The Benefits of Exploring Your Dark Side

I have previously touched upon the similarity between pragmatic transcenders and sociopaths, both in the eyes of others but also from a transcender point of view and as I stated, there are many similarities, see Sociopaths, Pragmatics and the Power of Love. Dexter came out during a time in my life when I was very busy finding myself and a part of this was exploring my own dark side, something Dexter of course does constantly. This was spawned by the fact that I felt a scary amount of similarities with Dexter and his way of thinking. The only difference was his psychopathy. I never, and to emphasize: NEVER, had any inclinations to hurt anyone for my own twisted pleasure like the drives inherent in Dexter, Hannibal and all their real-life inspirations. I have no dark passenger like Dexter, but nevertheless I found a lot of similarities between him and me. During my upbringing I looked at my friends and family and their dealings and relationships with other people and I was baffled at the energy they put into it and the emotions it brought out in them, both positive and negative. Could they really be for real? Were they really that passionate about these relationships? I never felt anything like this. I always took a more rational stance. Relationships come and go. Emotions are volatile. Other micro-universes are not that important to your own. (See The Adventures of a Lone Wolf). These truths that I only recently learned how to articulate properly were always with me growing up. This caused a lot of confusion which made my initial journey to enlightenment a bit difficult, which I touched upon in previous posts, e.g. Infinite Freeway. 

So when Dexter came into my life at a time when I was still living in Denmark, trying to fit in with the culture there and had only fleetingly encountered fellow transcender initiates on the much larger stage which is the world, he felt very much like a kindred spirit. This is because the sociopathic psychopath, like Dexter and others mentioned, is in fact a twisted and warped form of transcender as well. Sociopathic psychopaths possess many of the qualities of the transcender, including an ability to not rely on emotions but rather a cold hard rationale. They also look at the world in a much larger perspective than the dancers on the Dancefloor of Existence, seeing that most people are in fact slaves to their emotions and the dictating enslaving forces like religion, society and tradition/culture, i.e. the Trinity of Control. This makes it easy for these would-be transcenders to not only hide among the dancers but also to seduce and manipulate them and eventually when or if they desire, to kill or hurt them. Dexter and Hannibal do this in almost every episode of their respective TV-shows and it was also mastered by the real-life sociopathic psychopaths like Dennis Rader or Ted Bundy, enabling them to escape capture for long periods by posing as perfectly normal on the outside, avoiding suspicion by seeming completely unable to perform such heinous acts as they did. Transcenders do the same, albeit to a much lesser degree, and for completely different reasons. Nevertheless, my encounter with Dexter helped me gain enough perspective to start my ongoing journey to transcendence so exploring your dark side might not be a bad idea. Just be careful how deep you go. Stay tuned to learn more about the specific differences between transcenders and sociopathic psychopaths and where to draw the distinction. 

Definition of a Psychopath, the True Apex Predator

Psychopaths come in very different forms and levels of intelligence. Common to them is that they have an inherent need inside them to hurt others through physical or psychological violence. This need is unhindered because of their other trademark, a complete lack of empathy. Empathy is naturally an emotion as well, but I believe one of the more cognitive ones. Empathy gives you the ability to put yourself in someone else’s place and create a sense of what they are experiencing. This way you feel sorry for someone who is being hurt, usually making you unable to hurt others. But because empathy is a semi-cognitive emotion, it is possible to override it in cases of severe stress, such as self-defense. This is why anyone, under extreme circumstances (him or me!) could potentially cause harm to someone else if their own survival was threatened. In return, most of us would probably feel a great deal of remorse after this act of violence, since at the absence of the stressful circumstances that forced us into action, our rationale again switches on the empathy and we suddenly feel sorry in retrospect for the pain we caused during our time of stress. 

The psychopath experiences neither empathy nor remorse. Or rather, his rationale is eschewed in a way to switch off these semi-cognitive emotions and rather justify even the most abhorrent actions inside his own moral framework, construed in his mind. He might be fully aware of the legal real-world consequences of his actions but inside his personal moral framework, his conduct is completely justified. Like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, these people can think about the pros and cons of taking a life, but they will always find a way to justify it to themselves. Their victims (could be anyone) deserve no empathy from them, because their desire to hurt overrides everything else. Less intelligent psychopaths can potentially hurt anyone they come across, but they are usually easy to catch as they act mainly on impulse. An example of these is Henry in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, inspired by the real serial killer Henry Lee Lucas who killed numerous people while drifting across the USA. Charles Whitman or Ronald DeFeo are other examples. These psychopaths committed horrific crimes as an impulse out in the open with no sense of empathy or remorse, but thankfully at least also without any other predilections of continuing beyond those singular events.

The most dangerous breed is the sociopathic psychopath. These are experts of camouflage and know how to feign emotions that they do not in fact possess to ensure no one suspects their true nature. These are the real apex predators of our planet. They know that their impulses would cause them to be excluded from society and that this would mean the end to their ability to nurture their dark sides. As such, they possess vast quantities of rationale except they turn it towards not being caught and fulfilling their dark desires away from the spotlight without anyone noticing. Fictional examples include Dexter Morgan and Hannibal Lecter, both featured in books, TV-shows and movies named after their characters, but they have very real inspirations such as the BTK Killer; Dennis Rader, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and many others. These characters and real life killers have always held great fascination with me and now I think I finally know why.