In today’s world thieves and sociopaths can usually wander around to new locations to find new people to prey on who don’t know them, and don’t have their guard up. How do people with sociopathic tendencies get by in communal groups like tribes or small villages where everyone knows about you?
Well, thieves is too broad a category to generalize, but some sociopaths are more adaptable to society than others. I’d assume that the ones that kept getting into trouble were like that relative that keeps coming around begging for money to spend on useless junk but you tolerate anyway because he’s family (either that or they got killed if they got into too much trouble), and the ones with more long-term planning capacity either became the tribal leader or one of his dead rivals.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Shaman?
I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the sociopaths and psychopaths ended up as warriors, and probably successful warriors at that. If you think of it, many of the classical heroes of antiquity - like virtually everyone in Homer - were essentially sociopaths.
Well, in the really primitive cultures there aren’t any laws as we use the term. So a thief can keep what he takes if he’s strong enough, and a sociopath can kill who he pleases if he’s dangerous enough that others fear to stop him.
If they are thieves what are they gonna take? Primative societies don’t have much.
I knew a man in a small village who may or may not have been a sociopath. Whatever he was, he was a bad person.
One day this man, Bouba, moved into a hut built into the wall of my American friend’s rented house in a very small Cameroonian village. He was a distant city living relative of her landlord (who himself lived in another city). In the local culture you must always provide a place for a relative to stay, no matter how distant they might might be. Bouba didn’t work, didn’t tend a field (which would have been given to him for free) and didn’t do anything. Instead, he would steal the fruit off of my friend’s cashew tree- a tree her American predecessor planted and nurtured. She used to give the fruit to children and neighbors as gifts. Then, he would sell the fruit in town to buy prostitutes.
Eventually he got sick of paying for prostitutes and “married” one. She moved into his tiny hut. The marriage of a prostitute to an outsider obviously went with little recognition in the village. This was unfortunate, since the traditional wedding gift is a cooking pots. The newlywed couple literally did not have a pot to cook in, and did not have a spare cent to buy one. But this didn’t stop the man. He just ate with his (dirt poor, hard working, farmer) neighbor. Cameroonian hospitality dictates that anyone who shows up at your door gets fed. No matter what. So Bouba and his “wife” went and ate there every night, significantly affecting the poor farmer’s food supply. This was a place where malnutrition was a reality.
So I guess in some societies, they do great. Thieves, however, didn’t do as well. Some got away with paying tributes to the local leaders, but they’d be expected to prey on outsiders. If you preyed on your own people you’d better get the heck out of your village. It wasn’t uncommon to see a thief getting beaten to a pulp and tortured (tearing nails out, etc.) on market days.
Interesting, isn’t it? You can substitute “tribes” with “countries”, “really primitive culture” with “world politics” - and the essence of this question remains exactly the same.
Well, same as today where they can join the police or armed forces.
True, except for the fact that rules of engagement were a bit looser back then. Massacring your enemies, raping their women and looting their possessions was seen as the essance of warriorhood instead of the faux pas it is today.
The Police is full of sociopaths and psychopaths? Certainly I can see how a career in the armed forces could be attractive to someone with no qualms about hurting or killing people but I’m not sure what you mean by the Police.
Although I have read a study by the US Army that states that they quite specifically don’t want sociopaths etc because they are too hard to control.
No cites unfortunately but the study grouped people into three groups, the ‘sheep’ who won’t kill under any circumstances, the ‘wolves’ who enjoy killing or have no compunctions in doing so and the ‘sheepdogs’ who will kill to protect themselves or others. The first group is useless for obvious reasons, the second because as said they are too difficult to control and the last group is what is aimed to be recruited.
Where did I say that? I didn’t, did I?
On the the hand it is very often that you read in the news about police abuse so don’t tell me it doesn’t happen. Many cops are on power trips. Put someone in a position of authority and there is a good chance he will abuse it if he can. It’s human nature.
And did you ever hear of Abu Ghraib? The notion that war is nice and clean and by the book is just not true. You put young people in a situation where they are being killed and where they have the opportunity to kill without accountability and you get Mi Lai and all the similar incidents which have happened in every war and some of which have been reported in Iraq and I am sure many more have gone unreported. In wars people kill without much thought and even in a sporting sort of way. It becomes a game, a deadly game. So you could say wars increase the sociopathic level of the individual because it provides justification for the killing. It will make sociopaths of a few people who were not when they joined and it will increase the possibilities that one who had that tendency originally can act on it.
Being a sociopath or psycopath is not a yes/no thing, it is a gradation thing.
No, being a sociopath is a scientifically defined disorder with a very narrow set of qualifiers. Being a sociopath is something you’re born with; you can’t “learn” it. Now, you can certainly become a desensitized and callous individual with no regard for human life, but that’s not quite the same thing.
I read a book about sociopaths recently, in which the author observed that although a certain percentage of people seem to be born sociopathic anywhere in the world, tightly knit communities such as those found in, say, Japan seem to have fewer people acting on their sociopathic tendencies. She thought that perhaps the rewards for such behavior are lower in such communities and so more people just play by the rules even though they have no particular feelings about doing so. Sociopaths don’t have to lie, cheat, and steal, and some just don’t.
The book was The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout.
Yeah, there are a lot of sociopaths (who probably don’t even know they are) that never get into trouble because they are better at seeing the personal benefits of fitting in with society. The problem is that antisocial personality disorder usually comes with a certain degree of impulsiveness and lack of planning.
I don’t see what the existence of laws has to do with anything. A thief can keep what he takes if he’s strong enough, regardless of what the laws say. And a sociopath can kill who he pleases if he’s dangerous enough that others fear to stop him, regardless of what laws may be on the books.
What was your point about the laws?
-FrL-
I think his point is that where you have laws, you have cops. In lawless societies, the only ones opposing criminals are the victims, and if they were any good at it they wouldn’t have become victims in the first place, would they?
Why was the Imperial Japanese Army involved in so many atrocities and war crimes? Whatever social controls that worked at home in Japan, and a rigid system of military discipline, didn’t stop them when they were overseas.
Exactly. Without laws, you ( and your friends ) only need to be stronger than your victims and his friends in order to get away with preying upon them. WITH laws, you and your friends need to be stronger than the collective power of your tribe ( or city, or nation ). Which can happen; it’s called a “civil war”; but it’s a lot less common than a guy and his six thug buddies being able to beat up a lone guy and rob him.
The point was about Japan’s modern society as an example of a tightly-knot and controlled community, not about the Japanese as a people or whatever atrocities their military committed in the past.