**(Mods, if this should go in Cafe Society instead, please move it. Thank you.)
The situation is this: there are real people, historical people, and fictional characters for whom my heart just breaks. OTOH, there are real people who, frankly, I wouldn’t care a fig about if I just saw them run down by a Humvee. Not real people who I know and don’t like, but just Jane Schmoe crossing against the light or whatever. I can feel a vague sympathy for their family, but I can’t feel that saddened or otherwise affected by their death.
This occurred to me while re-watching a favorite episode of LEXX, Wake the Dead, in which a former assassin who is also a heroic figure, goes psycho and whacks five innocent teenagers. The episode is intended to be comedic, a satiric look at teen slasher movies, but while I’m sitting there laughing, it occurs to me that innocent people are being casually murdered*–and I’m laughing about it. :eek:
Yeah, I know it’s fiction, I know the storytellers’ intent is for the viewer to be on the side of the assassin, but still…
I’m no shrink by any means, but I’d think the very fact that you have these qualms means you’re not sociopathic. Sociopaths, as I understand it, don’t recognize that some things are right and others are wrong. They realize that some stuff will get them into trouble, so they have to be sneaky about it, but the concept of wrong has no real meaning to them, and they generally have no empathy whatsoever. You don’t seem like the most empathetic person in the world, but you do seem to have a grasp on right and wrong, so I think you’re probably all right.
I think that’s part of what I was trying to get at. People I know, I care about intensely; people I don’t know… well, gee, it’s too bad. That’s about it. (Unless of course it’s some really aggregious crime, the Sylvia Likens murder, for example.)
But another part of it–the part that disturbs me–is the TV episode I referred to above, slasher/horror movies, many action films, and the like.
I enjoy violent media as much as the next guy/girl. I also understand that it is wrong to kill innocent teenagers or most other people for that matter. I don’t really know why I don’t cringe or comtemplate the morality of people dying everytime death is presented to me-- be it a fictional TV/video game death, or an actual death reported on the news. I guess I’m just used to the notion of people dying. I need a personal connection to the deceased before I really feel anything. Maybe I’m a sociopath too, but you don’t sound like one to me.
I wouldn’t worry about it. As CrazyCatLady pointed out, you would not have started this thread if you were a genuine sociopath.
I am not a psychiatrist, either, but I’ve had the misfortune of knowing three people across my life who were almost definitely genuine sociopathes. For such people, all other human beings – including family and “friends” – are objects to be manipulated and discarded as convenient. They can fake intimacy and closeness to other human beings, often very well, but the disguise drops the moment it becomes a burden.
All human beings go through a natural, ethical development. All children, when very young, are sociopathes. People first develop empathy towards those they’re close to, then those like them. The better we fight our own ignorance, the more our understanding of the world grows, the more our compassion and empathy grows. At the highest levels of understanding, you could empathisize with a complete stranger on the other side of the world.
You’ve simply realized you are not at that level. It doesn’t mean you’re the other extreme, either.
Now, hold on… most of these “innocent” teenagers are hardly innocent at all! Everyone in those movies is always necking, having sex, drinking or doing drugs… no wonder they come a bad end!
In many cases, I do empathize with complete strangers, across the world and across the years. In many cases, I do not. So I guess that just makes me “weirdly socialized”?
In this particular incident–laughing at an episode where people are getting murdered, and enjoying the murderer–I suppose the fact that it was satire, and was intended to be comedic, should reassure me.
And yes, g.s.r.d., they were necking, drinking, doing drugs! Not only that, they talked back to their elders! Why, you’re right–they deserved to be whacked off by a dead ex-assassin gone psycho!
I’m pretty confidant that you know that Lexx is a show for entertainment. (yes death can be entertaining and funny) You know that those actors are not really being killed. You also knew that it was a parody of other films. So you should not be upset over their deaths.
Not being too upset over the death of strangers is pretty normal. Otherwise we would all be in mourning every day of our lives. If someone really got run over right in front of you and you just stepped over her crumpled body on your way to Starbucks to get a frappachino then you may have some issues.
I’d say that description is spot-on. I’ve only known one, myself, and that’s a counting contest I’m very happy to lose. For sociopaths, other people aren’t even there, in a very important way. I think that’s one of the saddest and most terrifying malfunctions of human development that can happen.
Enjoying violent media has nothing to do with that, but comes from a healthy bloody-mindedness.
