People always say that families and groups of friends are important to live a socially viable life. In fact, it is a commonly upheld myth in our society that sociopaths spend their days alone in their basements.This could not be more false. In fact, some of the greatest extroverts of all timer have been psychopaths. Hitler, Mussolini, and Al Capone were by no means introverts.
According to the US Justice Department, there are 21,000 gangs in the US with 70,000 members. It seems that social groups can be just as psychopathic as singular people, especially gangs. I don't know about you, but I don't see most things that gangs take part in (murder, extortion, rape etc.) are not socially healthy.
As I touched upon in my post, A Society of Evil Faces, many groups of people can believe in the same 'wrong' thing. Why, then, do we believe that groups are good when they can do so much wrong. Is it better to have a group of people all believing in something evil or have everyone come to their own conclusions about morality.
Interesting. Just to nitpick, I don't think it follows to use the phrase "socially viable" and word "extrovertive" together. I think it's a common myth that extrovertive means 'outgoing' and introvertive means 'shy.' While 'extrovertive' and 'introvertive' commonly are tied to those meanings, 'extrovertive' more accurately refers to a person who prefers what goes on externally to themselves while an 'introvertive' person prefers their internal goings-on. A serial killer, for example, might be very charismatic, but would also often be an introvert, because serial killers often are withdrawn in to their own fantasies for extensive periods of time, and often have a distorted view of social interaction (as manipulation) based on their internal beliefs and feelings about other people, and (often) narcissism. Although, perhaps in most use, people do mean the words the way you're using them, so you can ignore me here.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of that distinction, I think it's kind of dangerous we often attribute violence to the 'shady stranger' figure with a lot of focus on 'stranger danger' and whatnot from an early age, especially considering (as the Violence Against Women group mentioned) dangerous people can be the most friendly types.