Why does the U.S. produce so many psychopaths?

[The_Hero_of_Men]

The Hero of Man...


I will use penguins as an example. Penguins were found to be homosexual. Many animals in the animal kingdom are homosexual. Can you explain that? I don't understand when people say that homosexuality is a choice like I can all of a sudden like dick on Tuesday and go back to p***y the next day. It doesn't work like that. The same thing with attraction. You can't all of a sudden like women you don't find attractive. I used to try to find black women attractive, but it just won't happen. It is not meant to happen. Nothing you can do can make me attracted to them. You can choose to buy things. You can choose to go back to sleep when your alarm clock is set wrong, but you can't choose what sex you find attractive like it's a light switch.

Obviously, homosexuality is not normal. Homosexuality is just like any other mutation or defect. It happens in all organisms. Other animals have two heads and so do some humans at birth. That's just what happens. Homosexuality isn't that hard to figure out. Only 1 million people on Earth are homosexual, so it is not that big of a problem. 6 billion people on Earth.

You keep saying it's a choice, but how about you choose to like guys for sex now. Would you? I doubt it.

Phoenix, you do have a point. I do not deny that. The problem is, there are people who actually choose to be gay. And saying homosexuality is normal within the animal kingdom... Maybe it is, but that is like comparing apples to oranges-- humans are the only species on Earth that has the ability to think further than "kill, eat, procreate". I harbor no beef or animosity towards you or Erik. I have said that I am open to changing my position on the matter, that is, when and/or if I am shown the proper evidences proving that.

[Winston]

The reality is that a human being doesn't need that much to be sane and happy. After you have the essentials, food and shelter, if you have some position in society and a social connection, that is all you need. Societies with big extended families provide social connection - children learn to live with other people and compromise. America is becoming a one-child per nuclear family society contributing to loneliness and isolation.

A good book to read is "Don't Sleep, There are Snakes" by Daniel L. Everett. He was a former Christian Missionary who went into the Brazilian jungles to convert a primitive tribe. After living with the tribe and being exposed to their effortless happiness, he ended up losing his faith in Christianity. He realized that beliefs and ideologies interfere with real life. The book describes the psychology of a truly happy people.

The capitalistic American society is dependent on unhappy people for its economic survival, because unhappy people can be manipulated to buy an infinite variety of consumer goods they don't need in order to attempt to fill up the void. People work like slaves for money and then spend it on stuff - 90 percent of which is worthless. They are conditioned to think of something as valuable only if you pay for it. The reality is that the only truly valuable things you can get are free. Even the former free things are turned into commodities. When paid water was first introduced into American markets it was considered ridiculous - now it is considered normal. Shrinks charge over a hundred dollars an hour to pretend to be someone's friend, when a real friend is so much more valuable. People spend money to see movies, when entertaining themselves at home would create social connection and be so much more fulfilling. If people in America became happy - the economic system would collapse.

The American culture has developed an ideology subscribed to by most Americans which generates continuous unhappiness. Maladaptive, psychopathic behavior like competition is glorified and considered natural. The individual is glorified and told he has rights and is powerful. Little does he know that he is being set up for the fall by conmen. After he makes one bad decision after another and becomes broke to the shysters and conmen who control his information and feed him lies, then the system can point the finger at him and say - you are a powerful individual - your failure is your responsibility. The poor little monkey now feels bad about himself. He never realizes the crimes that have been committed against him.

The little monkey is given an identity to make him feel temporarily good. When the military drops bombs on poor defenseless people he can stick an American flag on his SUV and feel proud and powerful because he identifies himself with America, which is powerful. If he can't get a woman interested in the machine he has become, he can still feel powerful when his military bullies others. There is no people more identified with their country then Americans. If the little monkey is doing well in the system, he can then be proud of himself and look down at people who are struggling and tell himself that they are struggling because they are lazy and not smart like him. This is the little monkeys path to feeling good. But it is only a temporary fix. It actually increases his misery because it cuts himself off from his own compassion. It can bring pleasure, but not deep inner peace.

The remarkable thing about the American system is how relatively few people crack under such an insanity producing environment. It's proof of the resilience of an inner peace buried deeply in the human mind which is buried beneath all the crap piled on top of it by society, but still functioning if you listen closely.

MrPeabody,
The former mental health counselor I'm corresponding with liked your post above and had this to say about one of your points:

"Winston,

Indeed a very profound essay. I was particularly touched by the last paragraph, a thought I have pondered myself many times--as to how few people actually "crack" under the oppression of the system. I am not sure if this is due to an innate inner peace so much as it is due to the great societal pressure to conform, however. Occasionally some people DO crack and there is a mass killing and this is rehashed ad nauseam in the news as a sensationalistic horror and then is quickly replaced by the next horrific occurrence, whether it be man-made or a natural disaster or Herman Cain's current lead in the Republican primary polls.

I ended up ordering the book he mentioned--sounds like a good read.

I jokingly would take issue with only one statement and that is the notion that "shrinks charge over one-hundred dollars an hour to pretend to be someone's friend." Actually, most charge much more than that and most shrinks make NO pretenses of even being friendly. People are seen by them for an average of 6-7 minutes, asked a few questions about their condition and given prescriptions for medications and quickly ushered out like a product on a production line. There is little pretense of friendliness--and I speak from experience, having known hundreds of psychiatrists and sitting in on over a thousand psychiatric interviews. Just as an example, and this is something I was mistakenly reported for at work, I was sitting in as a psychiatrist interviewed a middle-aged black woman in distress. It was around the time of the year anniversary of her son's drive-by shooting death and she was naturally having a lot of bad memories about this. Of course, this woman was not "squeaky-clean" in the psychiatric sense, either, as she was a crack Cocaine user--but she did have other real issues. After she confessed her sorrow regarding the anniversary of her son's death, the examining psychiatrist retorted, "Isn't it about time you were getting over that?""