Manipulation is Controlled Reality

Predator Alert

The human predator creates abusive relationships and toxic groups. Predators hunt and trap others. They have no concern for anyone’s welfare except their own.

Warning Signs

Predators are not hard to recognize:

• They are utterly selfish. They pretend friendship and love, but feel absolutely nothing for others.
• Predators are charming and good at flattery, but they don’t mean a word of it.
• They brag and boast and make up outrageous lies. When challenged, they pass the blame.
• Predators are impulsive and easily bored. They demand thrills and take dangerous risks. They enjoy pushing others into taking dangerous risks, too.
• They are bullies with explosive tempers. They enjoy humiliating people. They hate it if anyone else has power or is admired.
• Predators weaken people with insults and putdowns.
• They are cunning and manipulative. They lie easily and think nothing of breaking a promise.
• Predators are without conscience: they do not feel remorse or guilt, and often boast about the harm they’ve done.
• They are lazy and live off others, giving as little as possible in return.
• Predators are control freaks, stopping others from taking control of anything if they can, and forcing petty rules on people – rules that are impossible to follow, because they want to enjoy their sense of control.
• They will boast about breaking the law.

Any of these characteristics is a warning sign. If someone has most of them, then they are a predator. Good people behave badly sometimes, but bad people – predators – behave badly all the time. They mimic friendly behavior, but they could not care less about you or your feelings.

The Science is New

We are only beginning to understand the predatory personality. Although predators pose the greatest threat to society, we must not witch-hunt them. Those who are violent must be kept out of society, but not mistreated. Our overloaded prisons too often allow predators to spread their anti-social, selfish behavior. They corrupt others by creating a cycle of abuse and injury, and leave prison without being rehabilitated.

There is strong evidence that violent psychopaths have under-developed brains, so cannot be held fully responsible for their actions (see Kent Kiehl’s Psychopath Whisperer).

We need to be warned about the potential danger of narcissists, so they should be labeled, and, if possible, educated into understanding their disorder.

We may be at the beginning of a great social transformation. By isolating and recognizing the human predator, we can solve many of our problems. Nothing is more important to human welfare than taking power away from selfish, anti-social people. Please help us to spread the word!

Social Influence Producing Behavior Change

Why people stay in destructive groups or relationships is often a mystery to people who have never been the victim of a coercive manipulative environment.

We often hold onto beliefs stubbornly. Once we are persuaded by a manipulator, it can trap us into a system of beliefs. Even the brightest and best people have been tricked into irrational beliefs and foolish practices by human predators.

Idealistic people who want to better the world, and are dismayed by society’s cynicism, are the most likely cult converts. Doctors, surgeons, scientists, artists, professors and lawyers have all been lured into cults and abusive relationships: it isn’t about intelligence, poor reasoning skills, or “gullibility”.

Because of consistency, or inertia, we tend to keep moving in the same direction, once we have adopted powerful ideas. Very few people find it easy to change habits and routines.

Predatory people use manipulative techniques to amplify commitment. Robert Cialdini has listed the normal, everyday methods of influence. Robert Jay Lifton observed the deliberate methods of “thought reform”.

Most people believe that they are not vulnerable to predatory influence. They are sure that others “fall” for the tricks of predators, but without knowing those tricks, and recognizing them, we are all vulnerable. We can fervently believe almost any idea, but it is much easier to see others’ faults than our own.

The only group of people – thankfully a small group – who are invulnerable to manipulation are those without emotional responses, without conscience and without any concern for others; and they tend to be the ones using the manipulation.

Irrational and cultic systems have often dominated human thought, even in the sciences. For instance, Behaviorist psychology, which insisted that nothing can be known about the mind or its workings, was dominant in universities in the US for decades, well into the 1970s, when it was shown to be plainly wrong.

A group provides a social environment. Some people remain in an abusive group, because their friends and family will abandon them if they leave.

We are all prone to groupthink, where we go along with the rest of the group. We don’t want to “rock the boat” or cause trouble.

We accept more and more dissonance over time, and our loyalty can keep us stuck. We become used to the language and the routines of any group we belong to, and other groups can seem ever more strange.

Only a significant event will cause someone to reconsider involvement with a group or individual they are loyal to. It can be an unpleasant event, an obvious contradiction, or a revelation of conscience that motivates a challenge to our beliefs. Often the abusive group or partner knows how to overcome disagreement, by playing on guilt, phobia or aversion, and it takes outside help to reconsider the abusive relationship.

There have always been human predators. When they control society, there is injustice, violence and war. Sometimes whole nations fall under the spell of a manipulator and a destructive ideology like Nazism. Gangs, terrorist groups and extreme religious cults are all founded on manipulation. Predators use religious belief and unethical laws to control others.