SADISM AS A SOCIAL FORCE (AND A WAY OF LIFE)

THE MODERN QUEST FOR SADISTIC FREEDOM

Sadism is an increasingly relevant subject matter in modern society. In recent decades we have witnessed developments which, to put it mildly, are not what would be expected in an ‘enlightened’ civilization. One of those is the incredible scale of modern human trafficking, which centers on children, for the purposes of abuse and murder. Tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of children disappear annually to become a commodity for people who enjoy abusing them sexually or otherwise – and killing them. A part of those children are supplied to the global ‘organ donor’ network – which means that they are simply killed. Many of the ‘organ donors’ are not killed right away, but abused before being turned into spare parts.

The genocide-level abuse and murder of children is not the only sadistic attribute of our civilization. Our zeitgeist is clearly turning increasingly sadistic, including entertainment. If you look closely you will notice that movie and television productions have, over the last two decades, incorporated sadistic themes on a massive scale. There is barely a show or a movie nowadays that doesn’t include gratuitous torture or humiliation rituals, or graphic demonstrations of the worthlessness of human lives. In many of them, the humiliation rituals are the main theme – such as in the ‘girl-boss’ genre, where the girl-boss is usually a sneering sadist. There also appears to be a concerted effort (by someone) in social media and on YouTube to flood children with sadistic and traumatic material, examples being the notorious ‘cute cats’ videos and ‘Elsagate.’

It is difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that sadism and the downgrading of the worth of human lives is systematically being integrated into the culture through exposure and normalization. Interestingly, these efforts seem to be primarily directed at children and young women.

There is also a giant ‘protection mechanism’ active in our societies to keep all this under the radar. Sadists, including pedophiles, are protected at every turn. A recent example of this was the response of the ‘critics-community’ and the media to the movie ‘Sound of Freedom’ which was released in 2023. The movie addresses child-trafficking and pedophilia in a fairly disturbing manner – and one would have thought that it would be praised for drawing attention to this serious issue. The response, instead, was an attempt to talk it down using every method possible. The ‘system’ seems to be quite protective of its pedophiles and child murderers.

Sadism is nothing new, but it has now become a major cultural and social force – apparently promoted and protected by our elites and managerial class. Discussing this subject is therefore relevant – unpleasant as it may be. So, what is sadism, who are the sadists, and what do they want?

Before going further it is important to understand that there are two basic types of sadism that are quite different. The people involved are different and have different motives for their sadistic behavior. One type can be called ‘psychopathic sadism’ and the other one ‘narcissistic/sociopathic sadism.’ Although it is less relevant than the narcissistic type, let’s start with psychopathic sadism.

Psychopathic sadism

Violence carried out by psychopaths is often just a ‘matter of fact’ – i.e. delivered without any sadistic content or emotion, or carried out impulsively when control is lost. Still, sadism is quite common and is sometimes ritualistic in nature. Let’s take a closer look at the mechanism which produces this violence and the associated sadism.

The mind and mindset of a ‘classical’ psychopath is dominated by the absence of emotions. A psychopath has neither ‘positive’ emotions which define the being of normal people, nor ‘negative emotions’ which function as a brake – i.e. conscience. Tragic events or violence perpetrated have therefore no negative emotional consequences.

Yet, psychopaths do have emotions. While the more recent evolutionary additions to the emotional system have been stripped away or suppressed, the oldest and strongest emotions (or drives) remain. A classical psychopath has aggression, sex drive, and sometimes fear. Other emotions are just not there, although some of them may sometimes become temporarily active under extreme conditions – which means that the psychopath will only feel ‘alive’ when he´s committing violence.

The issue here is that the more recent emotions – the less primal ones – function as insulation for the primal ones. In other words, normal people do not feel aggression all the time because other emotions are active – masking the aggression. In the psychopath there is no insulation, no masking. Aggression is active all the time – unless the psychopath is distracted by something – such as work, hobbies, or intellectual pursuits.

With the primal emotions ‘naked’ the psychopath must develop control and coping strategies to control his mind and behavior. Intelligent psychopaths are better at this than the less intelligent – and are therefore less likely to lose control. Stupid psychopaths are more likely to be impulsive and need less to set them off. They are therefore far more casually violent than the smart ones.

The strategies are of two varieties: Firstly, they develop massive ‘frontal brain’ control over the aggressive impulses – i.e. ‘self-control’ – which may even include guidelines intended as replacement for morality. Secondly, there are coping strategies which involve fantasies and certain scenarios to keep the aggression under control.

The mind of a psychopath can be quiet, even serene, when things are under control or he is distracted by something. But when he relaxes and allows his mind to wander, the serenity will often turn to absolute turmoil. The aggression drive will take over his mind and will constantly compel him to carry out violent acts. This manifests itself in violent imagery which flows into the psychopath’s mind like it’s coming from a firehose. If strategies are not developed, this will drive the psychopath completely insane, and he will lose all control.

The main coping strategy is to create a fantasy ‘structure’ or scenarios where the violence is acted out. In other words, the psychopath runs mental simulations involving violence to provide an outlet for the urges. This keeps them under control and prevents him from acting them out. These scenarios, however, sometimes turn into detailed plans, which then become templates for ritualistic violence where the fantasies/scenarios are acted out in detail.

When violence perpetrated by a psychopath starts to contain elements from mental scenarios, it will usually become more than just ‘pure’ violence. It will start to include elements of torture, humiliation, and such things. In other words, the violence will become sadistic in nature. Sometimes these sadistic elements will become the core and aim of the violence.

Psychopathy is technically an innate condition – i.e. psychopaths are born that way. It is even technically possible to diagnose psychopathy with a brain scan. However, psychopathy can also be created through pressure and abuse strong enough to damage or destroy the emotional system of the brain. This ‘acquired’ psychopathy, while sometimes temporary, is very similar to the real thing – except that ‘made’ psychopaths have the advantage of remembering what emotions are. Natural psychopaths, on the other hand, have no conception of what they are.

This means that if social pressures and sadistic abuse are widespread, psychopathy will also be widespread. Sadism, in other words, creates psychopaths. Sadism therefore creates more sadism.

On top of that, abuse and social pressures will increasingly prevent natural psychopaths from developing effective control and coping methods. We saw this happen in the sixties and seventies in the United States when the country was suddenly swarming with serial killers and serial rapists.

Let’s go back to the massive human trafficking problem mentioned at the beginning. Many of the abused children, who escape being killed, grow up with destroyed emotional systems. They become psychopaths who are often used by criminal organizations as torturers and killers. The child trafficking and abuse problem therefore provides a massive supply of psychopaths who perceive killings and sadistic torture as having the same significance as smoking a cigarette. One only needs to look at the Mexican drug cartels and associated criminal groups to see how this works.

We now come to the actual motivation for psychopathic violence and sadism.

While psychopaths are capable of casual violence, often when they’re being employed by someone for that purpose, their ‘personal’ violence and associated sadism has a particular cause.

Emotions vary in their strength, with some being fleeting and easily dismissed – while others are difficult to resist or stop before they have completed their purpose. Aggression and sex are not referred to as ‘drives’ for nothing. Both are difficult to stop once they get going.

If the control and coping mechanisms do not work, or the drives cannot be channeled somehow, their lack of resolution will become unbearable. The only thing that can alleviate the pain and chaos is to act on them. If the psychopath does that, for example by killing someone or using some other form of violence, the emotion/drive will ‘resolve.’ The psychopath will experience this as a massive emotional release and his mind will go quiet for a while.

To understand this release you can watch some of those chiropractor videos on YouTube where a patient experiences emotional release after years of pain – and starts crying. This is approximately what happens to a psychopath when he commits an act of violence, particularly a planned and/or ritualized one.

This release is the main psychological and physical motive for repeated psychopathic violence. It is also the main motive for sadistic acts, particularly formalized/ritualized ones. If we have a large number of psychopaths on the loose, we can expect a lot of ‘specialized’ and ritualized torture and sadism.

Before moving on to narcissistic/sociopathic sadism, it is very important to understand the difference in motivation between the two. A psychopath commits violent and sadistic acts to relieve his pain and to stabilize his mind (or because he’s told to), while the narcissist/sociopath does it purely for enjoyment. Sadism in a narcissist/sociopath is equivalent to a gourmand enjoying fine food and wine, or a junkie enjoying a heroin fix. It is the difference between seeking the absence of pain and seeking pleasure.

If we define sadism as enjoying other people’s suffering and humiliation, narcissistic/sociopathic sadism would be the real thing rather than the psychopathic version. It all depends on the definition.

Narcissistic/sociopathic sadism

The first order of business is to explain why I have put narcissists and sociopaths in the same group. Let’s begin by describing what a sociopath is.

The narcissistic sociopath

While the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths seems to confound most psychologists, it is actually rather clear. To use pop culture examples we can say that Dexter Morgan is a psychopath while Tony Soprano is a sociopath. Both these characters were relatively well written and suitable for demonstrating the difference – which is massive.

A ‘natural’ sociopath is someone who is born with impaired ‘negative’ emotions which create mental consequences for violent behavior. This includes guilt, shame, and such. At the same time other emotions are generally active, unlike in the psychopath. A sociopath is therefore a highly emotional person without remorse while the psychopath has no emotions at all, including guilt and shame – except for the basic drives.

Also, it seems that the ‘negative’ emotions are necessary for the proper development of all other emotions. Lacking those, sociopaths tend to be emotionally immature, superficial, and unpredictable. Many of them are basically like vicious children.

Sociopaths have the entire emotional spectrum active (apart from the restraining negative ones), which means that they can have the emotional aspect of personality. They can be emotionally charged or not, and of course have high or low self-awareness. In other words, they can be narcissists on top of being sociopaths – which psychopaths aren’t really able to be. Psychopaths simply lack the emotions necessary for proper narcissism.

In the context of sadism, the main difference between a sociopath and a narcissist is that the sociopath has limited or no conscience, while the narcissist has a conscience. To carry out misdeeds, the narcissist must rationalize his conscience away while the sociopath doesn’t need to do that. Still, narcissistic sociopaths will always try to rationalize their actions to protect their overinflated and self-righteous model of self – just like the narcissists do. The difference can be boiled down to this: a sociopath (narcissistic or otherwise) will kill, while a narcissist will try to manipulate someone into killing for him.

Narcissistic sociopaths can be said to be at the extreme end of the narcissistic spectrum. They are probably the most evil type of person you can find. For example, natural born pedophiles are generally narcissistic sociopaths. They are predatory, manipulative and self-righteous – fooling themselves into believing that what they are doing is actually normal while never experiencing remorse for the damage they do.

The essence of narcissistic sadism

I have written a lot about narcissism and I don’t want to beat that particular dead horse too severely in this essay. Still, a short summary is necessary for those who haven’t read my other pieces on this issue.

Narcissism is defined as a personality disorder, which is not entirely correct. Narcissism is more of a coherent personality than a deviation or pathology. It is a result of how some people’s brains are set up and how they can be further influenced into an increasing delusional state. Narcissism is the inherent belief that you are superior to others, either morally or intellectually, usually without being superior at all. In a narcissist this ‘model of self’ coexists with high influence of emotions on the narcissist’s self-perception and the perception of others. Simply put, this combination compels the narcissist to assure himself of his superiority by pushing others down, receiving an emotional fix as a reward. This creates a person who is essentially an ‘oppression junkie’ with a delusional world-view primarily intended to justify his self-perception and behavior.

A key part of this description in the ‘junkie’ part. When a narcissist puts others down, he will experience a ‘chemical’ reward, like from a narcotic. Let’s take an example everybody’s probably familiar with.

A narcissistic wife pokes and prods her husband constantly until he loses it and does something he shouldn’t have done. At that point the wife has won. She has created a situation where her husband is distraught over his actions and feels terrible. His situation has given her power over him. After that she will experience a ‘gleeful’ feeling when she thinks about the situation or exercises her power. Her husband essentially becomes a source of a drug for her. Furthermore, this feeling reinforces her narcissism and tends to exacerbate it, compelling her to use even more drastic methods to get a greater fix.

To put this in plain terms, the wife creates misery for her husband for her own enjoyment. That is the definition of sadism.

So, is narcissism simply equivalent to sadism? That depends on how you choose to define sadism. Narcissism (and the resulting sadism) has a wide spectrum, and as it gets more severe the nature of the abuse changes drastically. You could either define all narcissistic behavior as sadistic or define a point where it clearly transitions into sadism. We will take a closer look at this process soon.

Still, the fact remains that the physical and psychological ‘reward mechanism’ and the superior mindset behind narcissism are also what motivates sadism. The motive/reward mechanism for a mild passive-aggressive manipulation, like we see in third or more of all marriages and relationships, is essentially the same as in the sadistic torture of a child or an adult. The difference is mostly one of a degree rather than a qualitative one.

We can say with reasonable confidence that non-psychopathic sadism is a sub-unit of narcissism.

Before moving on, we need to keep something important in mind: not all abuse and torture are motivated by sadism. For it to be sadism, the perpetrator must enjoy what he is doing.

The sadistic spectrum

Narcissistic behavior intended to elevate self-perception has a very wide range. Its mildest and most common forms are basic oppression, such as ‘banning’ others from saying or doing certain things and oppression/manipulation using passive-aggressive behavior and victim mentality. This behavior is compulsive and may not necessarily be explicitly intended to cause harm.

However, from there the methods get increasingly darker, with various types of manipulation, gaslighting, and various types of abuse – both physical and emotional. The behavior’s purpose moves from a compulsive need to keep up the self-perception into intentionally causing harm. This means the following:

1. The milder forms of narcissism are compulsive and the narcissist will not be aware of what he is doing. Even the wife mentioned above does not realize that she is engaged in mildly sadistic behavior.

2. At some point the narcissist becomes consciously aware of the enjoyment component of putting others down. This awareness is always rationalized away, but it’s still there. The result is that the narcissist will actively start focusing on the abusive behavior to receive the ‘chemical’ reward that follows the ego boost. This results in an escalatory spiral where the abuse will increase and become more imaginative.

3. As the escalation progresses, the nature of the abuse will change. The abuse has now become directly connected to the ‘high’ the narcissist receives from the abuse – and the narcissist is aware of this. In other words – the more severe the abuse, the greater the high.

4. This eventually results in an explicit focus on causing damage to victims. What was previously seen as ‘putting people in their place’ or ‘punishing’ them (or something like that) has now transformed into causing direct damage to people. This damage can be psychological, physical or both.

Then there’s the nature of the sadistic abuse. Narcissists are emotionally charged people who place a lot of importance on physicality and physical sensations. In tune with that, they also tend to be more sexually charged than others. The more extreme the narcissism, the more physical and sexual they tend to be. The result is that as the sadism becomes more extreme, it will increasingly lean toward physical and sexual abuse. The most extreme narcissistic sadists are overwhelmingly sexual sadists.

Our managerial class seems to be partly selected based on narcissism, with extreme ones rising to the top. One would therefore expect a lot of sexual sadism at the top of our societies. There is some evidence for this.

Although the steps above are presented as a process, it’s not always like that. Some people, including narcissistic sociopaths, may enter the process at stage 2-3 and then move to stage 4. The majority of narcissists will stay at stage 1 throughout their lives, or move to stage 2 and stay there. Some will start at stage 1 and move to stage 4. It varies.

This goes back to what was discussed earlier about whether all narcissism is, by definition, sadism. We can either see this as an escalation of narcissistic sadism from the baseline stage to an extreme – or the transition from narcissism into sadism. The choice is yours.

Before moving on it is only proper to point out that sadism at stages 3-4 has certain logic from the point of view of the sadist. The fact that the focus is now on damage, and more damage equals better ‘high’ – it follows that this will influence victim preferences.

The reason many hardcore sadists (including sexual sadists) prefer children is their value. The higher the value of the victim, the greater damage you can do. The greater the damage you can do, the more gratification is to be had.

Children have the highest value for two main reasons: Firstly, they are innocent. They have no misdeeds to subtract from their value, unlike adults. Secondly, they have their lives ahead. They can therefore be robbed of literally everything that happens in a lifetime. In addition to this, everyone around the child, including family and friends, can be destroyed too. This math is very appealing to a narcissistic sociopath.

In general, innocence and youth are like catnip to the most toxic part of the narcissistic/sociopathic spectrum – because that’s where the greatest damage can be done.

The conscience problem

Now we start moving into the social ramifications of sadism. This is a large and complicated issue which will only be minimally touched upon here. There is, however, one major issue relating to narcissistic sadism which has massive effects on society and is poorly understood.

Definitions and measurements of narcissism are based on a ‘theory’ which does not assume proper separation between narcissists and sociopaths/psychopaths. Instead, psychologists see these groups as partly ‘fused’ and describe them using models such as the ‘dark triad’ or the ‘dark quad.’ They also put them under the umbrella of the extremely unclear ‘Antisocial Personality Disorder.’ This means that when these groups are ‘measured’ we never quite know what (or who) is being measured. I suspect that most research designed to identify narcissists are actually identifying sociopaths rather than narcissists. This lack of separation and clarity is extremely unhelpful when it comes to understanding these ‘conditions’ and their effects on society.

(I would personally describe the dark triad and dark quad frameworks as ‘idiotic beyond belief’ if someone were to ask – but that will have to be addressed later.)

The biggest issue by far for society is the fact that narcissists, including narcissistic sadists, have a conscience. Narcissists are not amoral people without ‘empathy’ or compassion. This means that for narcissists and narcissistic sadists, there is constant conflict between their compulsion to hurt others and their conscience. This is what turns narcissism and narcissistic sadism into a social force – as we shall see.

This also means that as narcissists ‘drift’ into sadism, their conscience becomes a major problem for them. A lot of what they do, both personally and on a societal level, is to neutralize that problem.

The limits of rationalization and the quest for sadistic freedom

Unlike sociopaths and psychopaths, narcissists (including narcissistic sadists) have fully functioning emotional systems. More specifically, everything works, but not quite normally. Among what works are the emotions which create negative consequences for amoral behavior – i.e. conscience.

It is this fact which causes one of the biggest characteristic of narcissism – which is their constant rationalization of their actions and beliefs. Every evil thing must be rationalized because otherwise it will have consequences for them. For narcissists, rationalizations are tools to neutralize conscience as well as to maintain the illusion of their superiority.

As narcissists become increasingly sadistic, their actions become more and more difficult to rationalize away. One can easily rationalize gaslighting one’s wife, but rationalizing sexual abuse and murder of a child is another matter. Something on that level is extremely difficult to rationalize away.

This is what often limits the actions of narcissistic sadists to being ‘viewers’ rather than ‘doers.’ Without conscience, sociopaths and psychopaths have freedom that the narcissistic sadists can only dream about. This results in a ‘division of labor’ where the sociopaths and psychopaths tend to be the doers. They carry out the abuse and killings and make the abuse and snuff videos – while the narcissistic sadists tend to be the consumers.

For narcissistic sadists, conscience equals being in bondage. It prevents them from being free to do what they want. Their utter hatred of fixed morality is partly a result of this burden they carry. I suspect some of them actually envy the narcissistic sociopaths, because they only need to justify their perceived superiority to themselves, not their actions.

But there is a method to overcome the tyranny of conscience – and to achieve sadistic freedom.

Normalization to the rescue

An absolute key element in narcissism is low self-awareness (low self-consciousness). This prevents the narcissist from accurate self-assessment – but it has other consequences: People with low self-awareness are less likely than others to have a well formed ‘internal’ system of morality. High self-awareness people, on the other hand, tend to have fixed morality based on tradition, religion, or something that is seen to be immutable and can’t be compromised. Killing is wrong except in very well-defined situations and that doesn’t easily change with the zeitgeist.

However, low self-awareness people tend to base their morality primarily on social norms. In other words, their morality comes from the outside. If you change the social norms, you can change their morality very fast. What is immoral today (and causes remorse) can be moral tomorrow (and causes no remorse). If ‘society’ decides that someone is not really human, for example a full-term baby, and therefore alright to kill – it can suddenly be done without remorse. In other words, remorse is controlled by what is acceptable to ‘others.’ Narcissists and narcissistic sadists essentially outsource their conscience to society.

This is the solution for the tyranny of conscience which narcissistic sadists suffer. You simply reformat society to make the things you want to do acceptable. When they’ve become normalized and acceptable, there will be no remorse when you carry them out. This is where sadism has become a social force. This force is the quest for freedom for the narcissistic/sadistic slice of society.

This may sound somewhat fantastic but consider the nature of the social trends and the speed at which they have transformed society. Their extreme nature and the almost desperate urgency to push them, is to put it mildly, suspicious. Those are not organic trends brought on by ‘modernity.’ They are being engineered and pushed violently.

Let’s look at some examples:

The normalization of killing babies is one of the more amazing trends in western societies. Several countries and states have now approved the ‘termination’ of a pregnancy up to birth. The next step, which is being pushed, is to allow ‘termination’ after birth – perhaps a month or three months. When that has become normalized, what is to stop expanding it to a year or more? What is happening here is that society is being manipulated into defining children as non-persons – and should you want to kill one, there is no need for remorse. This is a major step toward freedom for the narcissistic sadists.

The normalization of pedophilia is an extremely obvious trend in western societies. We all want to be accepted rather than persecuted – and that applies to narcissistic sadists and sociopathic pedophiles as well. No one is free unless free from persecution you see. Another great leap for the sadists toward freedom.

The systematic downgrading of the value of human life is very visible in popular culture – particularly in movies and TV shows. Many movies now push this as their main theme, much like wokeness was being pushed BT (Before Trump). Look at movies such as ‘Squid Game,’ ‘Mickey 17’ and all the zombie movies for examples. This is a massive desensitizing project intended to make people accept mass killings and brutality. This means that should anything about the abuse of victims of sadism or ‘necessary’ mass killings hit the news, people won’t even care. A good example is the indifference of most people to the Gaza massacre. Another step toward freedom for the sadists!

The normalization of casual sadism was mentioned at the beginning of this essay. We all want to exercise our freedom in public without being judged, don’t we? So do the sadists. Yet another step forward!

At this point you may be thinking that the number of hardcore narcissistic sadists, sociopaths and psychopaths is far too small to be able to engineer a social force such as this. This is, after all, just a tiny group. Or is it?

We don’t really know how many there are because the definitions used to measure their numbers are unclear. Still, a rough guesstimate would be around 3% of the population – perhaps as much as 5%. This doesn’t tell the whole story though because this group has protectors, helpers and admirers among the narcissistic part of the population. The proportion of those people in the West is probably between a quarter and a third of the population.

On top of that our managerial class is saturated with narcissists – which means that we don’t just have perhaps a third of the population in favor of sadistic social trends – but also most of the western governments.

The effects of sadism on western societies are far greater than just these examples. The effects are insidious and subtle, but everywhere. It’s just that the desensitization is working so we don’t really notice. Describing them further would make this essay too long – but maybe later.

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P.S. I would like to thank all my readers who put up with my overly long essays. I’m constantly surprised, and not a little grateful, that there are so many people who actually take time to read them through! I would also like to thank the people who have supported me by visiting my tip jar. I know who you are and your support is very much appreciated.

I have had little time to write recently, or to interact with readers, but I hope to be able to put a bit more time into this in the future. No promises though!