For whatever reason I feel absolutely nothing when I see physical violence towards human beings. To use a term from 'Clockwork Orange', I am numb to 'ultraviolence'. I can see the most graphic of images from murder to decapitation to rape and everything in between. But seeing an animal getting hurt makes me feel absolutely horrible. For example.... a scene from 'American Psycho' describes this well. When Patrick Bateman (main character...psychopathic serial killer) is talking to a homeless guy with a dog, he says very hurtful things and then stabs him a few times, with no remorse, killing him. Then he stomps on the dog. I could give a shit about the murder but I honeslty winced and looked away when he stomped the dog. The defenseless whines give me a terrible physical feeling in my gut and chest. Why don't I feel a terrible feeling in my gut and chest when I see brutal violence towards humans??? Am I an American Psycho too? Since I was a kid (I still am, I'm only 22) I've often wonder how much the 'normal', or 'average' human being thinks about intense violence towards others. How much is normal and how much is abnormal?? I'm sure everyone has at least once fanasized about killing someone they dispise...or what it would be like to stick a knife into a living thing. But how often is too often?? One good example is when I'm walking in the mall.... I would think about what it would be like, and how it would feel to just kick someone in the face. Or throw them over the railing down to the bottom floor. An incident that happened to me 4+ years ago has stayed with me for a long time.... Myself, my ex, and a bunch of friends were at a pool hall having a good time smoking herb and spillin some brewskis. My ex's best friend's boyfriend was really fucked up on xanax when some guy he had beef with walked into the bar. We'll call the boyfriend Bob and the beefee Bill. After some harsh words and pushing, everything seemed gravy....until we left and went to the parking lot behind the the strip of businesses. We made our way to the back and leaning up against Bob's car is Bill, one guy I didn't know, and his girlfriend. Bob walked right up to Bill and they started fighting. They exchanged drunken punches for about 3-4 minutes until Bill got knocked down to the ground and was laying on his back. Bob went over to him, stood on top of him and stabbed Bill 4 times in the torso. This was clearly induced by intoxication. Bill rolled over onto his side and his positioning created a substantial pool of blood next to him. Needless to say, my ex, her friend (Bob's girlfriend) and the other 3-5 people I was with were quite emotional. Crying and screaming caused a chaotic scene. While everyone was upset, for some reason I felt nothing. To be perfectly honest, I was interested. I'd never seen that much blood and it really got to my head. Just looking at Bill lying there, dying, I had a moment of clarity. I felt extremely in touch with the world. I felt as if I was a brick in the wall of the building. Sitting ever so still between smears of mortar, watching the world around me. My physical being was there, but I was not. My atomic structure stood there in this traumatic scene...yet I was no where to be found. I was somewhere else. Bill died at the hospital a few days later. I find I relate best to my cats. I talk to them. I understand the body languange very well. One in particular understands me as well. Cats are much more intelligent than most people know.... or care to belive. Once weened, they are a completely self sufficent species that need no one, yet they often choose to become 100% devoted to their owner. Usualy, only their owner. I have an ability to connect with almost any cat...mine or yours. I am afraid of no cat because I know their body language so well that I have ample time to take the necessary precautions if the need arose. I do not hear others peoples voices in my head.... I hear my own. I hear myself telling me things as my brain assesses my surroundings. Quite often there are several things being said at once, overlapping each other..... yet I hear and understand everything that is uttered. I subconsciencely tell myself what I am doing and who is watching and what they are thinking about me. While thats going on, I am telling myself my current problems and trying to remedy them. While thats going on, I may be thinking that I need to get gas..or something else inconsequential. In addition to things relevent to my life, I often get flashes of really random things...again, while everything else is going on. Things like, french fries.... parasailing.....a Volvo....and unfortunately, violent images. And all the time while all these thoughts are simultainiously flying around the confines of my brian, I am hearing music. Not music spurred on by my brain, music I enjoy and know. You will ALWAYS find me clicking my 6 guage tongue ring against my teeth...making drum beats (yes its true...they do chip your teeth) I often think I have a manageable case of autism rather than the ADHD which I was diagnosed with at age 9. I have the ability to pay attention to several things at once. Peripheral brain vision. I can watch television, click a tongue ring beat, and listen to my mother all at the same time......all the while comprehending all of it. Now that doesn't sound like not being able to pay attention....the hyper part makes sense though. Throughout my life I have had to deal with something I call, 'the subconscience will to be unwilling'. For example..... When I was 16 I couldn't find a job for one reason or the other. I eventually got a job as a cashier at ShopRite. While in the upstairs of the store, as I was watching a boring training video alone, I just got up and left. I obviously knew I was doing something dumb. I knew I would probably lose my job, and I truely cared. But I did it anyway. As I got older, I would get a strange feeling while thinking abuot something I didn't want to do. Things I had to do... like working and going to school. A good example is when I was 19. I once again lost a job, this time was laid off because of the company's lack of work. I didn't tell my mother and continued to tell her I was working, when I wasn't. I sold drugs to make the money I needed to pay my car bills, smoke herb for free, feed my opiate addiction, and pay my mother for living at her house. I would sit in my bed and think to myself that I had to go out an get a job. It was obviously very important that I find employment. But I didn't even look in the paper that was deliver to my house everyday. I would think that I needed to get out and find work, but I would get a weird physical feeling in my gut and chest. Similar to the beginning of a panic attack. Yet it would go away shortly there after. I would feel physically unwell when I only thought about doing something that I really didn't want to. All I wanted to do, and really still all I want is to lay in bed and smoke weed do whatever. Since then I've matured enough to just deal with it. Lifes a bitch, then you die. Everyone has to deal with shit, not just me. Like when I saw a person get stabbed, my physical being goes through the motions but my true self is nowhere to be found. My true self is trapped in my head listening to my voice tell me several things at once. Due to my immature stupidity and addiction to heroin (similar things) I fucked up my schooling, which as a direct result caused me a lot of anxiety later in life. I currently have a job I don't like that I went to school for....which I hated going to. Theres so many things I want to do but can't...right now. Yet I have a huge problem accepting the fact that these things I strive for take time. I lament the rest of my life. I'm sure reading this is going to make people think I'm crazy. Well, I've always known that I am crazy. I just don't know how crazy I am when compared to society's definition of 'normal'. I have no urges to hurt anyone. I just don't feel anything when others get hurt. Unless its one of the less than 10 people I care about...to a certain extent. I only trust 2 people. My mother and my grandmother. If anything happens to them I would do whatevers necessary. If anything happens to my cats I will hurt those responsible. But thats as far as it goes. The ONLY reason I am posting this is because know one knows who the person is behind the computer screen. I could give a fuck if people I don't know think ChiefMojoRisin is nuts. I do not feel even the least bit comfortable saying any of this to someone who knows who I am. So its much easier to say these things while blanketed by anonymity. And since my childhood therapist relayed whatever he felt like to my mother, I will never trust another one. I know they all aren't like that.... but I can't trust that I'll get another fucking quack who cares nothing about confidentiality and the doctor-patient relationship. I did not post this to get feedback, although relevent feedback is welcome. I just needed to get things off my chest. I write in a journal, but it doesn't write back. This may sound bitter or hostile but, if someone plans to respond solely to talk shit, save it and go fuck yourself.
Within every paragraph of your writing I can just get a sense that you feel victimized and at the hand of an opponent. One you can't put your finger on, which is really just an underlying sense of defeat. You have a defeatist attitude. STOP thinking your crazy, your not. Crazy isn't even possible. The fact that your consciousness is actualized and in existence should be enough proof that crazy isn't possible, unless you choose it. Which means you can unchoose at any moment. Think your crazy, then be it. Think your not, guess what? About thinking about killing people. I think you just have become immune like many people have throughout society over time. - Everything that we do in this 'reality' is simply an icon or symbol for something deeper. Just as these words are put together, its the same fashion. Your the interpreter, you get to choose how to read it...however you want through a combination of an infinite amount of possibilites. So choose the one ya want. So it is? lol...
You remind me of the kid from American Beauty (American Psycho, American Beauty?) Death can be a beautiful thing, relating to your experience. Personally, I'v seen people die, I'v seen close friends die in front of me, and it only hurts if I really know the person, their dreams, what theyre compassionate about, it all just hits you... But I'm the same way with seeing violence and whatnot with people, even with myself. I cut myself real bad when I broke my downstem and my finger... like it went all the way across I thought it went down to the bone... shitload of pain, but for some reason I just shrugged, applied pressure, etc... It's weird. I can take the largest amounts of pain, but I'll never induce it on myself, but I cannot, for the love of god, take my anxiety.
You put a lot of you into this. And really put yourself out there... I dunno if you're really looking for replies or just wanted to vent. I've known people that have a similar opinion with regards to killing somebody. I used to be room mates with a guy in college that had a lot of rage. He was a native guy from the Yukon (where the men are men and so are the women). Being a Native of the Yukon, he was very familiar with death, drugs, violence, and brotherhood. For the first little bit that we stayed together, he hated me, thinking that I was some privileged white kid, until the first time he gave me shit, and we scraped. I think just in the fact that he realized that I wasn't going to be a bitch, was enough that he respected and accepted me. We ended up being room mates for quite some time, into a year or two after I finished college. He didn't get to finish the school that we went to, he got kicked out of school for being Native, having principals, and not being a bitch. (if you don't understand why this can get you kicked out of school by a racist chovanist instructor than you don't really know very much) We used to sit around and discuss how we were certifiably insane. I'd tell him my delusions, about government, politics, and the people behind the scenes that control everything, and everybody. And he'd tell me that I was preaching to the choir. He used to tell me how every day he feels like killing people because their ignorant fucks, that perpetuate a society of brain dead people, who are responsible for the demise of his culture and people. Sometimes he'd sit in the balcony and ask me if I thought he would be able to hit a specific person with his scoped rifle, as they were walking down the road a ways up. If he had ever came home and told me that he had just killed several people, I would not have second guessed him at all. But I would know that there were only two things that could make him do that. Alcohol and fucking with him, but it'd likely have to be both those two put together. Because nobody outright fucks with him (to much of a temper), but if alcohol gets involved, or you push his temper past the point where he's already in your face, he would kill without a second thought. Actually we had another guy that stayed with us for a while, who he almost killed. Him and this other guy went out to the bar, and got smashed. Buddy was an idiot drunk, and pushed him a bit to far. I wasn't around when they got home but buddy was lucky he didn't get killed. I mean the guy that was staying with us was one of our bros, but he didn't know how to hold his liquor and provoked him into a fight. He was lucky he sobered up when the fighting started, because it turned into a fight for his life. As my buddies eyes went red, and he was no longer himself, but the fire inside him. Now it's a few years down the road and buddy has found himself an angry Russian wife, and just had a daughter. He's put his drinking behind him, well at least he didn't drink during her pregnancy, so he likely has it under his belt by now. But my advice is to be careful how much you feed that fire inside you. Because that fire will eventually come out. I know it feels good to fan the flame, and there are plenty of people who deserve to die. But the problem is you can never get them all, all you do is just give them more power to persecute people like you in the future.
hey Mojo, what you said sounds just like me. im pretty sure everything you feel is normal you just have a mind that likes to try to understand things. instead of asking why ask why not. maybe that will help.
I kind of feel the same way. I'm sympathetic to some things, not everything I see though. But I am extremely sympathetic towards animals. Mostly dogs and cats, I love em both. I think it's only because a dog and a cat don't have any reason to be tortured or killed, and neither can defend themselves.
Everyone is different, but I'd call it 'more healthy' to at least wince when you see another human being get hurt. I don't watch many internet video clips, but it can get u used to all the ultraviolence out there. Some things humans shouldn't have to see on a regular basis, just cuz it's real life doesn't mean I'm gonna watch it. Why would yu even want to see that stuff?
Theres nothing wrong with being emotionally flat as long as you cultivate a rational morality that works in society. Maybe you should be a coroner or work at a funeral home in some capacity. It sounds like you know better than to just go out and hurt people so this would be a good way to get your exposure to death and to explore it without causing it.
But causing it would be the ultimate experience, wouldn't it? At one point I was very close to killing myself out of sheer curiosity about an afterlife and all that. I've always really wanted to kill somebody and watch them die just to see..well basically how I would react.
congradulations; you have seen the evil side of the brink of detachment pushed by our consumer society. you have a gift; a gift in the way that youre goals remain undesurbed by events that might have otherwise ruined them. continue to feel remore for animals over humans; and dont try to justify why you think this way to urself - fuck it, thats just how u feel. crazy is the term the fearfull designate to minds that will ruin the status quo. whatever it is that youre looking for man, id say the first step on journey would be ripping off the mask of sanity
Leave...Go away... Let yourself become balanced again by being one within nature- wwoof.org if you're into that
I know exactly what you write. Many people I know have thought that I am disturbed of something of the like because I don't feel anything to see a human in pain, and I get a bit excited when I see fear (I have high functioning autism, and I can't express or really understand my own emotions. The only emotions I'm really able to identify is neutral (just normal), angry (when I'm hit), and sad/fear (when there are tears), so I get a bit excited to see a change). I am just not able to tolerate an animal in pain though. Something about it detests me. However, this seems to have played on me, because I kept getting perverted thoughts about killing my beautiful dachshund puppy, which manifested into obsessive disorder. Anyways, getting off topic. No, I don't believe I am a psychopathic. The only symptoms I identify with is neutrality to death, and I never have felt guilt in my entire life. That said, reading your post, I think you aren't psychopathic. You just have a different view, and natural reception to human suffering than what is standard. That said, as long as you're not causing harm to anyone, I don't see the problem, even if you actually had psychopathy.
A lot of people put on contrived lives, and walk around all day like actors on a stage with no purpose in life. It is easy to think that these people, who do nothing with their life, do not deserve a life. Your choices in regards to these thoughts, will determine your consciousnesses. If you choose dark things, you will bring darkness everywhere you go, like a curse, if you choose the ways of light, you will brings properity and life wherever you go; possibly without you even knowing it. Be careful when you wish for death, because when you die, you might want to try to find life again, and not be able to find it.
'the subconscience will to be unwilling' I've done the same exact thing...I just up and left my job...I knew I was going to be fired...I had no motive for quiting...I knew I was going to have to look for a job (which is a bitch) I was completely calm...I just wanted to see the "what if" timeline of my life...you get it? acting...I'm going to look deeper into this...interesting...I always thought acting was interesting...bc It deals with switching mindsets..something I'm very interested in...mainly due to my high ass anxiety around chicks is what fuels it...wow just find your motive behind all your thinking/acting....
I didn't read the replies, I am tired as fuck and need to crash but dude, I can identify with you in such a huge way. Especially the part when you said how you can relate easier with your cats haha. I have so many of those same thoughts, not only violent but sexual too. It's so bad because sometimes I'll get really guilty for thinking thoughts but it's like shit I didn't have the choice! It just popped up! Like for example the other day I got this thing where I was looking forward to the day my dad died, and I felt so bad because that is such a horrible thing. I love my dad he is a great man, but I know when his death comes it's going to produce an emotion that I have never felt before, and might never feel again. I think about like what it would be like to just snap someones arm in half. I would never want to hurt someone like that! But like shit, what would it be like? I think thats a large part of why I continue to have an interest in psychedelics. Even when I know something might/will end up bad, I have this irresistable urge, sometimes it almost feels like a responsiblity, to pursue it. The trick for dealing with shit like this, for me what works good is I just make sure to not dwell on it too long. I figure that everybody goes through weird shit, and you just gotta suck it up and keep on keeping on. Keeping doing what you know is right. Blessings.