Pulvis et Umbra
Though we could seek the opinions of the psychiatric community, I can just as easily save us all the time and expense and effort. Clinically, I would be labeled a tyrannical sadistic psychopath. Another might say that I have a malignant narcissistic personality disorder, though they are essentially the same thing. Personally, I much prefer the former to the latter. Malignancy suggests some kind of cancerous disease that must be removed or destroyed. But tyranny? Oh, that’s much more my style.
Rather by coincidence, I took a handful of psychology classes in college. By then, I knew full well that by most people’s standards I “wasn’t right.” Those classes gave me the insight into how I was different, and what I was. Not a human, but a psychopath. Deviant. A monster. Abberant. Perhaps even “evil.” I learned other terms that applied to me as well: anti-social personality, sociopath, narcissist, sadist. Those classes were quite the learning experience.
At the time, there was still considerable debate as to whether psychopaths were born or made, but the consensus was that it was some combination of both. New research suggests that we are likely born this way after all. In the psychopath, the paralimbic region of the brain appears to be “deficient” when compared with “normal” brains processing the same information. The amygdala—the cortex of emotional processing—doesn’t function the way it does in the vast majority of people. Happiness and love, guilt and regret, shame and grief, even fear is often beyond the grasp of the psychopath. This being true, we cannot comprehend the emotions of others, which in the rest of your pestilent species, helps to program a moral and ethical code. A conscience. A disease.
Your emotion and empathy are a scourge on the course of evolution. They prevent you from acting in your own best interest for the potential betterment of another. They allow for self-sacrifice. You call it compassion or humanity, but these are concepts that are diametrically opposed to the survival of the individual. They are therefore weakness—an evolutionary anomaly.
A biologist might suggest that the forming of emotional bonds provides the best chance for your genes to be passed through generations for millennia. A sociologist might say that humankind as a species only carries on because of the relationships formed with others—the desire to be accepted, to love and be loved, encourages the species to procreate and populate. A philosopher might tell you that love and compassion augments the will to live, to fight, to survive. I do have a rather vast amount of experience in this matter, and I can assure you that ultimately, love has no bearing on the final outcome. Apply enough agony and love is but an extinguished flame. The will to live is easily annihilated given enough pain. The feelings you have for those you care about are so much dust and shadow with the appropriate pressure applied. Trust in this—if we meet under such circumstances, your final thoughts on this earth will not be of your loved ones. They will be entirely occupied by your utter and absolute desire to die. And, of course, by me.
Though they may be more fleeting than your inane emotions, I do experience certain things. Exhilaration. Curiosity. Satisfaction. I take immeasurable pleasure in the suffering of others. I’ve had orgasms to the screams of the dying and to the terror in the eyes of the tortured. There is nothing quite so arousing. Nothing will ever leave you feeling so alive as extinguishing the life of another. And I allow nothing to prevent my attainment of these little ecstasies.
There is something distinctly instinctual about the paralimbic brain of a psychopath. Something primal. Our “deficiencies” are considered exceptional in the eyes of another beholder. Conscience is as purposeless as wisdom teeth or an appendix. We are better beings without it. We are not hindered. We are not chained to the misguided notions of honor or nobility. We take, we sunder, we rend and gnash and tear the throats out of the gentlest of you just to watch you writhe and bleed. For no other reason than it brings us pleasure, and because we can.
But you cannot.
This is why you are the Non.
