I've only got an hour to write, although I may stretch it to two, depending on how far I get. It's not the sort of thing I'll want to break off in the middle, no matter how practical it may be to do so. When you have something to express, you can't let things like sleep or food stand in your way. I have a headache, due to stress, dehydration, and eyestrain. I took a couple ibuprofen for it, which I greatly hope will kick in soon.
Epiphany. (American Heritage Dictionary, 2nd College Edition) 3. a. A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something. b. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.
We (that's the "reader-inclusive we," not the "multiple personality we") had to get past a minor Christian holiday and "a revelatory manifestation of a divine being" to get to the most commonly used definition, ranked third. Anyone know of a word that means the same thing as epiphany, except you slowly put it together over years instead of in a flash of realization? Although, I suppose even in the blinding flash, you're in reality simply recognizing as a unified whole the data which were previously perceived and recorded over time. Maybe it counts.
I've figured a large part of myself out this evening. Welcome to "Good and Evil With David Monath." It's a program which has been on for over 23 years, although it didn't get truly introspective until its 11th season.
I watched the movie "Murder by Numbers" tonight. I went alone. As long as I've been fully self-aware, I've been fascinated with psychology. I love figuring people out, finding out what makes them tick. This is valuable to certain friends; it is despised by others. One of the most amazing moments of revelation I've had was a time when I exchanged my own personality for another's and found myself able to think as they thought, evaluate the world through their cognitive process. It was a person I already knew extremely well, making it simpler than it could have been. It happened one night as I was lying in bed, and I terribly wanted to understand this person. I closed my eyes and pictured myself as this person, who'll be tagged "X" for purposes of nomenclature. I gave myself X's body, X's clothing, pictured myself in X's house, surrounded by X's things. I looked around at specific objects, thought about where they had come from, how "I" had treated them, what they meant to X. I called to mind X's voice, specific things X said. I imagined X's family as my own, X's mannerisms, X's likes, dislikes, preferences, points of view, known characteristics and attitudes . . . I kept building up X's identity around myself until finally, in a brilliant moment of awareness, I turned, as X, and considered a situation I had previously only been able to see through my own understanding and not through X's alien point of view. At last I UNDERSTOOD. I have never in my life taken illegal drugs, but I have to believe that the feeling I got in that moment rivals any high to be had from whichever drug you name. Who wants drugs when you can have enlightenment? It was a moment of utter success, of revelation, of placing myself outside the confines of my own experience and adopting a new, three-dimensional perspective. It was a moment which changed my life.
I had always had intuition about people, which I could most often then back up with concrete fact. I could always figure people out and find their buttons. But here was something so infinitely greater! Because of what I had done, I was able to feel as X felt, see as X saw, and I could then lay out all the remaining mysteries of X's actions. And thus began my true devotion to the study of the mind.
A brief note of a recent minor triumph; six months ago I was getting to know a girl at work, Amanda. I thought I was developing a handle on her, especially in the area of her interest in men. I would occasionally point out guys who were her type, and she reacted at first with astonished agreement (but really, how difficult is it?) and eventually with familiar delight that I knew her so well. Then it got interesting. We met a guy named Eric for the first time on the same night at a large Chevy Chase function. The next day, I asked her what she thought of Eric. Getting my meaning, she said, "Oh please. He is not my type." And certainly, he was like no one she had ever dated previously. Nevertheless, I told her she was wrong. She rolled her eyes. Despite the fact that she couldn't see it, I knew that he was what she needed, and wanted under the surface. She'd dated the other guys for a variety of reasons divorced from maturity or wisdom, and despite the fact that Eric wasn't the sort she naturally went for, I knew he was the sort that best matched her. In conclusion, while I don't condone her lifestyle, I would like to say that in two weeks they are moving in together and expect to be engaged shortly. Case closed, and I hereby raise a self-congratulatory toast and wish them the best.
I say this to illustrate my passion for knowing people, for understanding them, and it is on the foundation of your comprehension of this that I bring up something Bjorn, among many people, has said, namely "psychologists pick their line of work because they need to figure themselves out." This is so very true. I'm driven to understand myself just as much, and more, than I'm driven to understand others. I have to know what makes me tick. This website reveals that. I post as much on myself as I do on other people combined, and I use this journal to provide a personal case study of who I am.
Hence turning to the web page after tonight's epiphany. Oh, the elements stretch back for years, but I suppose the best place to start would be where I started tonight. I already actually tried that, and then realized I wanted to provide certain other background information. So, how about I reiterate that I went to see "Murder by Numbers" tonight. Some critic didn't like the formulaic nature of the movie regarding the deconstruction of the case, but I'd like to point out that these pinhead critics overlooked the very title of the movie, which clues you in that maybe, just maybe, the movie might feature a bit of methodism and a close, analytical tone. You don't go into a grocery store named "Anal-Retentives 'R' Us" and then complain about how the cashier chastised you for placing your soup cans in non-alphabetical order on the conveyor belt. Me, I love movies that get all introspective and psychoanalytical, and "Murder by Numbers" is as much about how the personal psychologies of the characters lead them to behave the way they did as it is about how the detectives picked apart the evidence trail.
More relevant to this writing, however, is the fact that I went to see such a movie, about killers and those who catch them. Now we're on track. Those of you who know me, know that firstly, there are about five careers I'd like to pursue. Secondly, those of you who know me know that I'm actively working toward either the psychologist or FBI profiler lines of work. Want to know a wonderful fact? The psychological profiles of your average violent crime investigator and your average serial killer are almost exactly the same . In fact, a large number of serial killers have a great interest in police work or the military. Generally they wash out eventually because they can't handle the regimen or are too unstable, or are unwilling to operate in someone else's system. When I joined the army, a number of my friends thought I'd either do spectacularly well or fail equally spectacularly. Happily, I've succeeded to the point where, after my last promotion a couple weeks ago, people in my unit joked that I might as well buy the next highest rank insignia at the same time as I purchase my just-promoted insignia to save time, since I get promoted so fast. If it please the court, I'd like to log that testimonial as evidence to be recalled at a later date. Thank you, Your Honor.
When the movie was over tonight, I wondered what prevented me from being a killer or criminal myself. Not your average ponder, I know, but then, we aren't dealing with ye average subject. When I was young, as in, junior high and below, I was nigh on sociopathic. I was secure in my intellectual superiority over almost all of my peers, and many adults for that matter. I don't recall the feelings of others greatly factoring into my decisions, although I always had the capacity for remorse upon reflection. Further, I had a flexible morality making it an indisputable act of God that I am who I am today, rather than who I should logically be on extrapolation from my origins. I've always possessed great powers of rationalization, the stuff of which legendary (and greatly despised) defense lawyers are made. I look back in near horror at some of the things I said to others when I was in elementary school, and as for sexual morality, although I am and will remain a virgin until I am married, I had to somehow survive a four-year period of the aforementioned "flexible morality" in which I'd managed to self-rationalize myself out of the necessity of traditional marriage in order to justify potential sexual activity. Further, there were multiple occasions when my father had to talk me out of cons and scams, and other similar illegal acitivities. The amazing thing is how little serious trouble I managed to get in. There has always been a guiding force in my life, reaching out with a shepherd's crook and steering me back from the precipice. I realize that I owe my life and soul to God.
However. When I was younger, I was taught about eschatology, the study of the end times, and learned of certain events and people associated with the future. One of these figures is the Antichrist, a false Christ in the last days who institutes blasphemous worship and leads the world into false religion. There were people who theorized (as people have always theorized about the times they live in) that the Antichrist had already been born and was alive somewhere in the world today. I was afraid that I might turn out to be the Antichrist. What if I wasn't really saved? What if I was evil in hiding, destined for greater, far more terrible things than I could imagine?
Not the concern of your average twelve year old, but I was truly afraid that it might turn out to be so.
The great redefining change in my life happened in early high school, when I made a conscious and adult decision to follow God and serve Him. So much of my old nature was washed away or greatly muted, and I began to develop anew, in the light. People, myself foremost, have noted the marked change in me from that time. The path of my life had delivered me to a fork along the way, a choice between evil and good. I have chosen God and am now a grateful slave to Christ, but I still feel the old potential for evil in my corrupt nature, what the Bible calls the "flesh."
For as long as I can recall, I've studied evil people, especially serial killers, mass murders, sociopaths, and the criminally psychotic. I've always checked out books on such things from libraries, and with any book on psychology I usually read the chapter(s) on the above topics first, then complete the rest. Two years ago, taking a class on criminal investigation, we were assigned presentations on a particular crime of our choice, and I chose to research serial killers. (I'll post the outline for my presentation at the end.) The essence of my findings was that serial killers invariably share three common psychological elements . . . they are compulsive, insecure, and dissociative. Since I mentioned that, I'd like to point out that I make a distinction between serial killers who kill from personal motivation and contract killers, who kill sociopathically for financial gain, or politically or religiously motivated killers, although the last two are more likely to be mass murderers than serial killers.
Anyway, the point is, I have a tremendous fascination with such people, and have long sought to understand the How, What, and Why of them. How disturbing, then, to find out just how similar those evil people are to the people who dedicate their lives to catching them . . . and how disturbing to know that my very fascination with and desire to operate in the law to neutralize them puts me in the same category. Of course, that only meshed with what I already knew about myself regarding the potential for evil. It isn't only criminal psychologists who have noted the similarity between those who prey on society and those who guard it. This point is addressed by a fiction author, David Weber, in one of his series, wherein he notes that his heroine is born to be a killer . . . she is driven, brilliant, powerful, fierce, violent . . . and happens to be, on the whole, a remarkably wonderful individual who captains a naval warship destroying her country's enemies for a living. She fulfills her deadly nature by exercising it within the law, morally, and for the good of society. Weber questions what else she could have been, under different circumstances. Her very qualities which make her a superb military commander could be, in a different, unlawful venue, evil. Not now, but later, I'll write more on why serial killers and violent crime investigators are so similar, but for now, you have the basics.
So, what of my obsession with psychology, my fascination with sociopaths and serial killers, the psychological similarity between those individuals and those who hunt them and my personal inclusion somewhere within that category, the awareness of my own evil nature apart from God's redemption, my childhood fear of being the Antichrist . . and the fact that tonight I watched another movie, wondering who I was more like, the killers or the detectives . . .
I've figured it out. All these years of studying myself, the Bible, psychology, murderers--
I've been trying to prove to myself . . . that I'm not evil.