Psychopaths, It’s All in Your Brain

I’ve been receiving some comments on an earlier post I wrote about the dark ritual energies that seemed to accompany the new Batman: The Dark Knight movie. You can view what I had to say about this here: Batman Movie and Dark Satanic Energies.

Many of the comments have been intelligent and insightful. The ones I have deleted have invariably been from young, hostile men who are proud about how “manly” they are because they are unaffected by scenes of brutal, explicit violence. Their comments can best be summed up as: “Dude, it’s only a movie!”

In the April 24, 2007 issue of MIT’s Technology Review there is a fascinating article called What Can Neuroscience Tell Us About Evil?

The article talks about how modern day psychiatrists and neuroscientists are learning a lot about psychopaths through studying brain imagery. The term “psychopath” has many definitions, but generally it’s a person who lacks empathy, compassion, fear, or remorse. Brain scientists are finding that the sections of the brain responsible for generating these normal emotional reactions appear to be “missing” from the brains of psychopathic people.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers in the United States, Germany, and elsewhere have started taking scans of the brains of psychopaths while the patients view horrific images, such as photographs of bloody stabbings, shootings, or evisceration. When normal people view these images, fMRI scans light up to indicate heavy brain activity in sections of the emotion-generating limbic system, primarily the amygdala, which is believed to generate feelings of empathy. But in psychopathic patients, these sections of the amygdala remain dark, showing greatly reduced activity or none at all. This phenomenon, known as limbic underactivation, may indicate that some of these people lack the ability to generate the basic emotions that keep primitive killer instincts in check.

The article does go on to say that not all psychopaths become killers. Some people whose limbic section of the brain is underactive head into the “heroic” professions and become firefighters, police officers, or fighter pilots.

That’s actually a little scary. Give the psychopaths all the guns and heavy artillery and hope that they don’t act out, even though their brains predispose them to be inhumanly desensitized to the suffering of other people.

What a superb idea.

I think before anyone runs for political office or is allowed to enter the military they should have a brain scan. It should be determined whether the person is able to feel compassion or empathy. If they are a psychopath, they are prevented from participating in either profession.

The Technology Review doesn’t go into detail about how these brain tests work, but basically what happens is that the person sits with electrodes attached to various sections of their brain and they are made to watch various images which are flashed before them. Innocuous images like cute animals, nature scenes, and cars are interspersed with photographs of brutal scenes like dead or mutilated bodies, war zones, and so forth.

In a “normal,” non-psychopathic brain, there is a huge spike of activity in the limbic center of the brain (the compassion and empathy center) whenever any of the horrific and violent images are shown. And when  pleasant pictures are flashed in front of them, there is no such spike in activity.

In a psychopathic person their brain activity remains level throughout. In other words, they have NO REACTION AT ALL when violent and bloody pictures of dead human bodies or mutilated animals are flashed in front of them. It’s just another day at the beach for them. They are unable to identify with the suffering of others and are blissfully unconcerned. At the anatomical level they are incapable of experiencing empathy.

We live in a culture where we have given permission for movies, TV shows, and other forms of media to constantly be flashing brutal images at us of people being mutilated, tortured, and killed. And this is supposed to be okay, and we’re all supposed to go around being “manly” and insist that these images don’t degrade us emotionally and reveal us to be sadistic animals.

Right.

Just yesterday I went to see what was happening at a liberal blog published by Arianna Huffington called the Huffington Post. Above the fold, filling the entire top and center of the screen, was a devastating photograph of an old woman crying as she stood next to another old woman, probably a close relative, who had been shot dead in the head and was lying on the ground in front of her.

Faces were not blurred. The spot where the bullet had penetrated the woman’s brain and left a blood trail was not obscured.

We were just forced to see this if we went to that blog.

You know, I get it, Huffington Post – there’s horrific violence escalating in the former Russian region of Georgia right now and civilians are being killed.

But I would feel just the same about it, knowing that it was terrible, if you hadn’t shown me that disrespectful and gory image of some poor woman being shot dead, leaving her family devastated and grieving.

That’s because I’m a human. Not a psychopath.

I GET IT.

Psychopaths don’t. It doesn’t matter how violent the images, how gory the movie, or how brutal or disgusting the photos or movie scenes are.

The brain of a psychopath is not wired the way real, compassionate, functioning people’s brains are.

And we have allowed the abhorrent consciousness (or really, complete lack of consciousness) of the psychopath to dominate our culture, littering our media landscape with images too horrifying for a child to see. And if we’re honest with ourselves and we’re not playing “manly man” games, we know that they are too terrible for an adult not to be emotionally affected by, too.

And this is what we now celebrate in our movies and our media. Including in the Batman movie, which was one dark, ritualistic scene of gore after another.

Young, psychopathic men out there – you’re welcome to enjoy your scenes of brutality and your complete non-identification with the victims of violence depicted in those films. You’re welcome to continue claiming, “Dude, it’s just a movie!” while at the same time enjoying all those horrific images of REAL people dying and being mutilated each day in the news. Admit it. You get off on it.

Just don’t expect to get any air time at this blog. This blog is all about outlining the Custodial influence in human affairs.

And there are a lot of signs in the ancient texts about the Custodians that point to them being the true originators of the psychopathic brain sickness that many of their descendents have developed.

You cannot objectively view the actions of a being known as “Yaweh” or “Jehovah” in the Old Testament (who by the way, sounds exactly like the bloodthirsty and vindictive Marduk from the ancient Sumerian texts) and not identify this “god” as a complete psychopath.

We’ve been giving psychopaths too much respect, too much power, since day one.

And I say it’s time to end it. And if you can’t make a distinction between images that uplift the human race and inspire expansion of consciousness and imagery that degrades, abuses, and limits consciousness, well then –

You’re not just a psychopath.

You’re clinically stupid and not qualified to comment on the human condition in any way, shape or form.

Batman Movie and Dark Satanic Energies

Did you see the new Batman movie?

I have to admit that if I had listened to my intuition, I never would have seen it. I had an aversion to it even though I had enjoyed the first movie well enough. Part of that feeling was probably due to the death of Heath Ledger, whose image and performance I knew would be exploited in the hyper-promotion of the film. A real death cult can arise around certain tragic movie stars who die before their films come out. Think of the weird and crazy fans of Brandon Lee, the son of Bruce Lee who was actually killed while filming the movie The Crow from a supposed mistaken firing of a gun that everyone thought was loaded with blanks.

I could sense that a similar cultural fixation was arising around Heath and his death from a drug overdose, and that the viewing of Batman was going to be turned into a ritual vortex of negative energies.

Still, I went to see it with a friend.

It was a complicated, convoluted film with too many characters. Heath Ledger’s performance was fine enough and the movie would have been better if it had just been about him and Batman. But there were lots of subplots, and one particularly gruesome plot line involving Harvey Dent which was just inexcusable for a PG -13 movie. The kids in the theater with me were noticeably traumatized by the gruesome stuff going on with Dent at the end of the movie, and their parents should have been warned. These were kids of 12, 13, far too young for what should have been an R rated film.

So the entire PR machine around this film was getting very dark, and after seeing the movie I felt that it was essentially a ritual sacrifice type of movie exploiting both the energies of Heath Ledger and his death and also something very dark and nasty, probably demonic, riding in on the scenes of Harvey Dent’s mutilation and possibly a lot of mind control and subliminals also woven into the film.

Compare that with Hellboy 2, which I found to be a spiritually compelling, fascinating, funny and fun exploration of life in many dimensions – from supernatural creatures to earth devas to elves. Fascinating and good movie – check it out if you haven’t already. It’s a very interesting film from a metaphysical standpoint and it does not celebrate darkness at all – in fact, it illuminates morals and love in a really cool way.

Batman had none of that. It was just a suffocating immersion in yuck.

Well, I had a feeling that there was more weirdness to come with Batman.

It of course made an obscene amount of money in a short amount of time.

Then around the time of the Batman premiere in the UK, Batman star Christian Bale was arrested for assault in a weird incident involving his mother and sister.

In the UK the definition of assault is a little different than it is here in the US. In the US assault has to involve physical touch. In the UK it can just involve threatening words.

Reports from the scene contradict each other, but apparently Bale has long been estranged from his mom and sister, and I believe the women have each had reported problems with drugs. Anyway, they supposedly showed up at his hotel demanding to be let up to his room and caused a scene. Then they were very unruly when he let them into his room and may have made threats like “You owe us!” and said something derogatory about Bale’s wife. Bale got mad and probably made some threatening noises like “Back off,” and the entire thing escalated into a case of “He said vs. she said and she said,” and it ended in his brief arrest.

I felt like Bale, being the center piece of this movie, was being bombarded by a lot of negative and strange energy as this film came out, and these chaos energies or even Custodial energies were working on everybody involved with the movie.

Well, today I was saddened to hear that Morgan Freeman, another star of the film, was just in a very serious car accident. Apparently they had to use the jaws of life to extract him from the car. He has supposedly broken a shoulder and an arm and is is serious but stable condition. I hope he is okay as I really like him and he brings a unique humane quality to all of his work. He’s kind of an elder wise man type and I do hope he and his family are okay.

The problem is that Freeman was just in two very dark films – his role in Batman was rather small, but he also played a leading role in a dark movie called Wanted. Wanted is about a young kid who discovers he has unusual genetics which allow him to react fast and heal quickly, and he is recruited to become an assassin by a mysterious group called The Weavers. Morgan Freeman plays the head of the Weavers who decides who must live and who must die (for the greater good, supposedly.)

It’s a somewhat mindless shoot ’em up movie, and the kid character is kind of funny and offbeat, yet the movie overall is very dark. It’s all about teaching the kid how to kill people.

I wonder energetically if being involved with Batman and Wanted plugged Freeman into too many Custodial or dark energies, and if it stirred up chaos in his life, leading to his car accident.

Something very negative is “feeding” off the Batman movie, its watchers, and its actors right now.

I would advise psychically shielding yourself before you watch either movie as there are probably a lot of undesirable parasites hanging on in the etheric surrounding both films. And if you feel restless, angry, or emotionally disturbed after viewing either picture, then you definitely need to do some psychic clearing on yourself to shake off any residual goop.

Editor’s Note: This blog entry has a follow up post here: Psychopaths, It’s All in Your Brain.