Wednesday, May 9, 2012

How We Got into This Mess


The Shadow Discovers Some Answers in the Oddest of Places

  • How Did We Get into this Mess of all Messes?
  • Wednesday  May 9, 2012

  • I have been aware of the destructive power of the sociopath since my early days working at the North Texas State Hospital (c. 2003). Reading the case histories of these people is an eye opener. the fall into the class of mental disorders that is by far the least understood: The Personality Disorders, which in addition to Anti-social Personal Personality Disorder, includes Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcisistic Personality Disorder, and a few other more obscure categories. Even though in my private practice in Seattle which was at least 50% psychiatric, I rarely saw any of these disorders. I had become very adept at what Freud would call neurotic disorders, Major Depression, Dysthymia (chronic low grade depression), General Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, ADHD, and Bipolar Mood Disorder. In fact I did a better job with these these "garden variety" psychiatric illnesses, than most psychiatrists, because they were busy caring for sicker patients, those with Major Psychiatric disorders like Schizophrenia and refractory Bipolar Disease. The psychiatrists would "short change" patients with these less disorders, spend little time with them, 5 min usually. I would spend a half an hour with these folks doing a bit of supportative psychotherapy, but mostly just explaining their "disease", though it is becoming increasing hard to call any thing Freud would have called a neurosis, when everybody has one or two, and the real problem isn't the biological inblalances in the individual that is the problem, but the "environment", the society is the real culprit. Our biology, more specific the neurophysiology of the brain, hasn't changed in millions of years, but since industrialization (just the last 400 years or so) our environment has changed dramatically. As, Marshall McCluhan pointed out c.1960, our nervous system was particularly vulnerable to a rate of change in the rate of exposure to new in formation brought to us ("ready or not") by the electronic media, that in order to adapt we would essentially have to become very neurotic (in Freudean terms) in order to cope. If we were not conscious of this process we would be prone to making responses from the more primitive parts of the brain, which would be non-adaptive. His assessment was so brilliant, and unfortunately so ignored because TV appeared so "harmless", that it in fact triggered the downfall of the entire moral, ethical and social structure that had made the Constitution so effective and thus made this nation such a glorious example to the entire world of what a human society had the potential to be. Thus at the peak of The American Success Story, television arrived and within one generation brought us to our knees. Television was such an effective electronic narcotic and used so universally used (in a classic addictive pattern), that it lower our defenses to the sociopath. So precipitated by our lack of awareness of the power of television, we suddenly failed the essential task of "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance", because we stopped paying attention to what the EVIL element in our society was doing. The sociopaths, always ready to exploit an opportunity jumped into the void of attentiveness created by the distraction of TV, and with lightning speed took control of our entire society in a single generation. So, that where we are now, waking from a 30 year slumber to find that aliens, who hate us and everybody else, have control of everything. And while still recovering from the shock of this realization, we find that we must immediately FIGHT to regain control of our society, or the problem of regaining control will become vastly more difficult. The longer it takes us to take definitive action. And, to make things oh so very much worse ONLY A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THE SCENARIO I JUST 
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  • Since it is essential to understand what a sociopath is, and how  to recognize them; a good place to start educating yourself is is to read a couple of books on the subject.  There are several worthwhile books written in the past decade.  Their target audience is the general puplic and other professionals, but these informative books are more slanted toward the general public  Most do talk some about the new understanding of the biological nature of the disorder, but since they are psychologists, their knowledge and experience comes mostly from their clinical experience of working with these patients.  You can learn in a few hours of reading how to recognize the sociopath, which is the first step in ending their ability to climb to positions of power and sabotage all of the good things that people have tried to do to make things better.  I'm sure you have noticed that many of the important aspects of our society have gotten worse, not better,
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  • Morris Creedon-McVean
  • Austin, Texas, the land of drought

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