[Dragaera] Subject: Re: "Work" and money

[Davdi Silverrock]

On 10/19/06, Scott Crain wrote:

>
>
>> Was Robert E. Lee a sociopath? Is Morrolan a sociopath?

> Neither of them are, nor is someone who takes pleasure in setting
> up a situation and seeing it through to the well-timed end a
> sociopath -- even if the end happens to be the death of another
> human being.  A sociopath is someone who kills specifically for the
> pleasure it gives them, and is willing to kill for no reason other
> than that.

Not according to my understanding.  This appears to be the root of the
problem that people had with my statement regarding the description of
someone who kills "just" for the money, and with no other concern for
who the victim is.

There's a fairly comprehensive list of psychological traits that
sociopaths have, and they mostly boil down to things like: "very low
emotional affect", "low or no empathy", "utter self-centeredness and
indifference to others", "poor impulse control", "indifference to
consequences", "no remorse for personal actions that cause harm to
other people", &c.

Taking pleasure in killing itself is not a necessary trait of
sociopaths; indeed, I've seen it suggested that sociopathy is far more
common than you might think.  It's just that as indifferent as they
are to human suffering and death, they don't necessarily take pleasure
in killing.

However, when sociopathy is combined with that pleasure in destroying
life, the result is a serial killer who will not have any empathy or
remorse to inhibit him from going out and indulging that pleasure as
often as he feels like it.

So this is why it seems to me that the assassin who enjoys, not
necessarily the killing itself, but the risk-taking and satisfaction
in completing the "job", regardless of who the target is, meets most
or all of the necessary criteria for being described as a sociopath.


Now, are *all* assassins sociopaths?  Well, I suppose that could be
debated.  A political assassin, for example, might see himself as a
soldier, performing the act as part of a duty to a cause higher than
himself.

Among the Jhereg, Vlad gives the impression that assassination is
viewed internal to the organization as being part of the culture; a
way of waging war.  Since most of the kills that Vlad has performed,
or (nearly) had performed on him and/or those close to him, or heard
about, have been like that, perhaps they do all justify it to
themselves that way.  Yet there are some counterexamples that come to
mind as well:  Baritt, for one, and the King of Greenaere, for
another.  I also seem to recall that at one point, Vlad told his
underlings to kill someone's mistress, although I could be
misremembering.

Bringing this back to Cawti, which was where this whole discussion
started, we don't know how she thinks of herself.  Perhaps she did see
herself and her partner as being freelance soldiers, who only killed
other Jhereg, who had themselves killed people and/or ordered people
killed (which might explain why she saw Vlad as being a "legitimate"
target).  If so, then there is more to her psychology than just doing
the job right for the money; she actually does have personal rules and
ethics, and would presumably restrict her killing to those that met
her personal criteria, and would refuse to kill anyone who didn't, no
matter how much money was offered her.

But of course, we do not know this for sure.