecies predator. The psychopath.
- [18:53]
A
A psychopath is someone who, for reasons of different brain chemistry, altered processing of emotional stimuli at the level of the cerebral cortex, is incapable of experiencing empathy. Pretty simple, but enough to create a reptilian interspecies predator and more consequential than you could ever hope to imagine. Psychopaths, creatures without conscience, represent around 1% of the population, but make their smallish presence heard. They commit 50% of serious crimes. Surely these inmates are simply the ones who don't have the right socio political leverage and are therefore of the prison classes. Donning the white collar offers a security blanket for the more ambitious psychopath. Take perhaps your country's leader or that financial company you trusted that gambled with your money and lost it. Occasionally you unknowingly read about a psychopath who killed someone for some arbitrary reason that doesn't quite make sense. More often you read about larger institutions whose actions have caused much more harm and are safely tamped down by lawyers or uninterested media. When we open our eyes to this new dimension, however, we see something very clear. Psychopaths alter our societies and have scarred history. They are no small addition to the universe. Academics offer little help in understanding the psychopath's world order, the minutia laden and therefore unscholarly world of Academia has for decades focused on the smallest of petri dishes, insisting on performing endless intricate studies of how psychopathic brains work and refusing to apply this knowledge to the world. This is the opposite of intellectualism. Academic myopia is itself a product of a psychopathic world. How deep does the COVID up go? Just as the term psychopath has been misapplied by mass media, so too is the interspecies predator in front of you. Completely misunderstood, the term psycho has come to mean crazy. And yet the term should be exclusively reserved for those who are psychotic. In other words, those who have difficulty determining what is real and what is not. Think schizophrenics and other fairly harmless and tragic people. Psychopaths are not psychotic. They see the world more clearly than you and more clearly than I do. Since they don't have the same emotions that you or I have, they can view human interactions dispassionately and apply the appropriate leverage to take advantage of you. And believe me, this is their entire motivation. You walk across town taking care not to bump into someone because, well, you wouldn't want someone else to do that to you. You have empathy. Your brain has the ability to put itself in someone else's shoes. Imagine the pain they might feel, and your prick of conscience does the rest. Call it the golden rule or the non aggression principle, or whatever ethical code glues together a society. The psychopath does not experience any of this. He walks down the street as if he were the only person on earth because he is this deep. Narcissism, if not solipsism, means he cannot possibly understand what you are feeling. It's not that he doesn't care.
- [21:57]
B
It is not within him to care.
- [21:59]
A
He does recognize that other entities exist, but for him, they are illusions, secretions in his brain, objects to amuse himself should he choose. The psychopathic serial killer who falls asleep after helping himself to the fridge in the home of the person he murdered does not have the faintest whiff of
- [22:14]
B
anxiety about his situation.
- [22:17]
A
His victims were a moment of pleasure. He's already forgotten about them by the time he cracks open his beer. The eternal present looms large for the psychopath. He is temporarily immortal. His body has removed physiologically from his experience all aspects of anxiety that cripple everyone else. A natural blessing and a curse for a creature unable to conceive of the past or the future. The psychopath lives for something else. He has no bonds, he has no love, no greater cause. When you perceive these things in him, it is because you are in the process of being processed, you are caught in mid spell. The psychopath has no ability for human connection. He is as alien to you as he is to himself. As one researcher has put it. The only emotions that sociopaths seem to feel genuinely are the so called primitive affective reactions that result from immediate physical pain and pleas, or from short term frustrations and successes. You have one major disadvantage. While the psychopath knows what you are, you don't easily know what he is. Psychopaths inhabit a body that you recognize to be human. Call it an evolutionary predatory advantage. The problem is, psychopath expert Robert Hare says, that as a species we continue to evaluate people as they appear to us. Perhaps we are the ones witnessing illusions. Evolution. We might discuss from whence psychopaths arise. In his book without the Disturbing World of Psychopaths Among Us, Robert Hare summarizes a scientific argument brewing on the origins of this phenomenon. The relatively new discipline of sociobiology argues that psychopathy is not so much as psychiatric disorder as an expression of a particular genetically based reproductive strategy. Simply, sociobiologists assert that one of our main roles in life is to reproduce, thereby passing on our genes to the next generation. We can do so in a number of ways. One reproductive strategy is to have only a few children and to nurture them carefully, thus ensuring that they have a good chance of survival. A different strategy is to have so many children that some are bound to survive even if they are neglected or abandoned. Psychopaths supposedly adhere to an extreme version of the latter strategy. They reproduce as often as possible and waste little energy in worrying about the
- [24:41]
B
welfare of their offspring.
- [24:42]
A
In this way, they propagate their genes with little or no personal investment. Robert Hare's successor adds a few words. I would come to realize during my research that psychopaths lack of connection with their children is one of the most salient features of the condition. I will add to Hare that neglected childhood is the sometimes asserted trigger of psychopathy. Psychopaths live in the shadow realm, passing on their psychopathy like the parasitic cuckoo bird. Martha Stout suggests Roman dictator Nicolae Ceausescu may have used the Romanian orphan phenomenon to export psychopaths to other countries in a mass adoption effort. Who says vampires are the stuff of legend? For the religiously inclined, here's my best offering. Psychopaths are human like entities born without a soul who are here to test you in some way or simply as byproducts of the Fall of Eden. Like any disease or venomous creature whose purpose you cannot quite justify in any other way. How long have you racked your brain about why God created mosquitoes in his ordered world. Interesting speculation, but we're better off focusing on the eternal presentation. Like sizing up an enemy in a challenging roleplaying game. The stats of the psychopath are more than most of us can manage. The lack of conscience gives a 5 bonus to attack power, bomb civilians without a second thought. And oh, how courageous he is. Fire 500 employees to save X percent of expenses. Pay for studies that hide the toxic substances in food products. Done and done. Lie without shame to your face as you sign up for the Ponzi scheme. His only concern is whether the pen he's giving you could have been cheaper. To save a few cents, let's continue. Print money that will more affect future generations than the present. The very embodiment of psychopathic thinking. Mass surveillance to enhance power and diminish freedom. The psychopath doesn't even know what freedom is. Freedom, as with nearly any concept we live with, requires one's ability to conceive of others. Create a death culture.
- [26:43]
B
No problem.
- [26:43]
A
Continue. Sex AFTER HIV CONTRACTION Nothing I've said here is even fiction. One psychopath remarks. You know, sometimes I wonder why have a conscience? It just puts you on the losing team. As a side note, not everyone who does these things is psychopathic. The results may be the same, but it's still worth asking. Are psychopaths evil? Beware murky waters. I don't want to minimize evil. When people act against their conscience to harm others, knowing that they are harming them, that is evil. The psychopath doesn't have a conscience. He doesn't understand harming others because he doesn't understand others. A crocodile is not evil for eating a zebra. That doesn't mean people have sympathy for crocodiles. A Nigerian tribe calls psychopaths Aran Khan, those uncooperative and full of malice. The Inuits prefer the word Kunlangeta for when the mind knows what to do,
- [27:41]
B
but he does not do it.
- [27:43]
A
The Inuits take such people on a fishing expedition at night. Unfortunately for the Kulangeta, the icy cliffs are very slick. Back to role playing. The lying ability of psychopaths boost their speech skill by 3. Just as Nietzsche would write in his famous On Truth and Lying in the Non Moral Sense. The psychopath approaches lying purely as a technique of which he has many inherent advantages. Due to his aberrant brain structure, his thoughts and ideas are organized into rather small mental packages and readily moved around. In other words, he is designed to be the ultimate lying machine, having no shame whatsoever. The words come quickly and Smoothly, he studies the face of the victim, witnessing emotions that he does not have, but has come to comprehend in others as various signs of weakness and thus potential exploitation. What's this? A flirtatious eye twitch? His predatory instincts click into gear. He smells insecurity and loneliness the way a pig smells truffles. I liken sociopathic charm, Martha Stout notes, to the animal charisma of other mammals who are predators. Calmness under pressure grants additional advantage. There is no consequences for the psychopath, no future, only the eternal present. It says the things most likely to gain the advantage in any split second. It displays supreme confidence, a feature valued in leaders and in men. The volume reductions in the anterior cingulate, parahippocampal gyrus and superior frontal gyrus contribute to a vastly different episodic memory. In psychopaths. The psychopath puts itself as the hero or victim in the story it creates spur of the moment, with supreme storytelling ability, capable of amazing deeds and prone to immense betrayal. Sympathy is garnered, victimhood enhanced. The confidence propels it along its mission for dominance. Is the psychopath a product of our modern self centered world? Debatable either way. Predecessors saw them too. Shakespeare, in tune with all of human experience, declares his villain Iago a motiveless malignity. The scorpion and the frog, a tale in the mind of Aesop and his fables, sees a scorpion hitch a ride on a frog across a body of water, only to see the scorpion kill the frog and drown them both. Why? The frog asks as he dies. Because I'm a scorpion. Curable? Yes. That's what people want.
- [30:13]
B
They.
- [30:13]
A
They refuse to believe the human face in front of them does not house a human. The original deception. Unfortunately, there's no known cure. Is psychopathy a disease? Is it a mental illness? The cogent psychopath would beg to differ. Under interview, they argue that humans, bogged down in messy emotions that may even hinder the human mind through crippling depression, are the truly mentally afflicted. In defense, we reach for our bag of arguments. But family and love and empathy. The words sound increasingly less compelling when spelled out in their logical detail. Simple as it may be, the psychopath looks on in amazement. It knows what it is more than you. For a cure to be considered, the afflicted must surely desire that result. And yet psychopaths do not. They enjoy confusing and manipulating their therapists and are often successful in doing so. He thinks the rest of us are naive and stupid for not playing it his way. Martha Stout says of one interviewee, psychopaths are fully comfortable in who they are. The violent recidivism rate of psychopaths is about triple that of other offenders. Psychopaths make up 20% of inmates impulse remorselessness and no concept of moral self that one might reform. These do not a cured psychopath make. As for hope of solution, Robert Hare admits that in the end he can find no convincing evidence that psychopathy is the direct result of early social or environmental factors. Now does it begin to make sense. The conquering, the bloodshed, the bombs. 25% of Cambodians erased on the killing fields. Deception, manipulation, lockdown. Absolute power. Corrupting absolutely. Surely they mean well. Surely they have our interests at heart in some way. Let's talk to our resident psychopath, Grant, being interviewed by Kent Keel about what he thinks of us. When I asked if he had done anything for which he hadn't been caught, Grant laughed with what seemed like childish mischief and said lots. Arson, robberies, breaking and entering, car theft, check and credit card fraud. And of course, there are a few bodies lying around. He's shot a few strangers, he said, for getting in his face and drowned at least one girlfriend in a pool. I eventually got Grant to concede that he had 10 murder victims. Oddly, he's never counted them up. In fact, he hardly ever thought about them. No, our enemy. We have.