Saving the World from Pretenders

By the standards set by today’s most modern societies which are arguably the most peaceful so far in human history, pretenders and their less intelligent fellow psychopaths are labeled sick and require help to fit into society. Think about ancient societies. Death and violence had a much larger role then, as such it would have been easier for pretenders to exist in plain sight. Any society that included slavery looked at slaves as lesser being, a piece of property to be treated as their master saw fit, much like pretenders look at their victims today. But back then they could pay to own slaves and legally treat them in any manner they saw fit. Now they need treatment in order to function in a peace-oriented society where hurting and killing people is no longer common and slavery is no longer legally allowed. But alongside this drive to kill and hurt, the dark passenger, the pretenders still possess the rationale of the transcender, making them more dangerous and differentiating them from other more impulsive psychopaths like Henry. These kill mainly on impulse and thus have less self-control and more likely to make mistakes leading to their capture. But common for both is the fact that their need to kill is grounded in emotions. No matter how much they try to control this drive it will always make them more vulnerable than transcenders who always move to serve the greater good without any interference from their personal emotions. But alas, nobody is perfect. Even transcenders have some inherent drives they cannot switch off. Thankfully, these drives usually lie within the confines of society’s laws, because if they did not, then the road to transcendence could potentially turn into the road to pretending. This emphasizes the disturbingly close resemblance between transcenders and pretenders, which at times is only a matter of perspective.

For who exactly is capable of judging the greater good? Can any man really make that decision? Who determines what is normal? Societies across history and even today have had and has a vastly different approach to issues such as human and animal rights, sexuality and degrees of punishment. But it is my opinion that the democracies of the western world represent the culmination of the evolution of our civilization so far. Like mentioned before, they are the legacy of transcenders of the past who used the Trinity of Control to devise laws that protected the rights of individuals against hurt and persecution and are thus currently an ideal for other less progressed countries to strive for. Here pretenders are outside society and must receive treatment in order to be fully part of it. Any society that embraces the presence of pretenders, guised in whatever legal or religious pretext they can exploit, surely belongs further down the evolutionary ladder. 

Pretenders - The Dark Transcender

To fit into modern society you cannot live your entire life on the macro-scale. A little bit of social (inter)acting now and then prevents transcenders from being alienated by more micro-oriented individuals. This is the same thing sociopathic psychopaths do. But on the inside they live in an entirely different universe from transcenders. Theirs is a merger between the micro/macro universes that the transcender inhabits. Like all others they are the masters of their own micro-universe but they attribute a sort of macro master status to themselves as well. Like Dostoevsky brilliantly illustrates with Raskolnikov, these psychopaths justify their actions within their own moral structures. They look at the people on the Dancefloor as lesser beings that are at their disposal to hurt as they please. In that sense, they may even think they are doing the world a favor by removing these lesser beings, equivalent to removing weeds or pests from a garden. Hannibal Lecter does not consider himself a cannibal. As he puts it, cannibals only eat their own kind. To him, his victims are not his kind, they are beneath him and as such no different to him than eating animals. Empathy or remorse does never factor in to the rational processes of his tribe. They only think about their own right to live out their desires. Needless to mention that they have extremely big egos and are usually downright narcissistic, Hannibal and Dexter Morgan making great examples with their incessant grooming and meticulous housekeeping and cooking. 

Transcenders have access to the same macro-perspective as the sociopathic psychopaths, but their own role in this is vastly different. They do not possess the same gigantic sense of entitlement within this structure. Rather they acknowledge their own humility and place as just another cog in the Universal Clockwork. In addition, they do possess emotions such as empathy and remorse. These are as any other emotion, still under the control of the intellect though, and could potentially be overridden if faced with a difficult choice, hence the pragmatism. In many ways, sociopathic psychopaths are transcenders who have transcended too far and started to integrate the macro-universe into their micro-universe. Much like Dr. Manhattan who actually was thrust from a micro scale onto a macro scale when becoming an omnipotent force of nature, they have lost touch with their humanity and now see themselves entitled to act outside the laws of man, a pretender to the throne so to speak, to being Master of the Macro-Universe. Therefore I shall henceforth refer to them as pretenders. Unlike the good doctor they are however only humans, and though they would like to think otherwise they do also still possess some emotions. In fact, although the rationale of pretenders enables them to fake the behavior of their victims, the need to kill and hurt others, their dark passenger in Dexter terminology, is in fact an emotion inherent in them from birth, once again showing the relationship between emotions and the animal nature in humans. Just like an animal predator cannot choose not to kill, the pretenders cannot choose not to hurt others. It is simply their nature. Although they possess great self-control, this dark passenger is one emotion that they are incapable of controlling indefinitely, leading them to commit horrible acts, perpetually separating them from transcenders and dancers and placing them on the fringes of society.

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. 

The Consequences of Emotions and Monsters in our Midst

In religion you pay for your transgressions in the afterlife, in society you pay for it during your actual life. But no matter where we believe the reckoning of our actions lie, the scary possibility is that it is only because our actions are perceived to have consequences in one form or another that most people have to be in a state of desperation before they would consider transgressing the more serious laws of Man, regardless of how they are published. The point is that humans are not good by nature; they are good because that way they hold a better chance of a fulfilling life, rather than wasting away in a prison or later on in the fires of Hades or wherever. It is the smarter choice if we want to live long and have many achievements thus our reason works to keep us in check, ignoring the animal impulses lingering under the surface. Once again, it would seem that it is our reason that makes us human. Not our emotions. 

Our emotions constantly try to pull us down to the level of our more primitive animal ancestors. Our emotions cause us to start fights, wars and hurt and kill others as a result. Modern transcender founded societies require no such actions. Crimes of passion. That says it all. Jealousy, obsession, lust, hatred, etc. These intense emotions sometimes drive people to commit crimes that cold, hard reason could have prevented. This is why transcenders are not reliant on their emotions. They are driven by rationale and as a result can focus their intellect on more productive areas and not get distracted by emotions. They still feel them though, but they can most times control them rather than the opposite way around. 

But not all transgressors are fueled by emotion. Some people choose to transgress the laws of Man in a completely rational and highly planned fashion. Usually they possess an intellect that enables them to fulfill their evil deeds yet still escape punishment. For this they are masters of camouflage. This tribe has always held high fascination in my mind, and recently I have begun to articulate why this is. I have touched upon them before, but this time I will discuss the more literal meaning of a word I used earlier to describe pragmatic transcenders. In his truest form the sociopath and his more dangerous relative, the psychopath, are nothing like these great thinkers though. In return, they are the most dangerous people you can ever come across, and they might be closer than you think. To be in constant fear of them is irrational as they are thankfully not THAT common. However, should you find yourself in the crosshairs of one, there is little protection to be found. Effectively they are the apex predators of our race and thus our entire planet, explaining why the Predators chose to bring a group of them to their game reserve for hunting in Predators. Locked doors and society is not a sufficient protection measure, rather just an illusion of safety compared to the cunning of these hunters. But understanding how they think, might help you to steer clear of them. Stay tuned.