Hone Your Psycho-dar
Equanimity Comes Under Scrutiny Again!
Beware. There are people in our midst who don’t give a damn about you.
Nine years ago I infiltrated this den of iniquity to uncover scandalous hypocrisies! Now, yet again, even darker evils have raised their ugly heads. Were it not for my highly tuned psycho-dar, these hideous injustices would remain submerged in its murky disguise!
A psycho-dar is what it sounds like; a radar that detects psychopaths.
As a whistleblower on Equanimity’s clever contrivances, I also seek to protect the general public from similar trepidations by showing how to hone your pyscho-dar. The first thing you need to learn is how to identify a psychopath. Equanimity’s founder is a typical example; someone who appears to be an ordinary and benign member of the community. As I uncover his wrong-doings, you will see how these fiendish people operate.
Scurrilous Sustainability
Equanimity is the brain-child of Simon Cole, a con man with a talent for sustainababble. He is expert at exploiting the environmently [sic] conscious with greenwashing. Conceved [sic] as a shining example of semi-off-grid, socially conscious share-housing, Equanimity masquerades as the epitome of sustainable virtue. In fact, he lures the unsuspecting tenant in with sweet talk of social justice and eco-friendly living. Then he nabs them when they are deeply embedded in his complex web of lies and when they are at their most vulnerable. Equanimity portrays itself as a cooperative cohousing oufit. In fact, it is a run-of-the-mill tenancy charging up-market rents for sub-standard accommodation. Quite the landlord’s paradise for this self-styled green guru!
Psychopaths, or sociopaths (they’re pretty much the same thing) are few in number, but once they’re in your life, they can give you untold grief.
Infiltrating the Lair
My investigation began with an anonymous tip off from a local resident. It [ sic] had discovered that this self-appointed guardian of Coopers Plains was running a ghost history group called Coopers Plains History Group. The group went into hibernation after its luminary Beryl Roberts retired in 2018. S. Cole Esquire saw his opportunity and swooped in to assume the Chair and run it single-handedly without any members to encumber his clandestine and racist agenda.
To get to the bottom of this, I decided once again, to pose as a prospective tenant, this time cleverly appearing as a 61 year old Aussie guy (Cole esq. has a propensity to discriminate against anyone who isn’t white), Standing over 6 foot and weighing more than 100 kgs, this was no easy task for a slender lady. Just think of Mrs Doubtfire — lots of makeup and a fat suit.
Psychopaths will usually appear in convivial circumstances. Therefore, I called Cole esq. by phone via the history group, posing as a local history enthusiast and tourism operator. Psychopaths will wax lyrical about you and themselves to ingratiate themselves, because they want something from you. This is exactly how Equanimity’s founder came across when I called him. He listened patiently as I expounded on my interest in the area and its tourist potential for grey nomads and my track record of big business dealings. I was playing reverse-psychology on him; beguiling him in the way he is accustomed to doing unto others. I told him of the multi-million dollar negotiations I was engaged in with nearby business operators to set up grey nomad tourist operations. He seemed to be taken in by the promise of big bucks as a history consultant.
Next, I slowly but carefully let on that I had some medical issues, knowing he usually has a guest room vacant in his section of the house and the hospital I was attending is nearby. Normally he has to work hard to lure and trap a tenant, but I made it easy for him, and soon, as I expected, he offered the room to me on the spurious ‘trial basis’ he offers. I pretended to read his ‘Rooming Lease Agreement’ closely and agreed to its outrageous terms, including foregoing bond in lieu of taking responsibility for any damage. This proved to be the key to uncovering his wickedness, as I will explain.
The Psychopathic Mind
Often, when a psychopath is weaving its [ sic] way into your life, it will spin a wild yarn about how capable you are of helping and the great benefits that will follow. This is to make you feel strong, fortunate and generous and prime you to give up your time, energy and belongings. Before Cole esq. could do it to me, I quickly turned the tables with a story about being speared in the guts by a Papua New Guinean during a tribal battle that left several of my men dead! This wasn’t to gain sympathy — psychopaths are incapable of empathy. But it excited Cole esq. and he saw me as a brave, adventurous entrepreneur and he wanted some of the action. I told him the old wound in the vagus nerve left me on emotional tenterhooks for years and finally it needed surgery to prevent further deterioration. This clever device disarmed Cole esq. of his usual psychopathic tools to manipulate me. Instead, I tricked him into manipulating me and offering a room. With psychopaths, always beat them at their own game and control them.
The thing that characterizes psychopaths is their lack of empathy. They are hopeless at reading emotions from facial expressions and tone of voice. But they’re not stupid. They will figure out what you want and think by listening to what you say.
According to David Gillespie, in his book Taming Toxic People, the psychopath’s ability to empathize is ossified at about the stage of a 4 year old’s. Apparently, their brains are different. Scans have shown a reduced count of spindle nerves that connect the amygdala to the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC). Both the amygdala and the aPFC lacks grey matter, too. The aPFC helps us moderate our desires in light of information about how others feel. It has evolved to an exceptional level in our species and is believed to be part and parcel of our ability to cooperate as social creatures to the scale we have.
They simply don’t feel for others the way normal people do.
The benign and benevolent don’t like to admit it, but they are the most likely to be taken in.
Psychopaths don’t throw tantrums in quite the same way as 4 year olds — they have learned to do it in a controlled way that gets results. In the month I spent with Cole esq., there were times when frustrations boiled up and seemed on be on the verge of an outburst. But, not wanting to jeopardize any chances of a lucrative consultancy this twisted anger turned into weirdly vociferous praise.
Garage Door Escape
After a month, I had gathered all the evidence I needed about Cole esq… Fortunately, my exit path opened up via an innocent accident. I tried to get out of the garage before the automatic door closed, but it caught me on the back and stopped. I tried to right it by hand, but it jammed. I told Cole esq. and he said he’d look at it, which he did using the manual, to no avail. I told him I’d get my son to try fixing it, but he couldn’t. Meanwhile, he and the other tenants had to either park outside or open the door manually — for two weeks! Ha ha. Poetic justice, I thought. A couple more weeks past and the next thing I knew, Cole handed me an invoice he’d paid to fix the door amounting to $800!! I asked him, “what about planned obsolescence?” His trite reply: “Well, we don’t know how long it would have lasted if you hadn’t broken it.” So much for doughnut economics!
The next day I let him have it. I went off site and got him to call me. It was my chance to tell him everything I really thought about him. Wow, did I sock to him. And his response? In a few hours all my belongings were out on the front nature strip. Yep, I was homeless again, as far he was concerned. You see how little sympathy psychopaths have?
His is still pursuing me through the courts. Sheezuz, what an asinine psychopath!
Reference: Gillespie, David (2017). Taming Toxic People: The science of identifying and dealing with psychopaths at work and home. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Pan Macmillan Australia. ISBN 9781743535875 (See page 67.)
Originally published at http://equanimity.blog on December 18, 2024.
