The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson

A few weeks ago I read Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Shamed and I was so impressed that I thought I’d read another of his books. For a year now one of my friends has been trying to get me to read The Psychopath Test and it certainly sounded interesting, so last week I downloaded it onto my Kindle and began reading.

Like the author, I wasn’t entirely sure what a psychopath was at the beginning of his adventure. Of course, I knew a few things. Psychopath is a bit of a buzzword. But I didn’t know, for example, that it’s used interchangeably with “sociopath,” or what exactly constituted either a psycho- or sociopath.

At the beginning of the book, Ronson is thrown into a bit of a mystery. It’s his style to engage with the subject of his research and to follow a story wherever it goes, putting himself thoroughly into the narrative. I quite enjoyed that in So You’ve Been Shamed. One of my literary heroes, after all, is Hunter S. Thompson, who was a one-man Gonzo genre.

Yet, for me, Ronson’s insertion of himself can be a little annoying at times. Whereas Thompson was larger than life and did it partially for comic reasons, Ronson is, like me, a fairly quiet and anxious person. Moreover, he seems to leave very little out of the book. At the end, in the acknowledgments, he thanks an editor for removing a few lines and I wondered if that’s all that was ever excised from the book. But it was an engaging read, nonetheless. Ronson’s story wandered hither and thither but it was always interesting, even if you were sometimes left wondering when you’d come back to the idea of psychopathy.

Like Ronson, learning about psychopathy made me wonder: Am I a psychopath? When he introduced the Bob Hare checklist that essentially determines whether or not a person is a psychopath, I found myself applying it to myself. Even after an expert in the book tells us that wondering whether or not you’re a psychopath is a sure sign that you aren’t, I still found myself wondering.

Oddly enough, I must admit, I kind of wanted to find myself out as a psychopath… One of the key notions of the book is that psychopaths walk among us, not necessarily hidden the shadows looking for someone to rape or kill, but in plain sight: they are often highly successful people. They are successful because they aren’t held back by guilt and empathy.

In the end, I had to admit to myself I just wasn’t psychopath material. I guess if I want to be successful I’ll have to go forth with guilt and empathy holding me back.

I was interested to learn, however, that I do know one genuine psychopath. I dated her for a year quite recently. I actually called her a “sociopath” at one point and thought of her as such on a few occasions, although I didn’t truly know the word’s meaning. She does, however, check most of the boxes on Hare’s checklist. Given that fewer than one in a hundred people are psychopaths, I found that frightening and yet amazing.

Despite my criticism of its rambling narrative, Ronson’s book is very readable. It doesn’t wander too far from the point, and is always fascinating. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to better understand the human mind. 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari

I was reluctant to purchase this book because it sounded absurd - an entire history of our species in one edition? Hah! It would be easier to write a history of the universe, I'm sure. Yet I sit here typing this review and am tempted to say that it is one of the best books I've encountered in a long time. Moreover, it's an important book. I feel confident in saying that the world would become a better place if children and adolescents the world over were encouraged to read this in school.

Why?
Well, a lot of the problems in the world - human problems, that is - stem from ignorance. There are many kinds of ignorance, of course, but some of them cause more problems than others. Humans (I'm going to use this term to refer to us - homo sapiens - although humans could well refer to any of the other genus homo creates who've walked the planet) tend to think they're special. We believe in absurd things like gods and nations and corporations. This book would put these notions to death and immediately free us of some of the most troubling problems facing us.
Yet, one of Harari's key arguments in Sapiens is that it is precisely our believe in "fictions," as he refers to these creations, that separated us from the other animals on planet earth. Prior to the cognitive revolution (70,000 years ago) humans were just another animal. We viewed ourselves as such. Then we began to band together in groups larger than other animals could form. This was due to a creation of fictions that allowed us to unite.
Harari doesn't make any claims about abandoning our beliefs, but his story of the origins and development of our species certainly shines a light on our stupidity, if you could call the inventions that have made us so powerful "stupidity."
He takes us from the beginning of the world to the cognitive and agricultural revolutions, depicting the changes we experienced or affected as unnatural. He makes strong arguments for the fact that humans have not gained happiness in spite of everything we've accrued. Today's over-worked and over-fed humans are not, he says, any more happy than the hunter-gatherers we once were. "We did not domesticate wheat," he says. "It domesticated us." He explains how the switch to agriculture made us weaker, less healthy, and at risk of starvation.
But there is no turning back.
As his story indicates, humans are changing constantly and it's not really a matter of choice. We are basically evolving. Yet there is no way to stop it or revert to better times. We move and change and pretty soon we will cease to be. His book begins before us and ends after us. It could be viewed as bleak, but I suppose that depends on your perspective. After reading this book, you might well be tempted to think of humans as a virus.
One last point: Harari depicts the domestication of farm animals and their treatment today as the worst crime in the history of our world, and he makes a compelling case. Viewed this way, while there are now more humans than ever, we are seriously lacking in humanity. 

So You've Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson

A few weeks ago I read Jon Ronson's recent book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed. The title pretty much cuts to the heart of the matter: the book addresses the frightening phenomenon of public shaming in recent years.

I'd never read anything by Ronson before, although I have a friend here in China who highly recommended his work. When looking through Amazon for something to read a few weeks ago, I spotted this and the concept intrigued me.

I knew I wasn't the only one to have realized this perverse obsession with public shaming that has arisen since, as Ronson points out, around 2012. I'd noticed a few people commenting on it through social media. Bizarrely, or not, these same people tended to be guilty of that same crime.

Personally, my observations on it stemmed from growing tired of liberal outrage. Now I realize that conservative outrage is also a horrible thing, but I tend to tune out conservative rhetoric, whereas most of my friends are liberals, so it's harder to ignore. And, for some reason, I still read the Guardian.

It seems that we're addicted to being upset. It seems that we settle all disputes in the modern day by demonstrating who has been offended the most. It seems that we are no longer capable of rational discourse, forgiveness, or justice.

If those seem like vague complaints, then I am guilty. However, perhaps that's because I'm not tearing into each one as well as Mr Ronson does in his excellent new book. What impressed me the most is that he could easily have done a book-length version of what my friends would do - and simply state why it's wrong to publicly shame a person, by going through several examples and demonstrating just how vicious we have become as a culture.

Instead, Mr Ronson has taken the high ground. He has explored the issue from a personal standpoint, as well as objectively, and has looked back through history. He comes at it from all sides, offering a surprisingly mature and reserved view of the issue.

He begins with his own experience - publicly shaming some people who had wronged him, and acknowledging that in his life he had participated in shamings, including many that he simply could not remember. He moved on to a few high profile examples, but rather than jump into the story in defense of the person who was shamed - the shamee, as he calls them - or even take the other side, he is very cautious and balanced.

Throughout the book he even delves into the murky world of 4chan to talk to several trolls, attempting to find out what it was the made them trolls. He examines the history of theories and psychological ideas about crowds and groups, essentially debunking supposed truths.

In the end he largely concludes that we shame out of an attempt to do good. Isn't that, after all, the liberal way - to attempt to do good, but have our heads lodged so firmly up our own asses that we instead just cause untold damage?