Introduction
A young woman meets a man at her father’s funeral. They share an immediate rapport. She spends the whole service crying into his shoulder, knowing from that from now on she can no longer think of herself in terms of “I” but in terms of “we.” This man is now bound to her. They talk all night. They talk all through dinner.
They sleep together and both think that the act of love-making has never been so wonderful or fulfilling.
She’s so goddamn head over heels for him that she doesn’t even realize she forgot to ask for his name until it’s the next day and he’s already gone back home.
She’s in absolute despair trying to figure out his name. No one can remember, and she’s gone through the whole guest list twice. Nada. Worse still, the funeral is nowhere near her home and she’s going to have to leave soon. She has no idea where the wonderful young man may live, and he certainly has no idea of where to find her.
That evening she kills her mother.
Why’d she do it?
Well, if you’re a sociopath you’d know right away that she killed her mother so she could see that nice young man again. It makes sense that he’d come back for the mother’s funeral, right?
Or at least that’s what I was told the first time I answered this question.
The person who asked me, my college RA, even told me that it came off a test scientifically designed to measure sociopathy.
I immediately called bullshit.
Why? Well, it’s not because I’m not a sociopath. I just think there are much better ways to tell whether or not someone is really and truly disconnected from other human beings than a stupid question about killing someone we don’t even know in the context of the story.
Hell, the mother might even have had it coming in the long run. Did you ever even pull your head out of your ass long enough to think about THAT?
What if the mother had molested the daughter her entire life? Am I the only person that finds it odd that this hypothetical woman is so screwed up in the head she’s chosen her OWN FATHER’S FUNERAL to find the love of her life? Talk about attachment issues. Or maybe the mother just stood by while the father sold out the daughter’s body for drugs when she was younger? No, we’re just supposed to sit back and assume that Mother = Good. How good could she have been if she raised a murderer?
Sure, the daughter probably IS killing her mother just to meet that young man again. But if the mother was the sole reason the daughter is fucked up in the first place, then I don’t really mind the daughter killing her to get one fucking CHANCE at happiness.
Like I said, there are much better ways of telling how disconnected someone really is from the collective human soul.
I have compiled the following list of three things that all truly human people share in common. If you are able to go against any of them, you are without a doubt a sociopath. These are universals, that apply to all humans of all cultures.
Dare I say it: they even apply to space aliens.
1. Can You Commit A Violent Act While Listening to Enya?
There is a sound in the universe that controls all harmony. No, it is not the mystical name of “Muad’Dib” from David Lynch’s 1984 science fiction film classic “Dune.” It is the music of Enya.
Don’t believe me? Click on the Enya video I have encoded here. Now imagine the person you hate most in the world, and then try to imagine just beating the living fuck out of them. Think about bashing their evil fucking teeth in with your computer monitor.
Can’t do it can you?
That’s because Enya, as Adam Carolla has observed, is like a magic wood sprite. No one knows what country she comes from. No one has ever said “Oh dude, I was out at dinner yesterday and guess who we bumped into? Enya! That bitch loves spaghetti!”
No, Enya lives in some kind of magical palace made of wood bark and moss on top of a rainbow bridge. Her sole purpose is to create intellectual spaces in which violence can not exist.
If you can think violent thoughts while listening to Enya, your name is Charles Manson.
2. Do You Mist Up When Witnessing Montages In Which People Age From Infancy to Infirmity?
I don’t care what birth defects you have. I don’t care if you’re Hitler. If you show me a picture of you as a child, with pictures showing your gradual growth from infancy to infirmity, I will break down and cry.
Why? Because time ravages rich and poor alike. It is the one thing that connects us all, and villain or saint, you are a human being. You have a human story. All humans are suckers for human stories.
Watch this video and tell me you don’t get sad.
The person in the video isn’t even real!
Especially when you see the montage involves combat in WWII. Any time an American hears about another American dying in WWII we are obliged to feel very sad and reflective about our own life.
That’s why at the end of “Saving Private Ryan” when we see Matt Damon turn into an old man begging his family to tell him that he’s lived a good life it is totally okay to make a tea kettle whistle sound as we break down and just cry like the living fuck.
That’s right. I said “cry like the living fuck.” That is how powerfully you’re allowed to weep.
3. Do You Enjoy Abba?
I’m mostly Croatian. I am genetically designed to believe that the only hope worth having, is the hope that you will die in your sleep. I could walk behind a ox with a plow all day and never plant a single seed. Want to know why? Because I have no internal mechanism that tells me things should or can get better. I don’t believe that hard work should be rewarded.
You get to be miserable and then you die. Happiness is fleeting, and we’re all going to be dead in fifty fucking years anyway. Who really gives a shit?
Yet I am sometimes pulled away from these harsh truths by the joy of a “Dancing Queen” or a very strange song that somehow manages to relate a young girl’s surrender to love to Napolean’s surrender at Waterloo, or another song about two people remembering the Mexican Revolution (Seriously? What the fuck is that? Doesn’t anyone else ever get bumped by that?)
Oh sure in my personal life I condemn Abba has “gay tripe.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve been on a construction site and said “Wow, this song is so gay!” Only to nod my head in time to the beat of “Super Trooper” as soon as I rounded the corner.
There is only one kind of person that truly, deeply hates Abba.
The kind of person that hates life itself.
