The Pursuit of Happiness

The Pursuit of Happiness

Where does the satisfaction of a sociopath come from? Sociopaths, whose conscience deeply falls asleep, have enjoyment in winning. It might be seen as a competitive character. To all of us,  “the opinions of other people keep us all in line, arguably better than anything else” (Stout 23). To sociopaths, happiness is the core of life.

Paul Bloom had made an interesting point in his book, “pleasure is deep. What matters most is not the world as it appears to our senses. Rather, the enjoyment we get from something derives from what we think that thing is” (xii). In other words, when an individual has a hypothesis about the world that later he receives a confirmation that it is right, he gets pleasure. This can be seen in the character of Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door, Supper Skip. He appeared to be an extraordinary child with a brilliant mind. Since he was aware of his gift, he has become remarkably arrogant. When he was in school, making teachers feel foolish was one of his favorites. Regarding Bloom’s statement of pleasure, we know Skip is finding pleasure in confirming that he is smarter than everyone else. Generally, any person with the same level of Skip’s intelligence would have the same tendency to act like him. However, Skip is not just any person, he has taken it to the next level. His need for pleasure is never fulfilled. It keeps building up to the point that it only makes sense to him. For example, Skip hates frogs, and to him, they are ugly creatures. At first, he cut them up with scissors. Getting tired of cutting, he stole his parents’ cash to buy a pack of fireworks in order to blow them up. In his view, the suffering on their faces was exactly what he had assumed as “fuck-face”. Due to his high intelligent, “the plan worked like a charm” (Stout 38). It is said that “when sociopathy and bloodlust come together in the same person, the result is a dramatic-even a cinematic-nightmare, a horror figure who seem larger than life” (Stout 48). Hence, since early ages, Skip has been sociopathic who doesn’t even try to fight against his bloodlust.

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Did Skip know that his endeavor was morally wrong? According to Martha Stout, sociopaths are lack of conscience and remorse. So the replaced question needs answering would be whether the sociopaths know that they are lack of conscience. Case one, they don’t. In their thinking, this world is dull, what they do is simply to make it more colorful. What can be more pleasurable than satisfying both of your belief and curiosity at the same time? Especially, exploiting frogs in Skip’s world could be logically seen as an innocent joy because of the failure of understanding kindness rather than an immoral thinking.

Vice versa, case two, they do. Martha Stout defined “bad behavior is the result of faulty thinking, rather than a lack of synderesis, or conscience” (29). In order to exemplify bad behavior, Stout had created Dr. Doreen Littlefield. She is a typical competitive sort of person. Everything she does is just to make she appear to be better than others. She likes to park next to an old car so that her car would be more noticeable. She likes to walk her froufrou dog in order to have her appearance became more elegant. It’s quite ordinary until we find out that her dog is just simply kept as an accessory. In other words, her “stupid” dog’s life does not matter to her at all. Another story, when Doreen realized her co-worker, Dr. Jackie Rubenstein, was about to get the award of the best “mentor”,  her jealousy got worse. The competitive Doreen convinced Jackie’s patient, who was ready to get hospital release, that his mental illness was getting more serious. As a doctor, she was completely aware of what she was doing was morally wrong. Therefore, her action reached all of the conditions to be considered, according to Stout’s statement, as “the result of faulty thinking”. So why did Doreen still decide to do so even though she knew it was not right and strongly against the Hippocratic Oath? It could be because of the jealousy. As Stout wrote in her book, Doreen felt that life “has not given her nearly the same bounty as other people, and so she must even the existential score by robbing people, by secretly causing destruction in others lives” (76). Doreen believes that it is meant to be her destiny, and “diminishing other people is her only means of being powerful” (76).   

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From this angle, Doreen could be seen as a Lucifer. Simon Baron-Cohen, the author of The Science of Evil, explained: “people can be cruel to each other not out of evil but because of empathy erosion” (8). With the lack of empathy and the depth of self-satisfaction which is hard to resist, sociopaths have more possibilities to become demons. Simon Baron-Cohen also pointed out “ when people are solely focused on the pursuit of their own interests, they have all the potential to be empathic. At best in this state, they are in a world of their own and their behavior will have a little negative impact on others” (8). When negativities come to life, in order to release anger and frustration, people borrow random models to humiliate them, laugh at them just to feel better, which is familiar to the need of self-satisfaction. “Homo Homini Lupus” (a man is a wolf to a man). Since we have negative judgments about others like the sociopaths always do, why there is such a big distance between us and the sociopaths? The remarkable theory of Freud about Superego might be a great answer. The Superego, according to Freud, is the rules of decision, which is ordinarily seen as morality. Normally, we can’t stop our bad feelings about others but we rarely use them or try our best to rob them. We are scared, in my theory, that our bad behaviors can destroy the people who we think we are. In other words, the ordinary build-up moral archetypes not only for the public display but also for themselves. Our good behaviors and traits make us proud. Vice versa, sociopaths’ good behaviors, and traits give them vanity. Generally, they only have good feelings when they receive praises. With a strong passion for being praised and poorly developed Superego, they are willing to act regardless of the moral standards.

Since “civilization requires such sacrifices, not only of sexuality but also of the aggressive tendencies in mankind”, which is claimed in Civilization and Its Discontents, “prospects of enjoying happiness for any length of time were very slight” (Freud). Theoretically, what sociopaths do is just to last their enjoyments longer, which I would love to call "Living Selfishly".

In conclusion, sociopaths are just rule-breakers whose happiness is a threat to others. Because of their boredom and lack of sympathy for others’ feelings, sociopaths can do anything that makes their world more interesting. It is their needs. They have the high satisfaction of what they do without feeling any remorse afterward. This reveals their primitive pursuit of happiness which has a strong connection with selfishness and unevolved civilization. If happiness is an innocent need, then how can you persuade a serial killer, who is usually sociopathic, that killing is wrong?  

Eurus Thach
With the precious support of Louise Nguyen

( I’m in the middle of my research The Box Theory which consists of four main types of living: The Religious, The Non-Religious, The Self-Religious and The Socially Religious.

This is a part of my research, which is consisted of Chapter 3: The Self-Religious.

The Self-Religious circles the individuals who lead their lives by their rules without the consideration of social standards about morality, common good or civilization.) 

REFERENCES

Baron-Cohen, Simon. Science of evil: on empathy and the origins of cruelty. Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group, 2012.

Bloom, Paul. How Pleasure Works: the New Science of Why We like What We Like. W.W. Norton, 2011.

Freud, Sigmund. “Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). Editor's Introduction. (1961).”PsycEXTRA Dataset, doi:10.1037/e417472005-547.

Stout, Martha. The Sociopath next Door: the Ruthless versus the Rest of Us. Broadway Books, 2006.