His name was William Edward Hickman. On December 15, 1927, Hickman kidnapped a 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker at her junior high school. Hickman then sent the first of three ransom notes to the Parker home, demanding $1,500. Four days later, Parker delivered the ransom, and in return Hickman delivered Marion Parker's dismembered body. Her arms and legs had been severed, and her internal organs were removed. It was called the worse crime of the 1920's, and Hickman was eventually caught, found guilty, and sentenced to death.

A real American hero, eh? Well, Hickman was considered a hero, a "Superman" even, by none other than Ayn Rand.

Rand's unfinished novel, The Little Street, was inspired by William Edward Hickman, and the hero of the novel, Danny Renahan, was based upon Hickman himself. In her journals, Rand wrote that:

"Other people have no right, no hold, no interest or influence on him. And this is not affected or chosen -- it's inborn, absolute, it can't be changed, he has 'no organ' to be otherwise. In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"

Yes, Rand romanticized a serial killer who dismembered a 12 year old girl.

Today we know that sociopaths (also known as psychopaths, or anti-social personality disorder in the DSM-IV-TR) have a non-functioning empathy center in their brain. It's also one of the few mental disorders that psychologists have a real handle on how it's caused.

The ability to feel empathy is a rather new thing in evolutionary terms. While an individual may have hard wired senses to detect negative stimuli from the world (such as pain), when utilizing a group-strategy for survival, it becomes necessary for individuals in a group to detect negative stimuli among other individuals. It is for this reason why we have things like facial expressions and speech. In other words, it is one of the fundamental aspects of what seperates us from other species. It's what makes us human.

I have spent more time with psychopaths than anyone should. I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that Hickman no more felt any remorse while dismembering a 12 year old girl then you or I would feel remorse for a bag of trash we tossed in the dumpster.

When Hickman returned upper half of Marion Parker's body to her father, Hickman was so amused by her father's horrified reaction, that he delivered the rest of her internal organs around the city of Los Angeles. Hickman likely thought that this was one hell of a practical joke he was playing. Yuck-yuck.

So here's the real rub. If Rand romanticized a sociopath, to the degree that she even call him a "Superman", and that all others are inferior to such an Übermensch, then wasn't she a sociopath herself?

-- Modified on 4/19/2011 11:47:37 AM

2 "thrill killers" in 1924 Chicago, who, greatly influenced by Nietzschean "ubermensch" philosophy, killed a 10 year old boy as an example of their "intellectual & moral superiority" It sounds like Hickman emulated these 2 psychos ( who were gay lovers ); btw, for that matter, the infamous 1947 L.A. "Black Dahlia murder" seems to have been modeled on Hickman. No honor among psycho killers, obviously.

I am continually puzzled by the "cult" reaction to Rand; her literary works have been savaged by critics & her philosophies are shopworn imitations of Nietzsche & Herbert Spencer ( Social Darwinist ) But, yet, the "sheep" still flock to her nosensical thoughts.It's the exact same cultist mindset the drives the "sheep" to admire the "literary works" of L. Ron Hubbard & his "scientology cult"

Cmon, Snow-----use full names instead of acronyms & make your debating points coherent for once. Wassa matter ? Afraid of misspelling this person's name ?------LOL

As I've said before, my own philosophy is something of a mix between libertarian socialism (anarchism), and social (direct) democracy.

In other words, I believe the state, as it currently functions, should be abolished. The only time the state's existence is justified, is when it is the expressed will of the People to exist, and to serve their interests.

Now you can agree or disagree with that, but that is what I believe.

This means that, in my view, a "nanny state", or what I would call a state that responds to the actual needs and desires of the people, would be the polar opposite of "strong government control".

I would also note that Mussolini and Hitler were both authoritarian conservatives (fascists), while Stalin was an authoritarian leftist (communist). Being a libertarian socialist puts me at the polar opposite end of the political spectrum of Hitler and Mussolini. If anarchist philosophy can agree on anything, it's the opposition of authority.

You might have noticed, that in my OP, I didn't mention anything about politics or government. So your comments are coming from left field (no pun intended).

The bigger question in my mind, is that if human beings evolved to use group strategies for survival, that several defining characteristics that make us human is a direct result of this group strategy, then would that not mean that an "individualist" approach to organizing our political and economic lives would be, by definition, self-destructive?

In other words, Snow, individualism, and "enlightened" self-interest is not a family value. It's not even a human value.

-- Modified on 4/19/2011 2:09:25 PM

So lets examine this:

Rand's words:

"Other people have no right, no hold, no interest or influence on him" - an accurate description of a socio-path

"And this is not affected or chosen -- it's inborn, absolute, it can't be changed, he has 'no organ' to be otherwise" - also an accurate description of socio-pathy

"In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people" - And again, a true description of a socio-path. The word "superman" has been used to describe the mental state of sociopaths, and is accurate as used by Rand.

What, exactly is the problem Willy? Show me a quote where Rand actually expresses admiration and maybe you'll have something. Nice try.

let's look at what you espouse as good....

Nanny State
Strong Government Control
Group Mentality
Demoizing certain classes of individuals...

HMM, whose philosphies do you share and therefore agree with, let's see...

Adolf Hitler
Joseph Stalin
Benito Mousillini

That's quite the company you admire there...

BTW, this is using your juvenille approach to logic you used to start this thread.
Your thought pattern, put into practice, how do you like it?

he is just gaming the system, cause that is the system in place.  willy can be a lazy ass at his job, get good pay, benefits and retirement. just like GaG said he games the system by taking all the tax breaks, or what not, to pay as little taxes as possible.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.  
the game(system) we have in place is a joke on all fronts, i think we can all agree on that.

"'Other people have no right, no hold, no interest or influence on him' - an accurate description of a socio-path"

This is true.

'And this is not affected or chosen -- it's inborn, absolute, it can't be changed, he has 'no organ' to be otherwise' - also an accurate description of socio-pathy"

Bullshit. People are not born psychopaths. They are created. While there are some studies that show that this behavior is a genetic trait, it does not appear to develop without environmental causes. If you have a child and you never give any affection to from the day it is born, if you never tell them that you love them, if you never protect them from harm, if you never console them when frightened, then the liklihood is high that that child will become a psychopath.

"'In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people' - And again, a true description of a socio-path. The word 'superman' has been used to describe the mental state of sociopaths, and is accurate as used by Rand."

Except we have a problem here, Sin. She is describing psychopaths as an ideal human being. She is not being neutral about such a person. She is romanticizing them. If the inability to feel empathy makes you super human, then would so other disability make you an even greater human?

Snow, I've always loved our civil debates. I haven't read an incredible amount of Rand's material, because like I said, I find her unreadable, and while it may be a stretch to say she's condoning Hickmann's behavior, she is romanticizing it. I find that a little creepy, quite frankly.

Jolene, I don't come here to win popularity contests. But if you're going to criticize my work, then it's only fair that I criticize yours. Do you really want to open that can of worms? I'm involved in a line of work that prosecutes people who harm the country and my fellow countrymen that I love. I earn a middle class income doing so, and I didn't bribe congressmen to get it. Compare that to the 54 billion in tax subsides the oil industry gets while they made a trillion bucks in profit in the last decade.

Tony, I'm gaming the system with tax breaks? You've got to be kidding. I have a mortgage. That's my tax break, and that's about it.

... but more looking at the strategies for survival, I think as a fellow evolutionist we can agree that traits that have survived in humans are quite complex and often contradictory. As any trait, to have survived through our 4.5 million years of evolution, has to have been at worst neutral in terms of survival benefits, the fact that individualist traits DO persist indicates they are not an automatic negative.

Individualist traits are the one thing that brought us out of the cave. Somehow, someone along the line had to be willing to risk social disapproval to try things a different way -- both for his own benefit and that of others.

There is no such thing as a group mind. All thoughts are held only be individuals. ONLY an individual can think a new thought. Granted, his new thought is anchored in prior thought. Nevertheless, only an individual can build on it.

And it is individualism that leads him to risk the wrath, fear and envy of others in disclosing his new idea. Nearly all human progress starts with someone being willing to say: "Everyone else is wrong and *I* am right!"

To label some attributes of humanity as "human" and others as "inhuman" is not a wise idea without a much wider context than you are examining.

most of the the lefties on this board would have just knee jerked called me some body part or told me to go fornicate with some beast on the woods...

You responded with intelligence and class...

For myself, I am what I would call a pure libertarian. Pretty conservative on fiscal issues, pretty liberal on social issues.

My real point was this, if you had done a little more research Rand's reaction to the whole affair was focused on the public sentiment. She never condoned what the man did, but if you read her works there are littered with examples of people responding to public condemnation.

Shrugged is full of this, with the capitalists constantly being attacked  by government and others who were not as successful. That was her interest in teh whole affair.

Find me somewhere where she condones his actions, then you have a point. Otherwise, you are basically pushing the envelope to try to attack someone because you do not agree with them philisophically.

"Pretty conservative on fiscal issues, pretty liberal on social issues."

I've said that I do the above, but I didn't know it had a label. "Libertarian." Hmm... now I need to go look up their political stands beyond the bits and pieces I thought I knew.

Although I'll admit an inordinate amount of ignorance to technical fiscal knowledge, I understand enough to call out the gov't for spending too much on the wrong things. As for the social issues, those fall under the freedom to make personal or individual choices, which hasn't endeared me to some on here who think THEY have the right to tell me what and how and when to think about whatever the social issue is.

However, I still DON'T like Willy. What's to like? Any man who PROUDLY admits that he does nothing of value in the work for which he's hired to do is a leech, regardless whether he's working for gov't or private sectors. The only difference is that in the private sector, he'd be fired for not doing his work, and the gov't just overlooks his laziness and taxpayer waste. So no, I don't like that or him for doing that.  

-- Modified on 4/19/2011 8:28:45 PM

you dislike WW for his so called "sloth" on his government job ( which could be a tongue in cheek jibe ) but yet, society at large frowns on & is revulsed by providing,a profession you have been engaged in for quite some time. Bourgeois society would exclaim : "Jolene, even a menial job at Mcdonalds is better than morally debasing yourself as a hooker." As a veteran hobbyist, certainly not MY opinion on providing,but, regrettably, that's the narrow minded, puritancial & judgemental way society looks at providing.

You're engaging in the same type of judgmental thinking, Jolene, which I find to be the ultimate in hypocrisy.

I don't dislike you Jolene ( I'm sure WW feels same way ), merely the inane ideas you post on here from time to time ( IE your thread on war movies.)

Willy creating "havoc"?! If he threatened or gave out personal info on someone, that adjective would apply. Not for being an outspoken
pain in the ass, which WW can be from time to time. Hell--that description also applies to me; but, then again, you don't like ME either. You're taking this board WAY too seriously, Jolene. Maybe you need to take a hiatus from here. It might be a good cure for your judgmental hypocrisy.






-- Modified on 4/20/2011 8:37:03 AM

killing and torturing animals as a child is a common trait among serial killers, but it's also common among psychopaths. And not all (or even a high percentage) of psychopaths murder anyone. They are more likely to be con men or drug addicts.

It doesn't change what psychopaths are, why they are who they are, and how they came to be that way. There may have been no childhood trama reported in Dahmer's case, but trama doesn't in and of itself create a psychopath. For instance, if a parent consoles a child should trama happen, then it might ensure that they won't become a psychopath.

The simple act of ignoring your kids from a very early age (short of the most basic of necessities) is more than enough to create a psychopath. This is rarely ever reported as child abuse, because the only person being harmed here is a very young child, and it can't express or even know that it's being harmed at the time it is happening.

Jolene has every right to be here, and I for one welcome her presence.

and since did you go all PC on us, quoting how society feels about prostitutes. Jolenes job is a hell of a lot more honest than Willy's. She actually has to perform at her job or faces the consequences of less income. Willy by his own admission spends most of his time wasting the taxpayers money while posting on this board. Fuck society, and fuck you if you really feel this way.

Yeah, we're still friends, but you are as wrong as a person should be. Just what is so fucking sanctimonius about looking down on an admitted government parasite? Anyone who actually works for a living, and providing is definitely work, has the right to look down on any clown who lives at the government teat. I certainly look down on him, call me a hypocrite if you dare!!!

i didn't mean that way, i was just following her lead where she said you were self proclaimed lazy at his job(don't know if true or not) so i was just making a point that if you had a job where you COULD be lazy at it and not get fired from it, that is like someone gaming the system with tax breaks.both taking advantage of a broken system for there own benefit.

He's an individual making an active choice to be a thief of his employer's time and our tax money. The thieving "game" - and in an abstract way, Willy himself - is a concept that if NO ONE played would fade away for lack of interest. Unfortunately, there will always be those who are like Willy: As lazy and grasping as they can get away with.

Willy is just one of the more vocal ones and gives us a stooge to point at and blame. I lump Willy in with the welfare families who raise their children to be on welfare. Too lazy to be of any worth to anyone. They're thieves of our tax monies too.

Granted, we on this board are all playing at games here that are illegal due to some unfathomable and unjustifiable laws. (Morality laws have never made any sense to me.) However, this is what we do on our own time, not our employers'. We don't steal time or money from our employers to be hobbyists or providers. At least I hope none are doing that! (If you are, fie on you too!).

So, yes, anthony6, if I were of a mind to hate, I'd have to hate Willy too, not just the game. As I said, though, he isn't worth that much energy. Simple detesting will have to do. When I think of him. Which I don't until I get onto this board and see the havoc he keeps trying to create.

Meh... he's probably not even worth detesting.

Wonder what he is worth?

I'm more or less retired from the providing business, and on into working for a retail establishment - and trying to establish myself as a writer. I'm EARNING my own way in this world.

Which is more than can be said for you by your own admission several pages back.

I don't criticize your work because I don't know exactly what you do. Even your words here that you "prosecute people who harm the country" doesn't tell me anything. You could be a lawyer or a CIA agent or even a sniper. So, it isn't your WORK I'm criticizing.

I'm criticizing YOU and your obvious relish at DOING NOTHING when you're supposed to be working.

So, critique away. Maybe I'll actually learn something about you.

And I've done a fair amount of reading about serial killers, probably the worst kind of psychopath there is.  Many of them, including Jeffrey Dahmer, have no known evidence of childhood trauma of any kind in their dossier.  Not always true, but sometimes it is genetic.  Dahmer, for example, began torturing and killing small animals as a child.  This is a common attribute of serial killers.

Willy, I wasn't arguing your entire point, just the part that seemed to assert that childhood trauma was a necessary precursor to becoming a psychopath.

being a hooker long before I ever embarked on this. I even started to try to change people's minds before I became one. No hypocrisy there; I was one before I ever financially became one.

I already covered that I'm breaking a law in being a provider. I know it and I also covered why I think the law is ridiculous (morality laws are still as stupid today as they were when I wrote yesterday).

Thing is, at least I'm WORKING. Frankly, I don't really care what anyone does on THEIR OWN TIME and with THEIR OWN MONEY. If Willy was actually working - even at his gov't job - I wouldn't complain what he does with HIS MONEY on HIS TIME; I'd figure he earned it then.

BUT, he's riding MY ass without paying for it by taking my taxes (his paycheck) and sitting there at his desk doing nothing. Prosecuting those who harm this country that we all love? And yet, pages back, admitting that he does nothing during his day at his desk? One of those sentences is a lie, Pri. As long as he doesn't work, he's fucking me without payment - and I don't appreciate it.

Point out how that makes me a hypocrite! I've said the same thing since he said the non-work thing.

Judgmental about sloth that I'M PAYING FOR via my taxes, yes. Hypocritical? No.

And for the record, I rescind that I dislike you. I know now that you tend toward unnecessary attacks, and I try to avoid those threads. Occasionally, however, you show an independent intelligence that I appreciate.

Even Willy shows an occasional glimmer of independent thinking when he defends the children. However, I still don't like his laziness on MY DIME.