A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 8
Religion & Virtue

Are they the future?

2,975 words

Part 8 of 8 (Part 1 here, Part 7 here)

There is joy in danger. — Napoleon

Psychopathy seems like the epitome of evil. As we’ll see, however, one characteristic of psychopathy is associated with at least one virtue.

Psychopathy can’t be cured; it can only be managed. Perhaps John Calvin had psychopaths in mind when he developed his theory of predestination: God chooses some for salvation rather than others. To the extent that psychopathy is hereditary (45% to 60%), perhaps this is true, though from a Christian perspective forgiveness is always an option, and oddly enough from a Machiavellian perspective, it’s always good to leave one’s foe a place to retreat to lest he come to believe his back is against the wall and then go berserk. In other words, it’s neither humane nor self-serving to stop a “good criminal” from trying to change his life, especially when the prospect of good behavior may be the only thing stopping him from going on a kamikaze mission against his foes when he has nothing to lose.

A clue as to what damns psychopaths to their behavior may lie in their inability to think in terms of moral abstractions. A study on psychopathic prisoners showed they struggled to interpret the meaning of proverbs. Experts believe this is due to their decreased frontal lobe function. The serial killer Ted Bundy, who scored a 39/40 on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, couldn’t get through law school despite having a decent IQ of 123 because he struggled to understand the abstract moral reasoning behind law. Psychopaths dismiss moral reasoning as a sort of fakery. Their brains can’t conceptualize of what it is, so they assume everyone else is faking it.

There may be a downside to thinking too much in abstractions, though, because it clouds one’s sense of reality. Psychopathic individuals may be freer from illusion. To quote Napoleon, who was quite a psychopathic individual: “I abhor illusions: that is why I accept the world as it is.” It seems that within a group, these illusions help us to get along — although with gender racial desegregation, the illusions that hold us together have needed to become ever stronger. Hence, those most capable of believing deliberately conceptualized illusions (moralistic white people) and those most cynical in propagating them (antifa types high in factor 1 psychopathy) rule the day.

Perhaps because psychopaths struggle to think in terms of moral abstractions, holding atheistic beliefs is correlated with subclinical psychopathy. This is not surprising, since atheists tend to have less empathy for others, a trait common among psychopaths. Of course, just because someone is an atheist does not mean they are subclinically psychopathic. Being an atheist also correlates with being male (50% increased probability), intelligent (0.20 correlation), neurotic (0.29), and having higher mutational load — i.e., bad DNA. While psychopathy is related to atheism, one study showed that clergymen are more likely to be psychopathic, so it seems the faithful laity are the least psychopathic — i.e., those moderately above average in religiosity.

Regarding the influence of intelligence on atheism, Richard Lynn reports that the average IQ of a nation negatively correlates with belief in God by -0.60, but Edward Dutton reports that it negatively correlates with IQ within the US by a much lower factor of -0.20. In other words, the average IQ of a nation may influence belief in God more than the average IQ of an individual within a nation.

An odd thing psychopaths share with religious people is that they are both more sadistic, even though religious people are less psychopathic on average. Sadism makes strange bedfellows.

Pupils of nuns in Catholic Schools of the mid-twentieth century have attested to sadism being commonplace. However, I can’t say how their levels of sadism compare with that of psychopaths.

Religious people tend to be more honest and humble. Psychopaths score very low on honesty-humility on the HEXACO personality scale (honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience), which incorporates these two traits as a kind of opposite of psychopathy and narcissism. Many virtues have been found to negatively correlate with psychopathy on it:

Honesty, humility, diligence, a tendency to forgive others, sincerity, concern with interpersonal justice and fairness, straightforwardness, contrition over wrongdoing, mercifulness, compassion, self-reliance, self-control, piety, fidelity, selflessness, altruism, modesty, prudence, responsibility, and having realistic long-term goals.

Men displaying these virtues may not be the most charming, but they’re ideal partners for long-term monogamous relationships.

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Psychopathy is virtually synonymous with the Christian concept of sin, since psychopaths would seem more likely to break all ten commandments more often given that they are more likely to go to jail for murder, sex crimes, theft, perjury, fraud, embezzlement, and so on. They also seem to be deficient in Christ’s fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control), since they are more vengeful, unhappy, emotionally dysregulated, impulsive, calloused, deviant, sadistic, adulterous, and emotionally dysregulated.

Psychopathy is not, however, reducible to a lack of virtue — at least not factor 2 psychopathy — because it is correlated with fearless dominance, and thus courage. Factor 1 psychopathy, however, isn’t associated with fearless dominance. It’s natural that a factor 2 psychopath such as Alex from A Clockwork Orange would imagine himself as a valiant warlord from the Old Testament, as he does in one scene.

According to one study, presidents who exhibit fearless dominance were more likely to display heroism in battle. Another study showed that students scoring higher in fearless dominance demonstrated greater heroism and altruism toward strangers. Heroism was found in another sample to correlate with the impulsive-antisocial aspect of psychopathy. The reason they are more courageous may have to do with their smaller amygdalae, the part of the brain responsible for fear.

In a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket, a soldier excuses the pugnaciousness of his comrade “Animal Mother” by telling a newcomer that “under fire, Animal Mother is one of the finest human beings in the world — all he needs is someone to throw hand grenades at him for the rest of his life.”

Full Metal Jacket – Animal Mother

Another positive aspect of fearless dominance is that individuals displaying it have greater stress tolerance. This makes sense given that stress can hold one back from taking charge, and taking charge can in turn lead to stressful events. Alex from A Clockwork Orange couldn’t handle all that ultraviolence without having inborn toughness.

A downside to fearless dominance is that individuals displaying it are somewhat less likely to cooperate in prisoner’s dilemma scenarios,[1] meaning they may be less trustworthy when pitted against their ingroup by a stronger outgroup. Part of the reason for this may be that when psychopaths decide to cooperate, they show less activation in their prefrontal cortex. Perhaps the Right’s greater tendency to break ranks is the result of a greater amount of fearless dominance among them.

Nietzsche’s “master morality” is more favorable to psychopathy than Christianity, but not entirely. Nietzsche posited that Christianity was a “slave religion” because it is a pacifist religion which castigates power struggles and makes virtues out of meekness and forgiveness — qualities that slaves, as the weakest members of society, needed. Instead of shaping morality to provide slaves with moral superiority, Nietzsche sought to give the masters moral superiority. For Nietzsche this meant pursuing one’s self-interest and being courageous. These traits are associated with psychopathy. However, Nietzsche also states that master morality should include honesty, trustworthiness, and an accurate sense of self-worth, and psychopaths are often pathological liars, don’t keep their promises, and have a grandiose sense of self-worth. Thus, master morality is only partially conducive to psychopathy.

The concept of master morality also isn’t conducive to modern-day masters. If masters had an accurate sense of self-worth, they wouldn’t pay entry-level employees so little and older workers double. Moreover, if modern masters were honest they would be less likely to be masters in the first place. Income is correlated with extroversion and intelligence, and intelligent extroverts lie more often than introverts and unintelligent extroverts. Nietzsche was himself an introvert, and tragically didn’t understand this. To quote Napoleon (who knew something about becoming a master), “the surest way to be poor is to be honest.” Sun Tzu echoes this sentiment, stating that “deception is the art of war.” Plato confirms that “honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.”

Indeed, philosophers tend to be more honest and self-aware than business leaders. Master morality is more of a philosopher’s attempt to understand the masters’ morality. What’s more, Nietzsche’s “magnificent blond beasts avidly prowling round for spoil and victory” are no longer warriors on horseback, high in fearless dominance and thrill-seeking, but Gordon Gekko types sitting in skyscrapers while conning the world out of a living wage. Nietzsche’s master morality thus seems to have been an attempt to reconcile the defunct factor 2 psychopath warriors and Christian “slaves.” Today, however, people high in factor 1 psychopathy rule the world.

When I saw a group of about a half-dozen young white men who were tall and well-built while traveling through a rural area, I realized that Jews and factor 1 psychopaths in urban areas have transformed America into a system designed to keep rural and working-class whites down. America is now engineered to oppress white males from the middle class and poor backgrounds who are introverted, masculine, honest, and humble. If only white, zoomer country boys could see how the psychopaths in corporations like BlackRock have engineered things against them by instructing psychopathic job recruiters and human resources staff refrain from hiring them, which in turn renders them underemployed and “low status” in the minds of women, thus placing them among the 51% of men aged 18-29 who are single. If they only knew that there’s increasingly no way for them to “play the game” and win. Whether they will ever wake up is a good question, but one thing is certain: If there is hope, then — to paraphrase Orwell — it lies with the country boys.

A Profile of a Psychopathic Man

He has a wide face, visible nostrils, and is short and husky. He works as a supply-chain manager in Washington, DC after quickly rising through the ranks. He has a degree in business from a school that admits students with low average SAT scores. He got his job by sucking up to a friend’s parent who worked there. He sometimes starts enterprises on the side that never seem to go anywhere, including a consulting business.

He has a sonorous voice and is socially engaging, speaks in a slow, controlled manner while using many disfluencies such as “um,” “uh,” and “you know.” He has very pleasant mannerisms and uses the first-person pronouns a lot. He barely moves his head when he speaks and uses a lot of hand gestures. He stands a little too close for comfort, and wears stinky cologne. He love-bombs you with compliments at first and seems emotionally cued in to your feelings, but seldom talks about his family. He is either a weekend preacher or a Richard Dawkins anti-theist, but whichever he is, he attracts a crowd.

He has had many girlfriends, and has three kids with different women, but is militantly opposed to having more, claiming he can’t afford them despite having paid off his student loan debt and squandering several hundred dollars per week eating out. He deliberately causes chaos and strife, especially when playing people off against each other. He often contradicts himself, tells half-truths, recounts long and complex stories, and overgeneralizes — especially from hypothetical or facetious statements. He is dodgy and never seems to square up with you. He always keeps you guessing. He gaslights you when you confront him about going to a strip club, claiming he had to go there because of ties with business clients. He changes the subject when he doesn’t feel in control. When he does apologize for his misdeeds, he nevertheless does the same things over and over again, and seems to show no genuine remorse for treating you badly.

He has a big ego and is always telling people he works overtime even when he’s just working regular hours. He seems overtaxed and not terribly good at his job. He posts ugly artwork and memes on his social media which somehow draw a lot of attention. He’s a big fan of Rammstein, but also likes Eminem and Machine Gun Kelly. He’s a “foodie” and spends his paychecks eating at various pubs and restaurants. He holds the record for tolerating the hottest hot sauce at one of them. He smokes weed and drinks almost every day, and tells tales of wild keggers he attended at school, and has experimented with illegal drugs. He’s a night owl but seems able to get up early every morning easily. He doesn’t move much while asleep, and sleeps soundly. He always seems to have some weird rituals he must perform before bed.

He has stated that he wants plastic surgery to flesh out his jawline better and fix his formerly gauged earlobes. He has several large tattoos, including on his hands. He likes the concept of Cyberpunk 77 and wants to get implants to enhance his cognition. He has pre-diabetes and suffers from a nervous system condition. He has practically dry-humped other women at parties. He maintains a good public image given that he volunteers for an hour each month at a children’s home, where he spends most of the time with photo ops.

Taking a car ride with him can be unpleasant because he can be aggressive with other drivers. Whenever you’re sad or upset, he’s emotionally unavailable, and even seems to become angry with you, so you just bottle your bad feelings up. He’s a militant anti-masker with a maniacal hatred of mask mandates and those who wear them. He seems impossible to startle, sway, or make nervous, being sangfroid in difficult situations. He sometimes offers a fake smile and is artificially congenial in interactions that just don’t feel right.

A Profile of an Honest & Humble Man

He has a long face, and is tall and lean. He has a long ring finger relative to his index finger. He has a degree in mathematics from a top school, but because he is a white male from a rural area without connections, he can’t get job interviews. He bemoans not majoring in engineering, because he thinks he’d have had a better chance at getting a job. He worked as a truck driver for a while because it was the only way he could make his student loan payments. He’s now a certified nursing assistant studying to become a licensed practical nurse. He has a genius-level IQ.

He has so much potential. You keep telling him he should teach math in a high school, but he lives in a small town where it’s hard to get a teaching job because, since whites are having fewer kids, the schools don’t need as many teachers anymore. He is shy at first and not the liveliest, most entertaining person. He can be a little socially awkward at times. He seems to stand far away from people when talking to them. He takes care of his grandmother, who has mobility issues, driving her to the grocery store or picking up food for her. He is always mowing her lawn, shoveling snow, or raking leaves at her place. He does the same thing for her elderly neighbor across the street and refuses to take money for it. He’s always putting others first and himself, last. He relies on religious faith and/or ideology to get through the trials of being underemployed and heavily indebted.

He’s only had one girlfriend, who he says broke his heart. He works as a bouncer on weekends, and he’s good at getting unruly drunks to calm down. He is always prodding you for answers and can be overly abstract at times. He can be honest to a fault. He apologizes sincerely when you confront him about bad things he’s done, but also stubbornly disagrees when he believes he has done nothing wrong. He is slow to warm up to people, but is trustworthy once he does. He does beautiful artwork on the side. He donates the proceeds to his local church and pro-white causes. You keep telling him he should submit his work to lucrative contests, but he refuses to do it for money.

He likes folk and traditional music, but some modern stuff as well, including the Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing.” He is calm under pressure, but can get nervous at times. He is restless while sleeping and pulls the sheets off the bed when doing so. He says he wants kids, but worries about having enough money to provide for them. He can always tell when you’re sad or upset, and tries to make you feel better. He doesn’t attract a crowd at a party and usually just hangs out in the background. He’s the sort of person who needs to put himself out there more. He drives with smooth handling and often motions for other drivers to go before him.

The question is: Which way, Western woman? Which sort of man will be more common in the future? A better question is which sort of man was more common in the past.

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Note

[1] The prisoner’s dilemma is based on the following hypothetical scenario: The police separate two captured suspects and tell them that if they each agree not to snitch on the other, they both go free, but if one snitches and the other doesn’t, the snitch goes free, and the non-snitch gets a long prison sentence. If they both snitch, however, they each get a moderate sentence. Prisoners often snitch on each other, but if they were to trust each other not to snitch, they’d be better off.