Tea at Trianon: The Sociopath Next Door

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The Sociopath Next Door

For anyone who has ever dealt with a sociopath, this article will ring true.

The covetous sociopath thinks that life has cheated her somehow, 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 their lives. She believes she has been slighted by nature, circumstances, and destiny, and that diminishing other people is her only means of being powerful. Retribution, usually against people who have no idea that they have been targeted, is the most important activity in the covetous sociopath’s life, her highest priority. (Read entire article.)

Brantigny said...: I am surrounded by Sociopaths.

They also do everything in their power to make you like them so as to disguise their real intentions. They cultivate their victims. They never take blame for anything. Rules do not apply to them. What ever they do is done to make them feel good. They do not care about others in anyway, there is not pity for their victims. Invariably their vicitms family and their family do not believe that they have done anything. They are unusually intelligent.

Ted Bundy was a sociopath. I have dealt with too many Bundys.; October 27, 2011 at 2:13:00 PM EDT
The North Coast said...: Mostly they are not very intelligent at all, and they burn through victims while turning their own lives into disaster areas. They're never able to understand why things go so badly for them and feel as though THEY are the victims.

There are hundreds of thousands of them in the business world, where they are often able to achieve a short-lived success by deceiving and plundering their colleagues and clients, who are their easiest victims. I've been plundered down to the ground by these people, and derive a certain grim satisfaction in watching their befuddlement at the ruin they bring on themselves.

And they never learn or change. You'll see them, in positions much reduced from their former positions, looking for new victims. The best thing you can say about the business world that harbors and enables so many of them is that it at least provides an outlet for people who would otherwise be serial killers. But the destruction they wreck on their victims often amounts to a death sentence, unfortunately.; October 28, 2011 at 3:06:00 PM EDT