The Sociopath Next Door (27 page)

Colby and Damon's “moral exemplars” include Virginia Foster Durr, the Southern belle turned civil rights activist who was the first person to hug Rosa Parks when she stepped out of jail; Suzie Valadez, who has spent many years feeding, clothing, and providing medical care to thousands of poor Mexicans in Ciudad Juárez; Jack Coleman, a former president of Haverford College, noted for his “blue-collar sabbaticals” as a ditch digger, a garbageman, a homeless person; businessman Cabell Brand, who devoted himself to the creation of Total Action Against Poverty in Roanoke, Virginia; and Charleszetta Waddles, founder of the Perpetual Mission, who dedicated her life to helping the elderly and the poor, the unwed mothers, the prostitutes, and the abused children of Detroit, Michigan.

The researchers studied autobiographies and oral histories and conducted in-depth interviews with each of the twenty-three exemplars and their coworkers. In a book that documents their findings, entitled
Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment,
they report three striking commonalities among individuals of extreme conscience. The authors label these shared characteristics as (1) “certainty,” (2) “positivity,” and (3) “unity of self and moral goals.” “Certainty” refers to an exceptional clarity concerning what the exemplars believe to be right, and also their sense of an unequivocal personal responsibility to act on those beliefs. “Positivity” expresses the exemplars' affirmative approach to life, their extraordinary enjoyment of their work, and their marked optimism, often despite hardship or even danger. And “unity of self and moral goals” describes the integration of the subjects' moral stance with their conception of their own identity, and the perceived sameness of their moral and personal goals.

“Unity” means that, for such people, conscience is not just a guiding light. It is
who they are.
In an attempt to describe his sense of personal identity, one of the exemplars, Cabell Brand, explained in an interview, “Who I am is what I'm able to do and how I feel all the time—each day, each moment. . . . It's hard for me to separate who I am from what I want to do and what I am doing.”

Colby and Damon consider this third characteristic, the “unity of self and moral goals,” to be their most important finding, and crucially important to the understanding of conscience and its effects. When conscience grows sufficiently strong, apparently it unifies the human psyche in a unique and beneficial way, and rather than causing “life disruption,” extreme conscience significantly enhances life satisfaction. Colby and Damon write, “Our exemplars have been invulnerable to the debilitating effects of privation because all they have needed for personal success is the productive pursuit of their moral mission.” In unself-conscious defiance of our cultural tendency to set conscience and self-interest in opposition to each other, Colby and Damon's exemplars “defined their own welfare and self-interest in moral terms and were, with very few exceptions, extremely happy and fulfilled.” Far from causing them suffering, or making them into dupes, their exceptional sense of obligation to other people made them happy.

Conscience, our sense of responsibility toward one another, allows us to live together, in our homes and on our planet. It helps to create meaning in our lives, and stands between us and an empty existence of meaningless competitions. A very large sense of conscience can integrate moral intention, personal desire, and identity in the mind—right action becomes
who we are
—and for this reason, extreme conscience appears to be a rare exact-fit key to human happiness.

So here is my best psychological advice: As you look around our world and try to figure out what is going on and who is “winning,” do not wish to have less conscience. Wish for more.

Celebrate your fate.

Having a conscience, you may never be able to do exactly as you please, or just what you would need to do in order to succeed easily or ultimately in the material world. And so perhaps you will never wield great financial or political power over other people. Maybe you will never command the respect of the masses, or their fear. On the contrary, you may suffer painful bouts of conscience that cause you to act quite against your own self-serving ambitions. And you may have to work hard all your life, giving up the temptations of childlike dependency, because you want your own children to thrive. You may yourself be caught up in the snares of sociopaths from time to time, and on account of your scruples, you may never be able to take satisfactory revenge on the people who have hurt you. And, yes, you may never become the dictator of a small country.

But you will be able to look at your children asleep in their beds and feel that unbearable surge of awe and thanksgiving. You will be able to keep others alive in your heart long after they are gone. You will have genuine friends. Unlike the hollow, risk-pursuing few who are deprived of a seventh sense, you will go through your life fully aware of the warm and comforting, infuriating, confusing, compelling, and sometimes joyful presence of other human beings, and along with your conscience you will be given the chance to take the largest risk of all, which, as we all know, is to love.

Conscience truly is Mother Nature's better bargain. Its value is evident on a grand historic scale, and as we will see in the next chapter, it is precious to us even in our ordinary day-to-day dealings with friends and neighbors. Along with an entire neighborhood, let us now try to spend a day with an unfortunate and sociopathic woman named Tillie. From Tillie, we can learn—though she never will—that conscience makes everyday experience worth having.

ELEVEN

groundhog day

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

—Marcus Aurelius

T
illie is someone personality theorist Theodore Millon would call an “abrasive psychopath.” She is sociopathic but, regrettably for Tillie, she lacks the sociopath's customary charm and finesse. Instead, to use Millon's words, she “acts in an overtly and directly contentious and quarrelsome way,” and “everything and everyone is an object available for nagging and assaulting.” Tillie's specific talent is to take the smallest, subtlest whisper of conflict and amplify it into a shouting match. She excels at the creation of hostility and bitterness where there was none before, and specializes in provoking people who ordinarily are gentle and peace-loving.

In Tillie's universe, Tillie is always right, and she takes self-righteous pleasure in opposing and frustrating her opponents, who are seemingly everywhere and somehow always wrong. Her mission in life is to correct the world, a calling she heeds without hesitation or conscience. In this mission, she perceives that she is unappreciated by others, which further justifies her behavior toward them.

This morning, Tillie has discovered a groundhog in her backyard. As she watches from her sunroom, it sits back on its round haunches in the grass and turns its alert little face in every direction, as if surveying Tillie's property. When Tillie opens the sliding door to get a better look, the animal freezes in place for a moment, then waddles away and vanishes into the ground at the edge of the lawn, at a point where Tillie's yard meets that of her neighbors Catherine and Fred.

Tillie makes a mental note of where its hole must be, then goes out to stand on her deck, a white-haired woman of seventy in a blue-checkered housedress, appearing for all the world to be the archetypal kind and wise old woman. As she gazes with interest across the lawn, anyone looking on might remark that her demeanor and bottom-heavy shape are not altogether different from the groundhog's.

Tillie's neighbors on the other side of her house and up the hill, Greta and Jerry, also happen to be having breakfast in their sunroom and can see Tillie there on her deck. They are too far away to notice the groundhog. All they can make out is seventy-year-old Tillie, standing very still in her blue-and-white dress.

Thirty-five-year-old Greta, the manager of a local department store, says to her husband, Jerry, a building contractor, “Damn, I wish that awful woman would just move away. How long has she been here now?”

“Fifteen months,” replies Jerry.

Greta smiles mirthlessly. “But who's counting, right? I know I shouldn't wish people gone, but she's just so incredibly
mean.
And controlling. I don't know how she can even stand her own self.”

Jerry sighs and says, “Maybe we could buy her out.”

Greta is about to laugh, and then she realizes that Jerry is not joking. All of a sudden, she understands that her normally even-tempered husband despises Tillie every bit as much as she does. She feels chilly, and a little guilty, and goes back into the kitchen to get some more hot coffee.

When she comes back, Jerry is still staring at the old woman on her deck. He says, “No, we really can't afford to buy her out. Maybe she'll just move. Seems like you'd move if everybody in the neighborhood hated you as much as everybody hates her.”

Greta points out, “Well, the thing is, I bet she gets this reaction wherever she goes.”

“Yeah, probably. Where was she living before?”

“Don't know,” answers Greta. Then, beginning to feel somewhat gratified that Jerry shares her sentiments, she says, “Do you believe this? It was last week, I think, she called me and said we shouldn't have any more fires in our fireplace. She's ‘allergic to wood smoke,' don't you know?”

“
What?
You never told me she did that! That's crazy!” Jerry clenches his fists, and then changes his assessment. “No, that's not crazy. That's just horse crap. We'll have a fire in the damn fireplace tonight. In fact, I'll bring in some more wood before I leave for work.”

“But it's supposed to get really warm today.”

“Who cares?”

This time, Greta does laugh. “Do you know how we sound?”

Jerry looks at his wife sheepishly, and the corners of his mouth begin to turn up. He unclenches his fists and cracks his knuckles a couple of times to get rid of the tension.

Greta and Jerry's neighbor across the street and down three houses is an elderly widow named Sunny. At this very moment, though she cannot actually see Tillie on her back deck like Greta and Jerry can, Sunny too is thinking about how mean Tillie is. Yesterday, Tillie called the police because Sunny had parked her car on the street in front of her own house. Sunny has always parked her car in that big space between the street and her house, since her husband passed away ten years ago, because she is afraid to back out of her driveway into the traffic. The young policeman came and made her put it in the driveway. He apologized several times, but still he said Tillie was right. It was a violation. Sunny has not even had breakfast yet, and already she is dreading her trip to the grocery store today, because she will have to back her car out alone. She feels like crying. And that car was nowhere near Tillie's house!

As Sunny laments across the street, Tillie, on her backyard deck, decides that the groundhog is not going to reappear right now. She goes back into her house, where she can no longer be seen by the breakfasting Greta and Jerry up the hill. While Greta and Jerry drink the rest of their coffee and try to talk about something else, Tillie, in her kitchen, picks up the phone and calls Catherine, the next-door neighbor with whom she now shares a groundhog.

Catherine teaches the sixth grade. She has taught school since she was twenty-two, and now her sixtieth birthday is coming. She thinks she ought to retire, but the notion only makes her sad. Her teaching, her kids, mean the world to her, and she really does not want to stop working. Her husband, Fred, who is seven years older and already retired, understands this and is patient with her.

“Whenever you're ready,” he always says. “I like to putter around the house and fix things anyway.” And then they both laugh. Fred can barely replace burned-out lightbulbs. Until he reluctantly gave up the mantle a year ago, he was the editor of their regional newspaper. He is a good, quiet, bookish man who loved his work, too, and still contributes an “emeritus” human-interest column called “People You Should Know.”

When the phone rings, Fred is reading in the living room, and Catherine is in the kitchen, getting ready to go to work early. The trill of the phone at such an hour makes Catherine jump. She answers it quickly.

“Hello?”

“Catherine,” says Tillie abruptly, snipping the word as if she were angry.

“Yes, this is Catherine. Tillie? Tillie, my goodness, it's seven in the morning. Are you all right?”

“Yes. I'm fine. I just saw a groundhog in the yard, and I thought you'd like to know.”

“A what? A groundhog?”

“Yes, in the back, between our properties.”

“Well, that's . . . interesting. Must have been cute, I guess. Was it?”

“I suppose. Anyway, I know you're busy. I just thought you should know about the animal. We can talk about it later. Good-bye.”

“Uh, right. Talk later. Well, good-bye then, Tillie.”

Catherine hangs up the phone, baffled, and Fred calls to her, “What was that?”

She walks into the living room, where he sits with his book, and answers, “That was Tillie.”

“Oh,” says Fred, rolling his eyes. “What did she want?”

“She wanted to tell me she saw a groundhog in the backyard.”

“Why did she want to tell you that?”

Catherine shakes her head slowly and says, “I don't have the slightest idea.”

“Ah Tillie!” pronounces Fred, raising his right arm above his head in mock salute.

As she finishes her morning routine, Catherine feels confused and slightly ill at ease, knowing that with Tillie there is always a thickening plot, and that the denouement is likely to be controlling and upsetting. But for the life of her, she cannot imagine what this thing with the groundhog is about. Does Tillie want to have it removed? Is Tillie asking her permission in some roundabout way? Also, Catherine and Fred have lived in this same house for thirty years, and they have never once seen a groundhog in the yard. How odd.