A Reader wrote about psychopaths who uses various ‘social masks’:
“The power trip loses it’s potency once you realize that power is an illusion. Jumping out of a airplane or setting things on fire is how I get my kicks. They are real to me, power is not.
You can ask JFK how powerful he is, oh, wait, he’s fucking dead. 🙂“
It doesn’t matter if Power is an Illusion. Everything, in a sense, is an illusion. You can also say Illusion has Great Power which is just as true in a different sense. To the one who experiences it power is real.
You can’t live your life according to the bad luck of others, and the Assassination of JFK is a bad example because he’s a small minority of assassinated presidents.
But let’s take a look at power: Power is a phenomenon that involves social interaction and feelings. It follows a line of events in time, and those involved invest energy and other things in gaining the best possible outcome for themselves.
Many say that is all an illusion.
Now let’s take a look at love: Love is a phenomenon that involves social interaction and feelings. It follows a line of events in time, and those involved invest energy and other things in gaining the best possible outcome for themselves.
But for some reason I have never heard anybody say love is an illusion. What is it that makes one an illusion and the other reality?
You could say that power is something you can attach to love and vice versa, whereas love is something that can stand alone. A ‘pure’ phenomenon of sorts. If this is how it is, then I have to say that some people just don’t have access to this particular kind of experience. We have to attach our ‘liking’ to something which has some form of substance, if only in the form of feeling good – which is what it’s all about at the end of the day, right?
I think this is so whether or not you’re a psychopath. Being a psychopath who takes on different roles according to different social situations and individuals is not being less human, it’s just at an extreme end of the spectrum, but human nevertheless. Maybe power is a spectrum phenomenon too. A phenomenon on the spectrum of human experience and therefore reality. I really don’t believe one emotion or way of liking something is more or less real or illusory than others.
An a final statement: Is not love the absolute power? Is not love that which nothing can conquer and which conquers all? And if this is so, is not then love just as much an illusion as power is?
The nature of illusion or reality has consequence only on the most transcendent level, and even if you’re a zen monk it has no practical consequence in everyday life. We all have to eat, and we must assert power to do so, for neither animal nor plant come to us and commit suicide for our sake just because we have the power of abstract thinking.
If you now say that I twist words because I’m a psychopath and you need therefore not consider my arguments, you are certainly giving up power freely. It is in your power to do so, and I cannot be blamed!
