5 ms·

Serial Swatter/Stalker Mir Islam Arrested for Allegedly Dumping Body in River

12 points by spzx 8y ago

wallace_f 8y ago
With all the luxuries and opportunities of the modern world it's odd to me that anyone would be this deranged. You'd have to be particularly irrational, or sadistic.
- seibelj 8y ago
  Even if only 0.1% of the population are true sociopaths, that still means 1/1000 people simply don’t feel empathy. What motivates this type of individual is often very different than the majority of people. I don’t think I’ve known any sociopaths but I worked with pathological liar with grandiose visions of himself. He would compulsively tell stories that were obviously untrue, like getting a $100,000 tip for delivering a pizza, or his college professor telling him that he was smarter than all the students so completing a degree would be a waste (explanation for dropping out). He would also lie about the tiniest things routinely, even when it didn’t help him. This was in fast food, and he was the manager. It doesn’t matter how modern society is, these sorts of people will always exist.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    Supposedly psychopaths usually have a history of being on the receiving end of trauma or abuse as a child though, which suggests some possible environmental factors. Doesn’t change your main point but I thought I’d point out that it’s not 100% genetic, and we may be able to reduce psychopathy
    - PavlovsCat 8y ago
      "An ounce of prevention", indeed. > If a child finds no response in this "dance of the eyes," it is just as fear-inspiring as a physical threat. Murder is therefore not only a physical act but a psychic one as well. > When children are exposed to this kind of inner terror they must do everything possible to survive. This leads to what Ferenczi (1984) described in 1932 as the transformation of anxiety and terror into a feeling of security. This process originates in a social environment that allows adults to exploit children's dependence in order to advance their own feeling of self-worth and leads children to quickly reject their own feelings and perceptions for the sake of preserving their vitally essential bond with the care-giving adult. A child does this by submitting totally to the adult's expectations. Ferenczi puts it as follows: > > "Children feel physically and morally helpless; their personality is not sufficiently consolidated for them to be able to protest even in their thoughts. The adult's overwhelming power and authority makes them mute, often robbing them of their senses. Yet their fear, when it reaches a peak of intensity, automatically forces them to submit to the will of the aggressor, to intuit and obey his every wish, to forget themselves entirely, to identify totally with the aggressor." > Such identification not only causes victims to ally themselves with their victimizers but to idealize them as well. In the eyes of the victim the victimizer appears to be a source of security. At the same time the victim begins to feel his or her pain as weakness because the victimizer forbids these feelings. If he were to become aware of his victim's pain, he would feel guilty. That is something the victimizer must avoid by inflicting further violence. Yet the pain and resulting rage persist in the victim, only this time the rage is turned against the self, which is now experienced as foreign. It is part of the normal process of adaptation to direct this rage against the external stranger. The ubiquity of this phenomenon determines the course of human history. -- Arno Gruen, http://arnogruen.net/the_need_to_punish_--_article_by_arno_gruen.pdf http://arnogruen.net/the_need_to_punish_--_article_by_arno_g...
      - wallace_f 8y ago
        Thank you for this comment; it led me to read a bit of Gruen after. I've yet to read what I believe to be such an accurate description of phenomena of the kinds of evil and hatred continually found in society throughout history. And I say this as someone who has experienced the receiving end of very real and detrimental hatred, stalking, and what is basically oppression. The Wikipedia has a terse synopsos of these ideas.(1) 1-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Gruen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Gruen
  - throw-far-away 8y ago
    Certainly there are people who seem like there's no one home or that they're innately antisocial, but I'd say that a sizable fraction of sociopathic behavior stems from the rich/affluent who are more isolated from other people and from the consequences of their behavior. The rigged Monopoly game study seems to indicate that having more changes people, that resources emboldens some people with self-important hubris over others. It's interesting that delusions of grandeur or persecution seem to be common among people who haven't accomplished very much or who are in bad circumstances. I used to talk to this relatively-sane, non-drug-using older homeless guy who repeatedly claimed the FBI has a file on him. IMHO, losers make wild, unsubstantiated claims while successful achievers point out minor, trivial flaws and shortcomings about themselves (if you're small, act big; if you're big, act small.)
    - wallace_f 8y ago
      Of course if the FBI has stalked any homeless people, no one is going to believe them.

12 points by spzx 8y ago

With all the luxuries and opportunities of the modern world it's odd to me that anyone would be this deranged. You'd have to be particularly irrational, or sadistic.

seibelj 8y ago
Even if only 0.1% of the population are true sociopaths, that still means 1/1000 people simply don’t feel empathy. What motivates this type of individual is often very different than the majority of people. I don’t think I’ve known any sociopaths but I worked with pathological liar with grandiose visions of himself. He would compulsively tell stories that were obviously untrue, like getting a $100,000 tip for delivering a pizza, or his college professor telling him that he was smarter than all the students so completing a degree would be a waste (explanation for dropping out). He would also lie about the tiniest things routinely, even when it didn’t help him. This was in fast food, and he was the manager. It doesn’t matter how modern society is, these sorts of people will always exist.
- chillacy 8y ago
  Supposedly psychopaths usually have a history of being on the receiving end of trauma or abuse as a child though, which suggests some possible environmental factors. Doesn’t change your main point but I thought I’d point out that it’s not 100% genetic, and we may be able to reduce psychopathy
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    "An ounce of prevention", indeed. > If a child finds no response in this "dance of the eyes," it is just as fear-inspiring as a physical threat. Murder is therefore not only a physical act but a psychic one as well. > When children are exposed to this kind of inner terror they must do everything possible to survive. This leads to what Ferenczi (1984) described in 1932 as the transformation of anxiety and terror into a feeling of security. This process originates in a social environment that allows adults to exploit children's dependence in order to advance their own feeling of self-worth and leads children to quickly reject their own feelings and perceptions for the sake of preserving their vitally essential bond with the care-giving adult. A child does this by submitting totally to the adult's expectations. Ferenczi puts it as follows: > > "Children feel physically and morally helpless; their personality is not sufficiently consolidated for them to be able to protest even in their thoughts. The adult's overwhelming power and authority makes them mute, often robbing them of their senses. Yet their fear, when it reaches a peak of intensity, automatically forces them to submit to the will of the aggressor, to intuit and obey his every wish, to forget themselves entirely, to identify totally with the aggressor." > Such identification not only causes victims to ally themselves with their victimizers but to idealize them as well. In the eyes of the victim the victimizer appears to be a source of security. At the same time the victim begins to feel his or her pain as weakness because the victimizer forbids these feelings. If he were to become aware of his victim's pain, he would feel guilty. That is something the victimizer must avoid by inflicting further violence. Yet the pain and resulting rage persist in the victim, only this time the rage is turned against the self, which is now experienced as foreign. It is part of the normal process of adaptation to direct this rage against the external stranger. The ubiquity of this phenomenon determines the course of human history. -- Arno Gruen, http://arnogruen.net/the_need_to_punish_--_article_by_arno_gruen.pdf http://arnogruen.net/the_need_to_punish_--_article_by_arno_g...
    - wallace_f 8y ago
      Thank you for this comment; it led me to read a bit of Gruen after. I've yet to read what I believe to be such an accurate description of phenomena of the kinds of evil and hatred continually found in society throughout history. And I say this as someone who has experienced the receiving end of very real and detrimental hatred, stalking, and what is basically oppression. The Wikipedia has a terse synopsos of these ideas.(1) 1-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Gruen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Gruen
- throw-far-away 8y ago
  Certainly there are people who seem like there's no one home or that they're innately antisocial, but I'd say that a sizable fraction of sociopathic behavior stems from the rich/affluent who are more isolated from other people and from the consequences of their behavior. The rigged Monopoly game study seems to indicate that having more changes people, that resources emboldens some people with self-important hubris over others. It's interesting that delusions of grandeur or persecution seem to be common among people who haven't accomplished very much or who are in bad circumstances. I used to talk to this relatively-sane, non-drug-using older homeless guy who repeatedly claimed the FBI has a file on him. IMHO, losers make wild, unsubstantiated claims while successful achievers point out minor, trivial flaws and shortcomings about themselves (if you're small, act big; if you're big, act small.)
  - wallace_f 8y ago
    Of course if the FBI has stalked any homeless people, no one is going to believe them.