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I'm glad you posted this; this is a very important issue. I had an online stalker for two years. This entity followed me around online, denigrating me in every way possible. There were over 1,000 emails posted on USENET (stay away from USENET--it's a zoo, and totally unmoderated), emails purportedly from me, with scatalogical subjects and really absurd remarks. I wasn't even in the country when all this occurred and nearly committed suicide when I saw it all. This behavior is very common online, particularly on USENET, and there is a book written about it, and the destroyed lives and reputations.
As a result, I studied this extensively. Apparently, there is a small but predictably reliable percentage of the human population (if you have a large enough sample), who are psychopaths, people without empathy and whose very brain construction differs from the norm. And they're not all killers, but people who wreck havock in the lives of others, leaving behind them a trail of broken hearts and emptied bank accounts. I think it's either 4 or 6%. I have a friend who is a police officer, and he told me that during his training, this data was supported. A smaller percentage of this percent are killers.
Robert D. Hare is an authority in this area. Here is a list of books about this which you may find helpful. The Gift of Fear was recommended on Oprah, and if you read nothing else, you should read it:
Emotional Vampires: Dealing With People Who Drain You Dry, Albert Bernstein Kindle ed. Net Crimes and Misdemeanors, J. A. Hitchcock The Gift of Fear, Gavin De Becker The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, Paul Babiak Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, Robert D. Hare
Everyone knows someone like this; the psychopath usually isn't some weird looking person you can recognize on sight. On the contrary, they're frequently charming. But they are very studied in their persona and their emotional responses, which they have to practice after observing others, since they don't have any genuine emotions themselves. Often, their eyes have a dead look.
PostScript: A white hat hacker friend of mine finally found this woman, who was working in an office in Huntington Beach, CA. When we threatened her with the newly-developing stalker laws in Cali, she stopped.
Hopefully not by choice! Share your stories of people you've come across, were stuck having to spend time with because you had to, even family members, etc. who you wouldn't be surprised if they've killed people or even just seemed to enjoy doing evil things to you or others.
MY situation:
I started a new job this past summer & I'm starting to think my 2 bosses (one's not really considered a boss) are evil heffers. They're fake, want it to appear as if they're nice, but they're most certainly not. They've done vindictive things, like not helping me with something that they could have easily done & handing out paychecks when they darn well know they have insufficient funds or that the check will bounce. Thankfully, I'm through with them when the month of May is over & will never have to ever see them ever again! For June, I'll just tell them to mail my last paycheck. I don't even want to come pick it up.
Well, there was that time I worked with Satan and we were at a meeting and he intentionally smacked his coffee onto my laptop and destroyed it so I couldn't give my presentation and I was like, "Dude, why are you being so evil?" And he was all, "Because I'm the devil!"
And I was like, "You're paying for my laptop, guy..." *squint*
And he was all, "Make me..." *squint*
And that's the story of how I met my husband, kids!
I knew a girl growing up who I considered a bad seed, a real ripe one who was abusive to her parents and siblings, enjoyed making other kids cry, liked hurting animals. Not just mean or even crazy, something more than that. The kind of girl that would make an old black woman rumored to be a prophet rock slowly in a chair on the porch of a broken down farmhouse for an hour before looking up at the sky and saying, "That chile got the devil in 'er."
I'm talking movie cliches, folks, simmer down.
I had to be around her a lot to an extent because she was a neighbor and related to one of my friends. Never a pleasant experience, would have shook the dickens out of her if I didn't think spiders would fly out. Didn't have to see her again once I moved away, haven't spoken to or seen her since my late teens/early 20s maybe. I imagine that somewhere, there's a corpse in a ditch because she wanted to know what murdering someone felt like. Or that she's a corpse in a ditch because someone got tired of her.
She's the only person in my life I can honestly say that I thought was genuinely evil. She probably eats faces, I dunno. Everyone else, I think is just mean or mental, but evil? Nah.
When I saw American Psycho, Christian Bale's character reminded me of a sales manager that I had in the mid 90s. Maybe not with the dead bodies in the closet, but still, the man gave me the heebie-jeebies. Really polished, but very vindictive and seemed to have nothing but contempt for other people. I've also met people that turned out to be pathological liars, had absolutely no empathy for other people, just all-around crappy people...
...but it's hard to say whether or not these people can be considered truly evil. How does one make the leap from narcissist/sociopath/some other similarly disordered person, to truly evil? What fills the gap? Like other people said, they don't always come off as though there's something "off" about them, but really charming, really well-adjusted and likeable.
A girl I knew back in high school - even at that age she was scary, a true sociopath - the kind who would turn on the charm and fool people into thinking she was all innocence, while backstabbing, manipulating, putting blame on others for her actions, and getting others in trouble for no reason at all other than fun. She was a pathological liar and made up lies about everything all the time, with or without reason, and god forbid if you crossed her, she could probably pull anything to get back at someone.
I really think there is no divide between a sociopath and an 'evil' person - a sociopath is evil by definition, and just because they haven't committed a heinous violent crime does not make them any less so. They could've ruined the lives of many around them through seemingly innocuous actions. A sociopath who commits a crime is simply one with a motive to do so, and I believe any person like that would be CAPABLE of committing a crime if they had enough reason and believed they could get away with it. At the same time, not everyone who does commit a crime, look at child porn etc., is necessarily 'evil' and a sociopath - they could simply be severely mentally ill or have a different uncontrolled personality disorder etc. That's my take on it at least.
I had a old boss that would send out the truck drivers on long hauls so he could hit on their wives, would take out his hate on one shop hand at least every 6 or so months-he'd encourage his other shop help to pick on this guy until he finally quit, he only made a decision to rent our products if it would make a personal add to his private bank account, he encouraged cash payments, he would pay full price for vendors and have what ever the discount was sent to his post office box in his name, he had a trucking company that was our first call to send out our equipment to customers- he would even hold the products until a truck came free, he used our company truck (a certain one) to go to customer locations-the driver was instructed to put magnetic signs over our company logo when he got out side of town and also use his wifes trucking company invoices, he was in legal partnerships with several vendors of ours-hid well on paper of course, he had a walmart bag full of blank receipts from cafes,rental houses,motels,restaurants,etc and would fill them in each month to add just over what his house,utilities,family's bills were, he would take at least one 3 or 4 day weekend with his family a month every month and charge the company like he had a customers family with his, we had company housing in a trailer court, he had one other trailer in another trailer court-to party and take his bar/girl/friends to and the company paid for it, he would let his buddies use company vehicles for their personal use and use the company gas cards, he stole/sold company inventory and later had our company buy it back, he rented out our company pickups/semi's/forklifts and their operators and the money to pay for this was sent to him and his bank account-oh, our company paid for the operators,fuel,repairs on them, he did this for over 35 years with many companies that I have known him. He is still doing this with another position in the oilfield now.
I spelled havoc wrong; no k at the end. But havoc is what sociopaths cause, as a rule, often on purpose and for fun. The good thing about those statistics I cited is that if, say, 12% of the population is sociopath or psychopath (there is a distinction and I've forgotten what it us), the upside is that 87% of the remaining population is decent, has a conscience, and really doesn't care to deliberately injure others.
This is a cause for celebration, IMHO.
On the other hand, the decent 87%--the ones with empathy and a conscience--are "prey" to those who operate from the reptilian brain. It's great to be innocent but I think you have to be informed, too.
It may be interesting to note that some of the authors writing on this subject indicate that a high percentage of business and government leaders are of the reptilian type, IIRC.
I spelled havoc wrong; no k at the end. But havoc is what sociopaths cause, as a rule, often on purpose and for fun. The good thing about those statistics I cited is that if, say, 12% of the population is sociopath or psychopath (there is a distinction and I've forgotten what it us), the upside is that 87% of the remaining population is decent, has a conscience, and really doesn't care to deliberately injure others.
This is a cause for celebration, IMHO.
On the other hand, the decent 87%--the ones with empathy and a conscience--are "prey" to those who operate from the reptilian brain. It's great to be innocent but I think you have to be informed, too.
It may be interesting to note that some of the authors writing on this subject indicate that a high percentage of business and government leaders are of the reptilian type, IIRC.
That's what I'm concerned about - being the prey. I've read some of the books mentioned upthread (really liked The Gift Of Fear) but still don't feel like I can accurately gauge whether or not I'm dealing with a "bad seed", and maybe other people feel the same way.
Dunno if it's just me, but in my readings about narcissists and sociopaths, combined with what those of us in society are supposed to aspire to, it all makes me feel as though I've fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole. Some of the people that society would deem "undesirable" have hearts of gold that they strive for some reason to conceal from everyone else, and the people with the storybook lives have the picture of Dorian Grey in their attic.
Maybe we as a society should learn to peel back the onion and look past what looks good on paper?
That's what I'm concerned about - being the prey. I've read some of the books mentioned upthread (really liked The Gift Of Fear) but still don't feel like I can accurately gauge whether or not I'm dealing with a "bad seed", and maybe other people feel the same way.
Dunno if it's just me, but in my readings about narcissists and sociopaths, combined with what those of us in society are supposed to aspire to, it all makes me feel as though I've fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole. Some of the people that society would deem "undesirable" have hearts of gold that they strive for some reason to conceal from everyone else, and the people with the storybook lives have the picture of Dorian Grey in their attic.
Maybe we as a society should learn to peel back the onion and look past what looks good on paper?
My deceased ex used to say that people have to earn your trust--and that is takes at least five years to get to know someone well. Appearances *are* deceptive, and the best and brightest person may be fooled. But in time, people will reveal themselves and maybe we need to trust people to limited extents until we can observe their history and interactions with others.
I think it's important, also, not to tip over into a generalized paranoia.
This guy was a manipulative SOB who lied without compunction, stiffed vendors, slept around on his wife, and a host of other things. Very early on in our business relationship, he mentioned that he had written a non-fiction book relevant to his industry and didn't know what to do next. So I helped him with his query letter, one that got him an interested agent in two days, wrote his book proposal, which turned into a publisher's offer in a week. I mean, it was amazing how quickly it came together.
Three weeks later, he got a different agent interested and was going to throw over the first agent who managed to get the book deal. I told him that, under no circumstances, should he do that. Then he put together a consultancy, brought together a lot of investors and then hosed them all. I didn't have money in it, but I had made a couple of phone calls on his behalf, so he made me look bad by association. I told him to never call me again.
I saw him at the airport a few months ago and he actually pretended none of that ever happened. I simply turned my back on him and walked away.
This guy was a manipulative SOB who lied without compunction, stiffed vendors, slept around on his wife, and a host of other things. Very early on in our business relationship, he mentioned that he had written a non-fiction book relevant to his industry and didn't know what to do next. So I helped him with his query letter, one that got him an interested agent in two days, wrote his book proposal, which turned into a publisher's offer in a week. I mean, it was amazing how quickly it came together.
Three weeks later, he got a different agent interested and was going to throw over the first agent who managed to get the book deal. I told him that, under no circumstances, should he do that. Then he put together a consultancy, brought together a lot of investors and then hosed them all. I didn't have money in it, but I had made a couple of phone calls on his behalf, so he made me look bad by association. I told him to never call me again.
I saw him at the airport a few months ago and he actually pretended none of that ever happened. I simply turned my back on him and walked away.
Yeah, you have to do that; you're not dealing with a normal, rational person who has ethics and empathy for others.
An example given in one of the books I listed (I don't remember which one): A woman opened her front door one morning, to find her beloved cat, dead on her porch. She cried and cried, and it was awful. Normal people would not wish her to go through such pain, or kill an innocent animal, or any of it. People who are damaged ethically would feel nothing about the matter, maybe laugh at the situation, and have no remorse about killing someone's loved pet.
There is a big distinction here--and only a small percentage of these folks are actually in prison or mental institutes, which is where they belong.
I suspect there have always been people like this. Human life has never been easy, whether we lived in African savannas, medieval hovels, or large modern cities.
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