Rob Kall: And you've described in your book how as you've gotten older, it sounds to me like you've really made a serious attempt to kind of control your sociopathic, behaviors that are hurtful. Or, or and higher risk as well. So it sounds to me like young sociopaths might be the scariest ones, people in their late teens and early twenties, who are, less aware of who they are and what they do and how it will affect them in the long run. Does that make sense?
M.E. Thomas: Yes definitely.
Rob Kall: Yeah. So you know there's a word that you don't put in your book at all, and it's sadism. And it seemed to me like many times you described interactions, like with the football player, where you were playing him, and co workers, the woman in the law firm, who you went into the elevator and showed off, and used that to control her and make her feel bad. That could be read as sadistic, and you don't use that word. What, what's your response to that?
M.E. Thomas: Yeah, I use it at the very very end. Where I say that I'm, I'm not necessarily sadistic, I'm not necessarily doing these things in sadistic ways. I think a good example is the opossums story, right? I'm, I'm killing a baby opossum, not well, I'm doing it rather unsuccessfully, but I succeed in killing it, or I succeed at least in not rescuing it, and it dies. But I'm not necessarily doing it to hurt the opossum, I'm just trying to, in that sense, of accomplishing the goal of killing it.
And I think people who are hunters, you know, don't have at all a problem with it. And people who love animals, and who would never harm an animal, hate that story, and say that it's a horrible story. So I think sadism is, is largely, contextual, you know. Sadism exists to a certain extent in society. There's certain things where something could be considered sadistic, that is, you know. So let's say when I trade stocks, right, when I trade stocks I know that every stock trade I think that I'm going to make money, and that I need to buy this stock because right now is the time to get in. And the person selling me the stock, because that's what a stock trade is, there's somebody else selling me a stock, thinks that they, this stock is going nowhere. And so they're selling to me because they want to get out, or they want to go to a better stock or whatever else it is right? Is it a little bit sadistic for me to engage in this very, zero sum sort of game?
Rob Kall: Wait, wait wait. But I, I feel a couple examples that you cite in your book, I don't want to go into stocks, stock is is a kind of mathematical thing, and you've already referred to the advantage of the non emotional approach to stocks. So what about, what about the football player, or the woman who you worked with, what about those situations?
M.E. Thomas: Take the woman I, I do work with, right? The woman I work with, it's a hierarchical situation, in which this person is sort of my boss, right? Is it advantageous for me to acquire some amount of power, or some amount of influence over my boss? It is, right? I'm not necessarily teasing her for the purpose of, of what? I can't even imagine what would be the purpose that I would be teasing her.
I'm trying to acquire influence over somebody who has influence over my life. They can give me better work, or they can not, or they can give me a bad review or give me a good review. So in that sense it's not, it's not to try to hurt them, it's to try to acquire influence over them.
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