Psychopaths_ Fascinating, Terrifying and More Common Than You Think

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the end, it made you feel so that you're
in a different reality. And as Hannibal, now, I realize
you didn't move a lot, no, and I didn't think
when you didn't blieme No. His psychopathic stare made headlines
in UK tabloids, while The New York Times dissected Coburger's
self described feelings of remorselessness as an adolescent. All of

(00:23):
that was Coburger's psychological diagnosis. Two years ago in Wired magazine,
an oracle titled the Myth of the Psychopathic personality refuses
to Die. Science wants to solve the problem of evil,
but some of the most mainstream concepts are little more
than folklore. As I say two years ago, the whole

(00:43):
psychopathic narrative has only gotten worse, specifically in terms of
this case over time. According to the same article in
Wide magazine, doctor Drew brought on a former FBI agent
to discuss Coburg in the context of the dark triad narcissism, psychopathy,
and Machiavelianism. Meanwhile, we saw that same stair that Sir

(01:04):
Anthony Hopkins, who played Animal lecter, the same stare he
spoke about, we see with Coburger in court, g in
the headlights, immobile but also hypervigilant. I don't see psychopathy.
I see anxiety, a lifetime of it, the same brand
we saw in Adam Lanza. I't I feel faired my mind.

(01:40):
I don't know. Two years hence true crime, so called
experts are still stuck on the same thing. And yet
lookaw normally looks here and here and even here. According
to Wired, the desire for strong language to match heinous

(02:03):
acts is only natural. Unfortunately sadistic bosses every day, our
souls and even murderers are still human, shaped by and
shaping the world. Do you believe that that criminals are
shaped by the world, that you may be playing some
role in shaping a criminal as well, that society in

(02:23):
a sense creates criminals, and that criminals are a product
a reflection of our society. In other words, in the
same way we may show symptoms of a sickness or
a disease, criminals reflect signs or symptoms of sicknesses in society.
They are more than simply the sickness itself. They are
manifestations of a wider malaise felt by many others. But

(02:47):
if that's true, then the solution to crime isn't just
catching bad guys. It's identifying the bad stuff in society
and sorting it out. But there's also another dimension our
response to the bad guys. Is it helpful? Are we
learning anything? Or is it maladaptive? And is all that
is happening that we are allowing the perpetuation of what

(03:11):
is already there. Condemning people as the subhuman or paradoxically
superhuman embodiment of evil isn't based on the characteristics of
the individual in front of us, Griffith says, but our
response to them. In other words, what we're seeing isn't
what we're seeing, It's we seeing it through our own prisms,

(03:34):
our own lenses, and so such illusory categories make real
understanding almost impossible. According to Wyatt, the perpetrate of the
university of Ido murders should be condemned, but getting inside
the mind of a killer is easier said than done.
Prediction and prevention, the supposed end goal of criminal profiling,

(03:56):
is even harder, and the proliferation of quasi scientific in
other words, labels for jerks, our souls, and even killers,
has far reaching consequences. What this writer is really railing
against isn't just the labeling of criminals, but any person
we don't like. Effectively, when we label another person, we

(04:16):
are essentially not so much dehumanizing them, but dehumanizing ourselves.
This only makes matters worse. This only makes society as
a whole even less humane and self aware. And isn't
that what we're campaigning for. Isn't that what all of
this is about, that in the face of a horrible crime,

(04:37):
we want a society that cares more, not one that
couldn't care less. Now, before we get to the rest
of this analysis, and this well form part of about
a two three part series. If you haven't already subscribed
to the channel, please do. If you find this analysis worthwhile,
please do hit the thanks button. Please do show your appreciation,

(04:59):
and let's get starck. That's called it a day. Come
I I'm a Bad Guy. A tale of urban reality.
By some estimates, there are as many as twelve million
psychopaths in the United States alone. Cold blooded, remorseless, and
strangely charismatic. They committed at least half of all serious

(05:20):
and violent crimes. Well, let me ask your silly question.
If there are twelve million psychopaths in the USA, and
half of all crimes committed are by psychopaths? Are there
six million psychopathic criminals out there? Did you know there
were less than twenty thousand homicides in America in twenty
twenty three? So what is going on with all the

(05:42):
psychopaths who aren't committing murder? Incidentally, if you think less
than twenty thousand is a lot. In South Africa, there
were over twenty six thousand murders last year, an average
of seventy two murders a day. That translates to a
rate of forty two murders per one hundred thousand South Africans.
In the USA, the murder rate is six point three

(06:03):
seven times less as low as the murder rate is
in America, it's still significantly higher than in other developed nations.
So are there just a lot more psychopaths in South
Africa than America? Is that how you explain this much
higher homicide rate? Or what about poverty, unemployment, and equality?

(06:24):
Is that a context that drives criminal behavior is the
actual real context of a person? Important? Now, think about
those basic concepts in terms of Brian Coburger. Poverty, well,
his parents went bankrupt twice, unemployment at one point Brian
worked as a security guard at the time of the murders.

(06:46):
He was unable to get a position at the local
police station, and he was also about to be fired
from his job as a teacher's assistant. What about inequality?
Do you think Brian Coburger felt socially equal to just
the ordinary other students on campus? If Coburger did somehow
get access to the fundels and he walked through there,

(07:08):
do you think he would have felt comfortable? Did he
socialize like they did? Did he have girlfriends like Ethan
and Jack? Did he have ordinary friends? Quoting from the article,
and by some definitions, not only serial killers, but also
large numbers of corporate executives are considered to be psychopaths.
In the popular imagination, they are an inescapable yet fascinating

(07:32):
threat in our midst. But is psychopathy a brain disorder,
as many scientists now claim, or is it just a
reflection of modern society's deepest fears. Much of true crime
is about anxiety how we deal with it, and one
thing an anxious person cannot abide is the unknown, is

(07:52):
things that they cannot control. And so by calling Coburger
a psychopath, he is instantly known and noble right wrong.
It's an admission that we are too cowd, worn out,
and exhausted to actually make the effort to figure out
who these monsters are or how they came to be,

(08:12):
Which is how and why the next one germinates in
the same societal cultural soup and comes into being, and
once again we'll diagnose them as psychopaths too, and so on.
According to Wyat quote, Americans understandably want HULP making sense
of the otherwise census deaths that populate the front pages

(08:33):
of local papers and constitute Netflix's extensive true crime back catalog,
but attempts to characterize evil remain scientifically dubious, and that
is something that this channel preoccupies itself with true crime
rocket science. Now think about it. Psychopath and evil are

(08:55):
actually useless labels. Why are they useless? Because context remains
essential and even a degree of compassion for a fellow
human being, even if that fellow human being is a criminal.
If the purpose of criminal psychology, or an interest in
criminal psychology is to pull back the veil on the
criminal mind, then terms like psychopath and evil do the opposite.

(09:20):
Rather than explain who and what criminals are, they do
the opposite, and there is also a built in deceit
that pretends criminals are an entirely different species to the
rest of us, forever alien to our more civilized sensibilities,
and a bridge too far. Thankfully, psychologically speaking, it's a

(09:40):
comforting thought, but far from true. In one of the
Batman comics, the Joker says, you are just one bad
day from being just like me. Evil doesn't exist neatly
in an individual in the way inherently judgmental labels like
psychopath might imply. It's not simply that psycho aren't born

(10:01):
but made either, it's that if psychopaths exist at all,
the same forces that shape them or at work on
the rest of us, likely with similar, if more subtle consequences.
The story of an everyday guy who refused to take

(10:22):
it one more day so we got a nutcase with
a bag full of guns is in Hollywood right now,
and he's heading west. I don't know if you've noticed
or not, but there's other people when they used the
phone here now. If you've watched the movie Falling Down,
Storring Michael Douglas to get a sense that any person
push too far, push too hard, is capable of criminal

(10:45):
acts and psychopathy. Now it's still possible to divest even
further from useless labels by focusing on the idiosyncrasies of
troubled or more precisely troubling individuals, as well as the
specific context in which they emerged. Have a look at
this comparison of serial killers to the general population, and

(11:06):
have a look at some of the types of that.
You can see the word there that some of these
serial killers suffered from. Look at the one that is
fifty percent psychological. And where do you think that psychological
aspect comes from? Very often at school. Despite all of

(11:26):
their scholarship, Jalava and Griffith say they don't have a
silver bullet for defeating, let alone replacing the myth of
the born criminal. Rather, they advocate for a descriptive rather
than this standard normative approach. In other words, describe who
someone is and place that person into his or her
proper context. None of that is easy, and it often

(11:49):
involves private information that families related to these individuals one
to keep that way, they want to keep it private.
It's also tempting to say that understanding motive after the
fact is pointless, Like the judge did in the coburger case,
because it can't undo what is already done, but it's
not pointless. Understanding our world helps us understand ourselves, and

(12:14):
a more self aware person vitalizes society. A more self
aware society is a more sensitive society, which is hopefully
a more equal and equitable one. Two. And this kind
of psychological accountability, this cause and effect understanding, it helps
us to understand our impact on our world, and this

(12:37):
can perhaps help prevent the bungled and the botched, the losers,
the outcasts from falling through the cracks. Understanding how a
certain person arrived at a certain point in time can't
undo the hurt they've caused, but it might help them
to chart a new path, perhaps even one that deviates
from their dark personality. Science wants to solve the problem

(12:59):
of evil, but some of the most mainstream concepts, like
psychopathy are little more than folk law. And I am
seeing psychopath used constantly in true crime. It's basically folklore
that is being peddled in this modern age. When are
people going to stop doing it? All it takes is

(13:20):
one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy.
That's how far the world is from where I am
just one bad day, And where does psychopathy have anything
to do with that equation? And by the way, do
you believe that is true? Because if that's true for you,
that's true for others. And if that's the case, it
behooves us to work together to make this world a

(13:43):
kinder place, a kinder world, and a kind of world
I dare say benefits all. Remember what Plato said, be
kind where everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Mark Twain said kindness is a language which the deaf
can hear and the blind can see. In other words,
kindness is a universal language. It's the difference between a

(14:04):
world supplied with love or driven by hate, and the
choice at the end of the day is ours. Many
people don't like to believe Coburger could have never become
who he became if people were nicer to him. But
even if there was a slim chance of that being true,
and I believe it's a lot more than that, isn't
it worth it? If the alternative is the chance to

(14:26):
avoid losing Maddie's Cayley's zannas in The Ethens of the Future.
If all prevention comes down to is using labels less
and be a little kinder, especially to the weirdos. Isn't
that worthwhile? Hate is easy? Love isn't so easy. One
is a path of least resistance. One is a path
of conscious effort and conscientiousness. One is a road to

(14:50):
ruin and mutual destruction. Another's a route to meaning and
shared harmony. But it is built on a foundation of compassion.
And so this is my request for my followers on
this channel, and wherever you may duwell, online or elsewhere,
be a little kinder than you have to. And doesn't

(15:11):
that foster a world worth having, a world worth living in,
a world worth caring about. Well, I'm not going to
take it further than that, but if you guys have
found this analysis worthwhile, I'm going to continue this discussion
of psychopathy in an episode titled are Psychopaths Real? So
look out for that. Thank you for listening, and I'll

(15:33):
see you guys next time.