america breeds sociopaths

I was having a philosophical journey, if you will, with my friend Megan last night over Facebook chat, about sociopaths and America and all sorts of things. I wish Facebook saved chats but it doesn’t, so I don’t remember how we even got into the conversation. I do know that we talked about Dexter for a bit. Season 3 opener was great! I’m excited.

Anyway, I made some point to connect independence and sociopathy/antisocial disorders. My position went something like this: Americans breed their children to be insular and to not trust people. This is done not by words but by actions, which, I argue, are more important than words, and even more fundamentally, dictate behavior much more than words do, especially to children. In other words, you may tell your child to “love thy neighbor,” but if you do not act that way, a child will not know how to love thy neighbor. I think this a pretty solid argument. Social interaction isn’t instinctual; if it were, children wouldn’t be born completely helpless. A horse walks within minutes of its birth, because walking is crucial for its survival. Human babies, however, are born only to be sponges for information.

For most of the evolution of man past its monkeyhood (yes, humans were once monkeys; I don’t care what god you follow, it’s fact), we have banded together for security and survival. Forming social groups was essential to our brain, language, and social development. In other words, we are who we are because of others.

In America, however, things are changing. We are becoming increasingly distrustful of our fellow man. We lock our doors, bar our windows, teach our children not to talk to anyone on the playground, never talk to our neighbors, watch as hundreds of men, women, and children are shows in brutal and agonizing ways on news and television and movies. Dateline stories about child predators, strange Muslim people flying planes into our buildings, our own money going down the toilet because of corrupt businessmen … more and more, people are blaming other people for the downfall of our country.

And let’s not forget divorce. What better way to force a child to consider the benefits of independence than by severing the most important connection they can have: the connection of a loving father and mother.

This has been going on for fifty years, maybe more. Each new generation is being taught that people are bad and not to be trusted. And so as children grow up, they learn to be “independent” as a survival tactic. Ten thousand years of evolution now thrown away to serve the Solitary Person. Parents, grandparents, hell, even children are bypassed these days. In America, there is only You, and everyone else is a mystery.

This, I say, breeds sociopathy. Antisociality is becoming the norm in America as people disconnect from society and connect to their computers. But that is a whole other blog for another day.

This antisocial disorder that pervades our society is the problem of our country. People don’t really care about foreign affairs other than making sure that Muslims don’t kills us and that we get their oil for our cars. Neighborhood Watches crumble as people stop giving a shit about the elderly couple at the end of the block. We’re all cooped up in our homes with a general distrust for everyone. And with the current economical crisis, it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.

I’m sorry, I seem to be rambling a bit, and that’s because I can’t remember exactly what I said last night, other than that Americans are sociopaths by the very nature of our independence, our severing ourselves from virtually everything. I think my next post will be about the ironic replacement of society via the internet, aka A bunch of sociopaths gathering together.