What Psychopaths can Teach us

• If psychopathy is conceptualized as an extension of normal personality, then it follows logically that psychopathy itself must be scalar, and that more or less of it in any given context might confer considerable advantages.

• Have an SOS Mentality - the skill to Strive, Overcome, and Succeed.

• The Seven Deadly Wins that Psychopathy can teach us

  • Ruthlessness
  • Charm
  • Focus
  • Mental Toughness
  • Fearlessness
  • Mindfulness
  • Action

Ruthlessness §

• To be mad without being mad. Act without remorse while appearing sane at the same time.

• *Psychopathy and Utilitarianism are Linked

  • A lot of our emotional mechanisms aren’t adopted for the modern world.
  • Emotions are done by numbers Psychopathy is an emotionless void. To a psychopath, emotion is irrelevant.

• Perhaps the one stand-alone feature of the psychopath, the ultimate “killer” difference that distinguishes the psychopathic personality from the personalities of most “normal” members of the population, is that they simply couldn’t care less how society, as a whole, might contemplate their actions.

• If you know where the buttons are and don’t feel the heat when you push them, then chances are you’re going to hit the jackpot.

• The great thing about insensitivity is that it lets you sleep when others can’t.

• Psychopaths feel the “moral pinch” less than us. They have no compunction about whether something is right or wrong

Charm §

• Charm is “the ability to roll out a red carpet for those you cannot stand in order to fast-track them as smoothly and efficiently as possible in the direction you want them to go”

  • People are as nice as you make them; This gives you power over them.

  • The reason why people don’t get their own way is because they often don’t know themselves where that way leads.

    They get too caught up in the heat of the moment and temporarily go off track. At that point, the dynamic changes.

    That’s when things become not just about getting what you want. But about being seen to get what you want. About winning.

• Subdue the enemy without fighting; That is the highest skill.

  • Assert your authority by convincing prospective challengers that they’re beaten before they start.

  • Dominants stand out, not because of what they take; Dominants affirm their position by what they give.

    The group looks for the most effective arbitrator in its midst, then throws its weight behind this individual to give him a broad base of support for guaranteeing peace and order. The cultural arbiter is the one who enables ideological change.

• Giving is receiving

  • One of the best ways of getting people to tell you about themselves is to tell them something about yourself. Self disclosure meets reciprocity.
  • Core personality structures, interpersonal styles, personal values—all these things are often best revealed in the small print of people’s lives.

“Most folk you come across pay no attention to what they say when they’re talking to you. Once out, the words are gone. But a grifter will zone in on everything … Like therapy, you’re trying to get inside the person. Figure
out who they are from the little things. And it’s always the little things. 

The devil’s in the detail … You get them to open up. Usually by telling them
something about yourself first—a good grifter always has a narrative. And
then immediately change the subject. Randomly. Abruptly. It can be
anything … some thought that just occurred to you out of the blue or
whatever … anything to interrupt the flow of conversation. Nine times out of
ten the person will completely forget what they’ve just said.

Then you can get to work—not right away, you need to be patient. But a
month or two later. You modify whatever it is, whatever the hell they’ve told you—you tend to know instantly where the pressure points are—and then tell the story back as if it were your own. Bam! From that point on, you can pretty much take what you want.

Focus §

• It is conviction that makes psychopaths tick.

• If the psychopath can “make” out of a situation, if there’s any kind of reward on offer, they go for it, irrespective of risk or possible negative consequences

“I think the idea of killing professionally, be it in the market or elsewhere, demands a certain ability to compartmentalize. To focus on the job at hand. And, when that job is finished, to just walk away and forget it ever
happened.”

• Psychopaths need to do something; Nothing isn’t an option.

Mental Toughness §

• Have a thicker skin in the face of other people getting in the way. Reap all the rewards for it.

• Developing a thick skin helps build up psychological immunity.

• Gear yourself up for the challenge

• This inner neural steel also makes you resilient in the face of life’s misfortunes.

• It’s not the cruel misfortune that breaks you but the threat of it happening; The carcinogenic thought process that something terrible is going to happen and it’s right around the corner.

Fearlessness §

• Adopt a zero tolerance policy on anxiety while the rest of society allows it to spread

  • Whoever keeps their nerve—is always going to win: provided, that is, that their opposite number is sane.
  • There are no half measures and no questions asked. “Fear nothing and no one” is the mantra.

• Realize: Fear is nothing more than a brain state. It comes and goes.

  • Fear emerged as a survival mechanism against predators. However, fear makes us risk averse .

They say that courage is a virtue, right?

“But what if you don’t need courage? What then? What if you don’t have fear to start with? If you don’t have fear to start with, you don’t need courage to overcome it, do you?  If I couldn’t give a shit in the first place, how can it (make me brave)?

(...) It seems to me that the reason people harp on about courage all the time, the reason people feel they need it, is to bring
yourself up to the level I function at naturally. 

You may call it a virtue. But in
my book, it’s natural talent. Courage is just emotional blood doping.”

• People spend so much time worrying about what might happen, they lose sight of the present. They overlook the fact that, right now, everything is perfectly fine.

  What freaks us out is our imagination; The brain is on fast-forward mode thinking of all possible disasters that might unfold, but the disasters don’t happen.

  Thus the trick is to stop your brain from running ahead of you. This is the trick to courage.

  Alternatively use your imagination to your advantage; imagine yourself not feeling fear? What would you do then? Then do it.

Mindfulness §

• The problem with a lot of people is that what they think is a virtue is actually a vice in disguise. It is much easier to convince yourself that you’re reasonable and civilized than soft and weak.

• There will always be a need for risk takers in society, as there will for rule-breakers and heartbreakers.

• Psychopaths live in the moment — in the here and now where the past and future evaporate and all that remains is the present moment. They achieve a Flow state,.

  • The trick, it would appear, is being fireproof. It’s being able to perform not just in the heat of the moment, but simply in the moment. It’s about not feeling hot in the first place.

• Psychopaths operate with a state of mindfulness. This involves two components:

  • The self-regulation of attention so that it is maintained on immediate experience
  • Adopting a particular orientation toward one’s experiences in the present moment, an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance
    • “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; In the expert’s mind there are few.”

• Whether we’re “good” or whether we’re “bad” lies partly in our genes, and partly in our environment. But since we don’t choose either, are we free to choose at all

• Psychopaths exhibit supersanity

A chill does go through the veins. The only way I can describe it is to compare it to intoxication. Only it’s an intoxication that sharpens, rather than dulls, the senses; an altered state of consciousness that feeds on precision and clarity, rather than fuzziness and incoherence … Perhaps ‘supersane’ would be a
better way of describing it. Less sinister. More, I don’t know, spiritual

• Both the cultivation and maintenance of a relaxed state of mind can considerably aid, not just our responses to, but also our perceptions of, the stressors of modern living

Action §

• There are times in life when it’s a case of the “least worst option.” When sometimes, in order to achieve the desired, or most favorable, outcome, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

  Sometimes, from an objective point of view, it’s actually the right thing to do.

What’s worse, from a moral perspective? Beating someone up who deserves it? Or beating yourself up, who doesn’t?

If you’re a boxer, you do everything in your power to put the other guy away as soon as possible, right? So why are people prepared to tolerate ruthlessness in sport, but not in everyday life? What’s the difference …?

• Realize that: Inflicting harm on other comes naturally. Interpersonal aggression among humans has a long history.

• Anchor your thoughts entirely in the present, screen out the chatter of the querulous, recriminative past and the elusive, importunate future, and anxiety begins to subside. Perception begins to sharpen. And the question becomes one of utility: what we do with this ‘now’, this enormous, emphatic present, once we have it

• The decision to act heroically is a choice that many of us will be called upon to make at some point in our lives. It means not being afraid of what others might think. It means not being afraid of the fallout for ourselves. It means not being afraid of putting our necks on the line. The question is: Are we going to make that decision?

Balance §

• A very high dose of psychopathy (all the dials turned up to max) is as bad as a very low one. Instead, it’s moderate levels that code for greater “accomplishment”.

• Psychopathy is like a medicine for modern times. If you take it in moderation it can prove extremely beneficial.

  It can alleviate a lot of existential ailments that we would otherwise fall victim to because our fragile psychological immune systems just aren’t up to the job of protecting us.

  But if you take too much of it, if you overdose on it, then there can, as is the case with all medicines, be some rather unpleasant side effects.

• The ability to delay gratification, to put on hold the desire to cut and run (and also, needless to say, to run and cut), might well tip the balance away from criminal activity toward a more structured, less impulsive, less antisocial lifestyle.

• A functional psychopath is a psychopath without poor decision making and one who can act in a psychopathic way in appropriate contexts.

Links §

• The Wisdom of Psychopaths — What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success by Kevin Dutton

• The 48 Laws of Power - a good supplemental read.

• Stoicism - the “philosophy” behind a psychopath’s actions resembles stoicism - to detach oneself from others and to live in the moment.