...Whatever your job, you manipulate and bully the people who are under your thumb, as often and as outrageously as you can without getting fired or held accountable. You do this for its own sake, even when it serves no purpose except to give you a thrill. Making people jump means you have power -- or this is the way you see it -- and bullying provides you with an adrenaline rush. It is fun.
....You can frighten a few people, or cause them to scuryy around like chikens, or steal from them, or—maybe best of all—create situations that cause them to feel bad about themselves. And this is power, especially when the people you manipulate are superior to you in some way. Most invigorating of all is to bring down people who are smarter or more accomplished than you, or perhaps classier, more attractive or popular or morally admirable (p.p.3-4).
Though sociopathy seems to be universal and timeless, there is credible evidence that some cultures contain fewer sociopaths than do other cultures. Intriguingly, sociopathy would appear to be relatively rare in certain East Asian countries, notably Japan and China (Editor's Note: "China" in this sentence seemingly refers to “Taiwan” ). Studies conducted in both rural and urban areas of Taiwan have found a remarkably low prevalence of antisocial personality disorder, ranging from 0.03 percent to 0.14 percent, which is not none but is impressively less than the Western world's approximate average of 4 percent, which translates to one in twenty-five people. And disturbingly, the prevalence of sociopathy in the United States seems to be increasing. The 1991 Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, reported that in the fifteen years preceding the study, the prevalence of antisocial personality disorder had nearly doubled among the young in America. It would be difficult, closing in on impossible, to explain such a dramatically rapid shift in terms of genetics or neurobiology. Apparently, cultural influences play a very important role in the development (or not) of sociopathy in any given population (p.136).
Though sociopathy seems to be universal and timeless, there is credible evidence that some cultures contain fewer sociopaths than do other cultures. Intriguingly, sociopathy would appear to be relatively rare in certain East Asian countries, notably Japan and China (Editor's Note: "China" in this sentence seemingly refers to “Taiwan” ). Studies conducted in both rural and urban areas of Taiwan have found a remarkably low prevalence of antisocial personality disorder, ranging from 0.03 percent to 0.14 percent, which is not none but is impressively less than the Western world's approximate average of 4 percent, which translates to one in twenty-five people. And disturbingly, the prevalence of sociopathy in the United States seems to be increasing. The 1991 Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, reported that in the fifteen years preceding the study, the prevalence of antisocial personality disorder had nearly doubled among the young in America. It would be difficult, closing in on impossible, to explain such a dramatically rapid shift in terms of genetics or neurobiology. Apparently, cultural influences play a very important role in the development (or not) of sociopathy in any given population (p.136).
Some of the most interesting information
about cortical functioning in sociopathy comes to us through studies of how human beings process
language. As it turns out, even at the level of electrical activity in the
brain, normal people react to emotional words (such as love, hate, cozy, pain, happy, mother) more rapidly and more
intensely than to relatively neutral words (table,
chair, fifteen, later, etc.) If I am given the task of deciding between
words and nonwords, I will recognize terror
over lister much faster, in terms of
microseconds, than I will choose between window
and endock, and my enhanced reaction
to the emotional word terror can be
measured by recording a tiny electrical reaction, called an “evoked potential,”
in my cerebral cortex. Such studies indicate that the brains of normal people attend to, remember, and recognize words
that refer to emotional experiences preferentially to emotion-neutral
words. Love will be recognized as a
word faster than look will be, and a
greater evoked potential will result in the brain very much as if love were a more primal and meaningful
piece of information than look.
Not so for the sociopathic subjects who have been tested using language-processing tasks. In terms of reaction time and evoked potentials in the cortex, sociopathic subjects in these experiments respond to emotionally charged words no differently from neutral words. In sociopaths, the evoked potential for sob or kiss is no larger than for one for sat or list, very much as if emotional words were no more meaningful, or deeply coded by their brains, than any other words(p.p.124-5).
Not so for the sociopathic subjects who have been tested using language-processing tasks. In terms of reaction time and evoked potentials in the cortex, sociopathic subjects in these experiments respond to emotionally charged words no differently from neutral words. In sociopaths, the evoked potential for sob or kiss is no larger than for one for sat or list, very much as if emotional words were no more meaningful, or deeply coded by their brains, than any other words(p.p.124-5).
Stout, M. (2005). The sociopath next door: The ruthless versus the rest of us. New York: Broadway Books.
3 comments:
<真実は「やぶの中」について>
最近の例で言えば、イラクで二人の日本人外交官が殺されました。『週刊文春』が、あれは「米軍の誤殺だ」という報道を流した・・が、本当はどうか全くわからない。・・あのタイミングで日本人がイラクで殺されれば、自衛隊のイラク派兵にとっては、はなはだ都合がいいんじゃないかと思う・・イラクの人を使って殺させたっていう筋書きだって考えられますから・・常に真相はやぶの中なんです。
イギリスのダイアナ妃の暗殺事件だってまったく同じ。・・・私が、西洋的な社会がある意味で嫌いなのは、そこなんですよね。非常に政治的に動く。しかも事件まで起こす。ケネディ大統領がなぜ殺されたか、いまだに分からない。どうやら真相に近付いたに違いないというのは、それに近い証人が次々に殺されていく事実で分かる・・そういう社会なんです、彼らの社会は。
(p.80)
養老孟司『真っ赤なウソ』
上記著作の日本語訳『良心をもたない人たち』は当ブログで既にご紹介しましたが、編集中、フォント(行の間隔や文字スタイル)を勝手に乱される危害を執拗に受けました。今回の原書のアップでも早速同様の危害を受けています。(途中から行間のスペースがなくなっているのにご注目)
生活保護を受けながらの無職者や、アメリカ名物「ヒマすぎる警官たち」から大学教官までCOINTELPRO Perps(集団ストーカー犯罪をやる者)全般に見られる特徴なのですが、このようにコンピューター技術を使うなど、自分が持っている知識や権力を使って人を苦しめ、嫌がらせすることでしか己の屈折した優越感を維持することができなくなってしまった「心の障害者団体」といえるのが現代の代表的なアメリカ人。
では何故、多くの人が、こんな大変な事実を知らなかったのでしょうか?
それは彼らには、もうひとつの特徴として、「陰湿さ」があるからでしょう。完全犯罪をやれる環境があるなら、犯罪やらなきゃ損だろ、という考えがアングロサクソン文化の根底にはあるようです。中澤新一氏をして「アングロサクソンは完全犯罪をやらせたら天才的ですよね(笑)と故・河合隼雄氏との対談本で言わしめたのも頷けます。
この世間を騙すことで己の歪んだ優越感を満たそうとする心の病について故・河合隼雄氏がアメリカの幼稚園で観察から得た知見を著書で次のように紹介していました。
男の子に小突かれているアメリカ人の女の子が平気な顔でいる。不思議に思っていると、この男の子と向かいあってテーブルに座ったとき、女の子のほうがニコニコしながらテーブルの下で男の子に蹴りを入れていたのだそうです。 こんな子供のころから「陰で」暴力を使い、いかにも「そんなことはやってない」という顔ができることを覚えるのがアメリカなんだなあと河合氏は納得したそうです。
集団ストーカーをやるようになった人間というのも、あらゆる極悪非道な悪行や下心をすべてウソを吐いて隠すことに生きがいを求めています。ですから、彼らは上記スタウトの著書のように本性が痛快に暴かれることを最も嫌う。まさに『羊たちの沈黙』のレクター博士みたいに。
この習性もまた、彼らが当ブログの同本の紹介に対し、執拗な嫌がらせを行なってくる動機になっているようです。
しかし一方、それでも告発を止めない真に勇敢な正義漢もまた、彼らの陰険な文化から生まれてくるのが面白いですね。
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
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