I keep trying to find some kind of leftist who claims to have antisocial personality disorder, and the only person I have found so far was on a random leftist discord who acknowledged they might instead be an egregiously misdiagnosed autistic person. I have checked the words "antisocial" and "ASPD" through search on this site, and nobody has ever mentioned personally having ASPD.
Google is unusually useless at the task, too. The most relevant things are articles pertaining to the Soviet and Cuban practices of detaining and imprisoning people who are deemed to be "antisocial." After some digging, I found the usual anticommunist talking point about Stalin and Mao being worse than Hitler or something, tacking on a baseless claim that Stalin and Mao may have been antisocial. No meaningful info.
There's no difficulty at all in finding antisocial fascists, cops, chefs, capitalists, or CEOs. Why can't I find an antisocial comrade? Is there some part about leftism that is inherently exclusionary towards antisocial people? Is it a problem to be exclusionary towards antisocial people?
If any comrade here has ASPD I would really appreciate hearing your experience.
I want to believe there is an unempathetic way to arrive at leftism. It's not a good model for people who obsess over maximizing personal gratification, but it's the only way to guarantee some level of gratification. Surely there's some antisocial person out there who sees communism as the best ticket they have for a good life.
There absolutely is. I was leftist before I was really empathetic - what did it was my material conditions. The core of my radicalization was being too broke to afford a pack of smokes while working shit McJobs that made a ton of money for the corporation. The thing that led me to leftism specifically was hearing about some dude in Berkeley who got arrested for hitting Nazis with a bike lock and I said to myself "that owns, actually, let's see what else these Antifa believe in" and having every single one of my workplace experiences validated by Marx. I had to have the empathy bullied into me by the old subreddit, honestly, and it's still something I still struggle with. I don't think I'm ASPD, though, just a :le-pol-face: pmc dork failson with maybe a little more self-awareness than most of my ilk.
Antisocial behavior is not the only facet to ASPD, in the same way that sneezing does not automatically mean you have a cold; you're conflating a single symptom with an entire disease. There are plenty of symptoms I don't exhibit, like conduct disorder, aggressiveness, or impulsiveness - in fact I'm about as far from impulsive as you can get. Even if ASPD was a spectrum I would barely be a blip on the radar at all. I was just a sheltered, alienated manchild who couldn't really understand what it meant to be exploited or marginalized until I got just the absolute tiniest taste of it and then had someone else painstakingly explain how that applies a billion times more to a lot of other people.
I heard something about Stirner in regards to the ego and leftism, is that relevant? From what I've heard, he was nothing more than a troll.
the inherent problem is that most people prefer to gamble that they can beat you to the top rather than secure a medium for both of you. Remember, they have acquired the guiding ideology as a pathogen, and capitalism is inherently self-destructive.
Seen it first hand. Those who only want leftism for a better life fall into liberalism quickly. It's extremely easy to get ahead under liberalism as long as you're willing to put your boot on the neck of someone else, and that's a way more positive outlook for someone who only cares about themselves than to spend your entire life fighting for something you'll never personally benefit from. They live in a nice house and receive funding from fascists. As soon as the material conditions require it, I fully expect that they'll abandon all of their progressive values and transition into a full blown white supremacist. Dreading the day that happens.
also I feel I must add that the term "sociopath" is outdated and usually avoided when talking about antisocial personality disorder
Obligatory, the terms "sociopathic" and "psychopathic" are typically avoided terms since they've become incredibly loaded
I know reasons abound for antisocial people to be leftists, but I want to actually find one :P
I've heard third hand that apparently people with ASPD can develop a kind of empathy if their social environment heavily favors it. Not sure about the validity of that tho
It's a spectrum disorder, like autism. Some people are certainly lost causes, but some could also become decent people.
The thing is, most sociopaths won't want to get "better" because sociopathy is often a beneficial trait for the sociopath: being utterly ruthless can be massively advantageous in this fucked up world of ours.
Makes me wonder if because capitalist society rewards that behavior it has a higher prevalence due to a selection bias of non-sociopathic people dying at higher rates due to poverty etc
Anyone know if this article about a researcher looking at a scan of his own brain and "discovering he's a psychopath" is in line with current research? Because it's what I always think of when this topic comes up. The short version is that he was studying the brains of people who have been diagnosed with some version of antisocial tendencies, and was also doing a study on Alzheimer's, so he had brain scans of his family. He noticed one looked like the brains of other antisocial people, and oops, turns out it's his brain. But he's a functioning member of society that, while he can be an asshole sometimes, hasn't done any of the truly terrible things we typically think of as normal psychopath behavior--he's not a murderer, not a rapist, etc.
So why is that?
Why has Fallon been able to temper his behavior, while other people with similar genetics and brain turn violent and end up in prison? Fallon was once a self-proclaimed genetic determinist, but his views on the influence of genes on behavior have evolved. He now believes that his childhood helped prevent him from heading down a scarier path. “I was loved, and that protected me,” he says. . . .This corresponds to recent research: His particular allele for a serotonin transporter protein present in the brain, for example, is believed to put him at higher risk for psychopathic tendencies. But further analysis has shown that it can affect the development of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (the area with characteristically low activity in psychopaths) in complex ways: It can open up the region to be more significantly affected by environmental influences, and so a positive (or negative) childhood is especially pivotal in determining behavioral outcomes.
Of course, there’s also a third ingredient, in addition to genetics and environment: free will. “Since finding all this out and looking into it, I’ve made an effort to try to change my behavior,” Fallon says. “I’ve more consciously been doing things that are considered ‘the right thing to do,’ and thinking more about other people’s feelings.”
But he added, “At the same time, I’m not doing this because I’m suddenly nice, I’m doing it because of pride—because I want to show to everyone and myself that I can pull it off.”
Ever since I read that an number of years ago, I've been thinking about how nature doesn't make dangerous psychopaths--it only makes people who are particularly in danger in this society we're living in, where social bonds are weak and too many kids grow up with not enough attention and way too much anxiety. I don't know if this theory is considered too deterministic, but I've always thought it was really hopeful. I believe that a better world is possible, and if we build it, then people with these "antisocial" brains will be raised in an environment that lets them be them, but in a healthy way, like this scientist.
Anyway, I don't know anything about psychology and I have no idea if any of this is considered correct these days. Anyone out there know more?
OK, I was wondering if the "Psychopathy seems to come from an inborn predisposition" part was still considered likely or if had turned out to just be a correlation that ended up being ultimately meaningless. I think it's interesting to think about what changes we could make to society and the environment children are raised in that would lead to more good outcomes with psychopaths, basically changing the stereotype that psychopath=murderer in the making. I feel like I'm having a hard time expressing what I'm thinking here. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm thinking about what it would mean to make a society where someone who can't feel empathy would still have lots of good material reasons to engage in prosocial behavior. Not a dog eat dog world, but one where cooperation is rewarded, that kind of thing.
That is so cool. The message I had received before I read about that scientist was definitely that psychopaths are fundamentally broken people, and I hated thinking that. Like, all my friends were watching Dexter and I refused because I'd heard that his dad realized he would inevitably grow up to be a serial killer, so he decided to train him to hunt other serial killers. The thought that some poor kid would just be doomed to be a serial killer no matter what was something that I just could not get on board with, not even in fiction. It's great to think about your friend's theory that psychopathy might be curable in adulthood as well. If we had a justice system that made any kind of sense, that would surely be part of it. Anyway, that article made me think of psychopaths as not being uniquely dangerous, but instead as being uniquely in danger of being damaged by our alienated society. It's been on my mind off and on for years, whenever something even tangentially related comes up. And you taught me more tonight, so thanks for that.
Yeah, and acquaintance called me anti-science for not believing the premise when the show came up in conversation, but I was pretty much like, well, go ahead and call me irrational since I have no proof that it's wrong, but I refuse to believe that a person is doomed to a life of crime just because they happened to be born with a certain kind of brain. It's nice to know my blind faith was justified, lol.
Fallon was once a self-proclaimed genetic determinist, but his views on the influence of genes on behavior have evolved.
Yep, psychopath.
Also the "I can't be mentally ill, mentally ill means bad person, and i'm not a bad person" reeks of psychopathy.
When faced with the irrefutable evidence that mental illness doesn't make you a bad person, he chooses instead to reject the evidence.
Well, he did accept that he's a psychopath, he just theorizes that his secure and loving upbringing helped him to be well adjusted so his psychopathy manifests in less antisocial ways.
Abuse, hellworld, and 50 hour work week has made me anti social. I just want to lay in bed and never speak to anyone. I've always had fucked up emotions, especially when it comes to feeling anything. Every doctor I've been to just wants to give me pills and shove me out the door, so I can't know anything about what's wrong with me.
I don't know if I'm a psychopath or it's just that I'm emotionally numb to everything and always have been. Not really anyway to find out anything about my self or change anything as long as lay dying in this capitalistic world
ASPD isn't being a shut-in, there's an antisocial person in my family who constantly hangs out with friends. The withdrawal you describe sounds more like depression.
"Antisocial" is often used to describe shut-ins and socially inactive people, but I was intending to discuss people with antisocial personality disorder.
It's been my experience that anti-social individuals tend to fall into anarcho-capitalism more than anything.
Fine if they can find themselves to leftism but 90% of them never make it that far and just end up cryptofash at best.
I could tell you some stories about some leftists I encountered irl who displayed antisocial tendencies, but opsec and shit because they're a region specific organisation. Lmk if you want me to PM you.
