PROFILE OF A PSYCHOPATH (6) - Greed!
I thought it would be nice to look at what drives the development of psychopathy, which could be called greed, an errant positive feedback loop, or a reward system. In this video, it is shown how greed can be an addiction bringing a person closer and closer to death. It emerges from anxiety over mortality and, in an effort to deny mortality, it actually hastens or amplifies painful mortality.
My thought, here, is that such denial often uses other people as its functionaries, (flying monkeys), and ends up harming the lives of others as well, perhaps more destructively than one's own life, for some time. The injury from denial is projected onto others, and foisted off onto them as blame - and this usury is the road that narcissists and psychopaths take to greater and greater (imagined) "power."
I have said that jealousy is a big motivator of narcissists and psychopaths, which they often remake into a kind of morality that then justifies their "righteous" abuse of those of whom they are jealous. They transform their own (denied) jealousy into a moral crusade, or they use existing morals or laws to justify such jealousy-fueled campaigns of destruction and usurpation of power or control.
But what is jealousy? Well, for one thing, jealousy often manifests from observations of material possessions or applications of other people, and into the pursuit of immitative or more expensive or powerful material possessions - and this is a fundamental operation of what we call greed. A person's own existential angst is projected onto someone else, rationalised by the latter's possessions, seeking to find resolution by out-materialising that envied person.
However, the envy doesn't fundamentally start from possessions, but from the spirit, or assumed power, sensed from the envied person. Being takes on the angst of fearing mortality, and that is directed at fellow beings, and it all plays out not in the realm of being, but in the realm of matter, possession and power. So, my idea that jealousy underlies so much psychopathy is completely compatible with the idea that greed motivates psychopathy. And greed is not only over objects or money, it is over people and positions and opportunities.
So, on the road to greater "power," (a denial or mortality), the narcissist, and moreso the psychopath, will use and abuse people in the same way they will use, and soon disgard, objects, in their insatiable addiction to consumption. One does not achieve greater wisdom through envy or consumption or denial. But try to explain this to some insecure person who is already locked into the feedback loop of greed, and you will simply be rejected, vehemently - since you are a threat to that person's very sense of self, or of being, tenuous and desperate as it is.
You will find that a narc/psycho may show apparent confidence in manners of asserting control, especially via referencing law, or morals, or money, or mechanics of power, or the realpolitik means of coercion, and even psychological manipulation, but they do not show much confidence in expressing their true feelings, or emotional needs or desires, or their hopes at intimacy, or all this stuff that normal people, who did not surrender to an environment of takers while growing up, are fairly confident in expressing.
In their own heads, tho, narc/psychos feel they are trying very, very hard at trying to be intimate and so, when they inevitably fail to connect, they blame the person they pretended to try to connect to, right? Pretending to connect by using promises, or money, or threats, and so on. In fact, this constant failure of their becomes part of the addiction towards power, which they habitually use to set up and then blame people, thus rationalizing the morality of their pathological crusade.
I have said that narcissism starts off as the basic need to survive, which is based in physics, and which I call the existential bias. We start off with a greater relationship to the timeless and subatomic early on, but ours is quickly a mortal mission to define, to be an identity, apart from the, "universal." But, we hold within us being, which retains the universal as a motivator to continue to exist.
When we develop, and then emerge from the womb, we are both insistent on our internal, universal right to be, but are also needing to define our identities by separating from everything else, including our mother(s). Bit by bit, we see the difference between ourselves and other people, and so on, even as we maintain our insistent spirit. It is a tedious balancing act, which all parents must manage.
Narcissists are those who fail to define these boundaries and elevate their spiritual insistence - their rights - above the rights of others. They put their egos first, because they still think they have a right to be connected to - to own - other things and people. They make others - flying monkeys - extensions of their egos, which is an establishment of a political hierarchy, especially when they use this structure to abuse others who are marginal or apart from the hierarchy. See how it works?
Those at the bottom of the hierarchy tend to be selfless givers. Trapped idiots. Dreamers. Forgivers. Enablers. Well, the narc/psycho sees unreal value in material things and objectified people, always seeking to conform them back into his or her juvenile, egoistic, delusional assumption of, and ownership of, reality. So, this is where greed comes from. Seeking spiritual power through the attempt to control material things and people.
All psychopaths are narcissists. Not all narcissists care so little about others that they become psychopaths, meaning to exert force to control and injure others for their own vanity, which is sadism. It seems to me that it is the degree of sadism involved that determines how much a narcissist tends towards psychopathy. AND, it seems to me, many, if not most, narcissists would become psychopaths to the extent that they felt they could get away with it.
Similarly, greed, given full liberty, will stop at nothing but death. The unbridled controller always ends being the one completely controlled. Those who fear death the most are the worst killers and those doomed to a hellish demise. And these are very important points.
Back to starting off, gradually separating from the infinity of the womb... If done badly, the child may grow into a narcissist, assuming ownership over, and blaming, things and people who have nothing to do with him or her. What can encourage such selfishness - such greed?
Sugar in the mother's bloodstream. It causes the child to inherit dysfunctional insulin, and to crave calories. Alcohol in the mother's bloodstream can encourage the child to want to drink or to become disturbed by F.A.S. Heroin or cocaine in the bloodstream = the desire of the child to do drugs. Stress and trauma = the compulsion of the child to cultivate stressful and traumatic environments. And so on.
It is not so simple as a child failing to wean itself from the eternal. Real things in the environment can make this weaning more difficult and incomplete. Better influences in the environment will encourage more refined, healthier development of the fetus and child. Like healthy eating, positivity, and healthy thinking.
In some sense, the mother helps determine what exactly the "universal" means, and what it means to wean from that, or not. In addition, the father's past life, and life during conception, have great influence upon the future psychic health of the child, but that is a long topic I'd like to post about later, on its own.
To summarise: What occurs in the womb, as what occurs via genetics, can influence the way and degree to which greed and narcissism may develop in a child. A society feasting on ice cream will create greedy, hungry children who will mow down others so they can have their calories. Just a metaphor to help describe what I am getting at.
Of course, rearing by parents is also a determinant of whether a child might develop destructive narcissistic traits.
So, I need to try to sleep now. Here is the video. (The video does not discuss narcissism or psychopathy per se). I might add some more to this post later.
My thought, here, is that such denial often uses other people as its functionaries, (flying monkeys), and ends up harming the lives of others as well, perhaps more destructively than one's own life, for some time. The injury from denial is projected onto others, and foisted off onto them as blame - and this usury is the road that narcissists and psychopaths take to greater and greater (imagined) "power."
I have said that jealousy is a big motivator of narcissists and psychopaths, which they often remake into a kind of morality that then justifies their "righteous" abuse of those of whom they are jealous. They transform their own (denied) jealousy into a moral crusade, or they use existing morals or laws to justify such jealousy-fueled campaigns of destruction and usurpation of power or control.
But what is jealousy? Well, for one thing, jealousy often manifests from observations of material possessions or applications of other people, and into the pursuit of immitative or more expensive or powerful material possessions - and this is a fundamental operation of what we call greed. A person's own existential angst is projected onto someone else, rationalised by the latter's possessions, seeking to find resolution by out-materialising that envied person.
However, the envy doesn't fundamentally start from possessions, but from the spirit, or assumed power, sensed from the envied person. Being takes on the angst of fearing mortality, and that is directed at fellow beings, and it all plays out not in the realm of being, but in the realm of matter, possession and power. So, my idea that jealousy underlies so much psychopathy is completely compatible with the idea that greed motivates psychopathy. And greed is not only over objects or money, it is over people and positions and opportunities.
So, on the road to greater "power," (a denial or mortality), the narcissist, and moreso the psychopath, will use and abuse people in the same way they will use, and soon disgard, objects, in their insatiable addiction to consumption. One does not achieve greater wisdom through envy or consumption or denial. But try to explain this to some insecure person who is already locked into the feedback loop of greed, and you will simply be rejected, vehemently - since you are a threat to that person's very sense of self, or of being, tenuous and desperate as it is.
You will find that a narc/psycho may show apparent confidence in manners of asserting control, especially via referencing law, or morals, or money, or mechanics of power, or the realpolitik means of coercion, and even psychological manipulation, but they do not show much confidence in expressing their true feelings, or emotional needs or desires, or their hopes at intimacy, or all this stuff that normal people, who did not surrender to an environment of takers while growing up, are fairly confident in expressing.
In their own heads, tho, narc/psychos feel they are trying very, very hard at trying to be intimate and so, when they inevitably fail to connect, they blame the person they pretended to try to connect to, right? Pretending to connect by using promises, or money, or threats, and so on. In fact, this constant failure of their becomes part of the addiction towards power, which they habitually use to set up and then blame people, thus rationalizing the morality of their pathological crusade.
I have said that narcissism starts off as the basic need to survive, which is based in physics, and which I call the existential bias. We start off with a greater relationship to the timeless and subatomic early on, but ours is quickly a mortal mission to define, to be an identity, apart from the, "universal." But, we hold within us being, which retains the universal as a motivator to continue to exist.
When we develop, and then emerge from the womb, we are both insistent on our internal, universal right to be, but are also needing to define our identities by separating from everything else, including our mother(s). Bit by bit, we see the difference between ourselves and other people, and so on, even as we maintain our insistent spirit. It is a tedious balancing act, which all parents must manage.
Narcissists are those who fail to define these boundaries and elevate their spiritual insistence - their rights - above the rights of others. They put their egos first, because they still think they have a right to be connected to - to own - other things and people. They make others - flying monkeys - extensions of their egos, which is an establishment of a political hierarchy, especially when they use this structure to abuse others who are marginal or apart from the hierarchy. See how it works?
Those at the bottom of the hierarchy tend to be selfless givers. Trapped idiots. Dreamers. Forgivers. Enablers. Well, the narc/psycho sees unreal value in material things and objectified people, always seeking to conform them back into his or her juvenile, egoistic, delusional assumption of, and ownership of, reality. So, this is where greed comes from. Seeking spiritual power through the attempt to control material things and people.
All psychopaths are narcissists. Not all narcissists care so little about others that they become psychopaths, meaning to exert force to control and injure others for their own vanity, which is sadism. It seems to me that it is the degree of sadism involved that determines how much a narcissist tends towards psychopathy. AND, it seems to me, many, if not most, narcissists would become psychopaths to the extent that they felt they could get away with it.
Similarly, greed, given full liberty, will stop at nothing but death. The unbridled controller always ends being the one completely controlled. Those who fear death the most are the worst killers and those doomed to a hellish demise. And these are very important points.
Back to starting off, gradually separating from the infinity of the womb... If done badly, the child may grow into a narcissist, assuming ownership over, and blaming, things and people who have nothing to do with him or her. What can encourage such selfishness - such greed?
Sugar in the mother's bloodstream. It causes the child to inherit dysfunctional insulin, and to crave calories. Alcohol in the mother's bloodstream can encourage the child to want to drink or to become disturbed by F.A.S. Heroin or cocaine in the bloodstream = the desire of the child to do drugs. Stress and trauma = the compulsion of the child to cultivate stressful and traumatic environments. And so on.
It is not so simple as a child failing to wean itself from the eternal. Real things in the environment can make this weaning more difficult and incomplete. Better influences in the environment will encourage more refined, healthier development of the fetus and child. Like healthy eating, positivity, and healthy thinking.
In some sense, the mother helps determine what exactly the "universal" means, and what it means to wean from that, or not. In addition, the father's past life, and life during conception, have great influence upon the future psychic health of the child, but that is a long topic I'd like to post about later, on its own.
To summarise: What occurs in the womb, as what occurs via genetics, can influence the way and degree to which greed and narcissism may develop in a child. A society feasting on ice cream will create greedy, hungry children who will mow down others so they can have their calories. Just a metaphor to help describe what I am getting at.
Of course, rearing by parents is also a determinant of whether a child might develop destructive narcissistic traits.
So, I need to try to sleep now. Here is the video. (The video does not discuss narcissism or psychopathy per se). I might add some more to this post later.
Click to view