psycho

bored at work again. i find a topic on the forum about a cannibal allegedly living happily ever after in freedom with his family, namely nikolai dzhumagaliev. i follow the link, read the stuff in wikipedia, google a bit more and think to myself 'hey, the dude is a cross between hannibal lecter and... darn! what was the red dragon's name again?'. so i look up thomas harris. yeah, it was fracis dollarhhyde. of course i diverge into articles on blake's paintings and various other characters in the novels but meanwhile i am caught up reading all about hannibal. the article states that dr. lecter is not a sociopath as he only displays two of the three symptomes. sounds interesting. i click the link, here i am reading on psychopats. there's a link at the bottom leading to the article about fictional portrayals of psychopaths. i warmly recommend it. check this out:

In the past fifteen to twenty years, psychopaths, comedic or otherwise, have increasingly been portrayed in popular movies as caricatured exemplars of a kind of aggressively "hip", permanently jaded, ironic, postmodern sensibility of cool. This type of fictional psychopath assiduously cultivates and promotes his deviancy amidst a pervasively cynical and nihilistic pop-culture wasteland. The postmodern psychopath necessarily exists in a chaotic, fragmented environment — one devoid of any authentic values and feelings, saturated with banal consumerism and ephemeral mass-media simulacra, and informed by what French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard has called "an incredulity toward metanarratives". Hence, extreme anti-social behavior becomes the normative method for negotiating one's way through all of the violence, confusion, vacuity and absurdity that abounds. It is by remorselessly and efficiently committing crimes with depraved deadpan indifference that the postmodern psychopath attains the nihilistic grace of self-referential coolness which is his calling card.

The appeal of postmodern psychopaths in the current popular culture is not entirely clear, but it is quite possible that they are meant to reflect and cater to the narcissism, hostility, jadedness and cynicism of a certain portion of the contemporary audience which prefers to experience garish displays of violence and criminality unencumbered by the implied moral framework of the classical "grand narrative" pretext that is traditionally grounded in the Aristotelian teleological imperatives of justice and catharsis.

errrrm. according to the above quoted and underlined (well, bolded)... aren't we all a bit psycho?

the article then proceeds to analyse psychopaths in iconic works of fiction in literature and cinematography, namely a clockwork orange

It follows that Alex, the rampaging delinquent who abuses his liberty through violent crime, is just as inauthentic a person as Alex the good citizen, who has been coercively rehabilitated by unnatural means and thereby robbed of any free moral choice. Regardless of whether Alex is actively anti-social or passively complaisant, his behavior is ultimately as overdetermined and mechanized as that of a wind-up toy — i.e., "a clockwork orange". In this sense, Alex DeLarge certainly qualifies as a kind of post-human dystopian psychopath

and do androids dream of electric sheep?

The film raises the question of where the moral agency of conscience-endowed humanity ends and the amoral automatism of psychopathic inhumanity begins.

ok, so maybe we are not psychos. for how many of our choices in life are... truly our choices? in how many cases do you by your own accord and free will abide by the rules set to you (and these rules multiply by the day) and in how many do you do it because the repercussions for acting otherwise (i.e. according to your heart's desire) are too high a price - from social exclusion to detention in state or mental institutions. constant acting on my feelings would probably make me passable for the label, though i still have issues with the 'lack of remorse' criterion. anyway, this one dude here strikes a chord with me:

The Marvel Comics vigilante known as the Foolkiller has been depicted in several incarnations, usually as a reactionary crusader. Whom he kills depends on whether or not that person fits his private definition of a fool. As a result, he has killed in cold blood not only criminals, but also average, ordinary, law abiding citizens if only because their thoughts, words, or actions deem them fools in his eyes.

errrrrm. psycho trait. yup. my 'humane' side fights a constant battle under the motto "they are human too. they have a right to live as mother nature made them" with my foolkiller side. errrrrm. i'll let you know if and when the switch burns through. i'm off to practice my psycho glance :)

and if you want to have some fun, check out this page. how psycho are you?