Sunday, January 09, 2011

Dexter

Today I explained to someone that the reason I hate Americans being fat is because it's directly connected to their encouraging universal psychopathy (automobiles) and abuse of children (forced eating). The connection's pretty weird but also pretty solid. It's hard to be neutral and blasé about a symptom that a nation is evil. And that's exactly the word I used too: evil.

Normalizing Insanity

And that was before I learned about the show Dexter on American television. The existence of that show is just the 57th piece of confirmatory evidence I have that yes Americans are evil to the core. (The 56th piece of evidence was '24 hours' which publicly advocated torture.) Put in clinical terms, the whole ridiculous notion that there exists in a healthy society a proper place for a psychologically unhealthy individual is empirically wrong and appallingly stupid.

In modern society, the proper path for a schizophrenic isn't to become a shaman, prophet or priest, it's to take anti-psychotic drugs and to cease having psychotic episodes. Nor is it the proper path for those prone to uncontrolled violence to become soldiers and police, far better for them to take all their vitamins so as to curb their violent impulses. Nor is it proper for psychopaths to become vigilante killers, rather it is proper for them to die. (We'll worry about their lives when there's a method of treatment or incarceration that doesn't just increase psychopathy.)

Encouraging Evil 

I have to say that it greatly disturbs and appalls me that there exists any nation on this planet that thinks making a show like Dexter is a good idea after the experience of Stanley Kubrick with making the film A Clockwork Orange only to then immediately pull it from all theaters because of copycat crimes. You can bet your ass the makers of Dexter don't have the slightest twinge of guilt over the murders they've inspired.

There's a reason why Canada routinely censors news and trials of murders and suicides. Because it inspires copycats and apparently there's just enough morality, decency and concern for human beings in Canadians to not want to be responsible for people dying. That's not very much decency you know. Yet even this fucked up Anglo country manages to easily pass this very, VERY minimal standard. Not so the USA.

Pretending Evil Is Banal

You know what the USA reminds me of? Rwanda just before the genocide, where everybody (including the aid agencies) kinda thought it was perfectly normal for the airwaves to be saturated by calls for the murder of Tutsis and people were distributing guns to anyone and everyone who wanted one. No, the USA isn't as bad as Rwanda and never can be. BUT the same cognitive dissonance and blatant disregard for the entire concept of evil is right there.

I want to be very specific though. What disturbs me isn't the psychopaths, the serial killers, and the violent criminals. What disturbs me is everyone else, supposedly possessed of empathy and human decency and the slightest bit of common sense, blithely going along with them without even blinking. It disturbs me that they ... just don't care. It disturbs me that it doesn't disturb them. It disturbs me how most of the population seems to act like psychopaths.

The Displacement Effect

Then again, I buy that pornography decreases actual sex by displacing it. I buy that rape porn decreases actual rape by displacing it. I buy that violent movies displace violent crimes. I buy that child porn displaces actual molestations of children (measured empirically). I have problems buying that a show about a murderous psychopath like Dexter satiates and displaces the desires of actual murderous psychopaths. Or maybe not.

Apparently, Dexter has ratings of 3-5 million viewers. Which is 1-2% of the American population. And as if by some coincidence, the USA has 2% psychopathy. If that's true, IF Dexter's entire viewing audience are psychopaths. And more importantly, IF all the longitudinal studies showing that young children raised on television grow up to become much more violent adults, IF all those studies are wrong THEN there's only one thing left for the USA to do: legalize child porn.

Except that argument doesn't work. You see, young children have no sexual desires so they won't seek out or watch child porn of their own free will. Young children do however have much less developed empathy and morality, so they will seek out a show promoting psychopathy like Dexter. So logically, a show like Dexter is much more dangerous to society than child porn can ever be.

So the argument goes the other way instead, if child porn is an abomination then everyone who participated in making, distributing, or even watching Dexter ought to go to jail and be publicly reviled. I'm okay with that.

Actually, it sounds like a fantastic idea.

4 comments:

Rok said...

> So logically, a show like Dexter is much more dangerous to society than child porn can ever be.

The danger of child porn is not that children would watch it, but that in the process of making it a lot of children are scarred for life.

Dexter's audience are not psychopaths (matching % is just a coincidence), but followers who feel attracted to people they percieve as having power. This is especially true for women. A psychopath like dexter doesn't care about the society's rules and he follows his own path. Rule breakers are percieved as people with power by followers in general population so people feel attachment to them, even though said person will never care about them. It's a natural instinct in humans to align themselves psychologically with people of (percieved) power.

Richard Kulisz said...

Come off it, the criminalization of child porn has never had anything to do with its production being deleterious to children. Such is blatantly evident to anyone possessed of the slightest trace of logic since child abuse and sexual child abuse are ALREADY illegal under totally different laws.

Yours is just an odious lie, made especially more odious because it's the conformist orthodox crap which cattle tell themselves. And YET AGAIN
more odious by the hypocrisy and total lack of integrity you display by manifesting the very characteristics (lack of logic, willingness to lie) you CLAIMED to despise in your last comment on my blog.

As for "followers who feel attracted to people they perceive as having power", I'm sure it's just a coincidence that psychopaths and narcissists (psychopaths lite) JUST HAPPEN to be followers who feel attracted to people they perceive as having power. Huh.

> A psychopath like dexter doesn't care about the society's rules and he follows his own path.

That shows how much you know about psychopaths. The first part (not caring about society or its rules) is true. The second part is demonstrably false. You probably believe that crap about psychopaths being intelligent rather than obvious imbeciles. And imbeciles are incapable of forging their own path.

> It's a natural instinct

Yeah, much like the natural instinct for peace, and the natural instinct for war, and the natural instinct for pretty much everything. What a load of crap.

It's only a "natural instinct" in Americans to align with psychopaths. That's because America has a narcissistic national identity. Narcissism is expected and normative of Americans by Americans. It is seen as Good and Natural. When the truth is that it is Evil and Unnatural. A truth which nearly every nation OTHER than the USA recognizes.

Richard Kulisz said...

The reason people care about power is because it's a necessity to achieve almost anything people want. Notable exceptions to this are poverty and powerlessness.

The truth is almost nobody cares about power for its own sake. Only fucked up, severely warped and twisted people do. Like the elites.

Sane people don't care about power anymore than they care about tiny rectangular pieces of coloured paper. Power and money are just necessities like clean water and hygienic toilets.

Furthermore, people who want to become powerless and poor end up invisible, especially compared to people who want power and wealth for their own sakes.

The so-called "natural human desire" for power has nothing to do with nature or humanity or even with desire. It's a statistical artifact pure and simple.

Just like empathy <=> good is also a statistical artifact.

Anonymous said...

> Come off it, the criminalization of child porn has never had anything to do with its production being deleterious to children. Such is blatantly evident to anyone possessed of the slightest trace of logic since child abuse and sexual child abuse are ALREADY illegal under totally different laws.

Gee whiz, ya think? I know it wasn't used the basis of child pornography legislation or any other related legislation, and I wasn't even claiming that it was - I haven't mentioned legislation at all, nor have I claimed that child porn production's effect on children was the only thing going against it. That was putting words in my mouth.

> As for "followers who feel attracted to people they perceive as having power", I'm sure it's just a coincidence that psychopaths and narcissists (psychopaths lite) JUST HAPPEN to be followers who feel attracted to people they perceive as having power. Huh.

Yes they can pretend to be followers of others, more powerful than them, but to their own ends.
They never are true followers. They aspire to be at the top, while most followers never do (idle fantasizing is not a real aspiration).

> That shows how much you know about psychopaths. The first part (not caring about society or its rules) is true. The second part is demonstrably false.

I think you mean something different by "forging their own path". I meant it as "working toward their own selfish ends", not "being a great leader/inventor/thinker".

> You probably believe that crap about psychopaths being intelligent rather than obvious imbeciles.

I think psychopaths have a range of intelligence just like other people. From dumb ones to fairly intelligent ones. They all of course share the same psychological damage.

> Yeah, much like the natural instinct for peace, and the natural instinct for war, and the natural instinct for pretty much everything. What a load of crap.

You seem to hold a belief that humans are a blank page when they are born and that they have no predilections. I disagree. Thinking that living in communities of up to 200 people for the largest part of human history left no mark on human psyche is IMO the same as thinking living in packs left no effect on dog nature. Absurd.

> That's because America has a narcissistic national identity. Narcissism is expected and normative of Americans by Americans. It is seen as Good and Natural. When the truth is that it is Evil and Unnatural. A truth which nearly every nation OTHER than the USA recognizes.

I agree with that.

> The reason people care about power is because it's a necessity to achieve almost anything people want. Notable exceptions to this are poverty and powerlessness.

> The truth is almost nobody cares about power for its own sake. Only fucked up, severely warped and twisted people do. Like the elites.

> Sane people don't care about power anymore than they care about tiny rectangular pieces of coloured paper. Power and money are just necessities like clean water and hygienic toilets.

All true, and as you say, only fucked up severely warped and twisted people care e.g. psychopaths I was talking about.
I never claimed normal people desire power (well they desire control over their own life - which is some minimum amount of power).

> The so-called "natural human desire" for power has nothing to do with nature or humanity or even with desire. It's a statistical artifact pure and simple.

I never mentioned "natural human desire for power". I specifically said "aligning with people of power" which is different.

It's impossible to debate anything when you're trying your hardest to prove to yourself that everyone is scum to the point of replying to arguments not made or implied.

Don't worry, I shan't bother you again.