Chapter Ten
See Clearly
We found ourselves so far removed from our old lives; we were finally able to detach ourselves from our previous way of hectic, big city life. We had moved well away from the criminal activity of our tropical island's main town to a magnificent resort styled bungalow we called home. The huge white, purpose built house was unfurnished and we set about making basic furniture and beds from the plywood packing crates supplied on our arrival.
We learned to live a minimalist lifestyle and found it incredibly liberating and refreshing, it seemed as though we had removed so much physical and emotional clutter from our lives. We slowly but surely detached ourselves from materialism and entered a new and exciting phase of our lives. With very few personal possessions or pieces of furniture, cleaning was a joy, rooms were easy to keep clean and we knew the island natives would be extremely disappointed if they robbed us, as we now had very little of value for them to steal. The fact we had little of value, meant that we were well down the list of desirable westerners to rob.
The central town was a considerable distance from us, on an unsealed, limestone road that literally shook our car to pieces. There were times the road degenerated into chaos and natives could walk faster than we could drive. It was like riding a raging, bucking bull as our four-wheel drive vehicle brutally lurched from one huge crater in the road to the next. The deep holes were so close together there was no way to avoid them and we even tried driving through the small jungle clearings to avoid the pummelling. The only competent grader driver on the island was on holidays in another country for three months and with the help of continual tropical downpours, the road collapsed into a pock marked lunar landscape. My wife suffered debilitating migraine headaches from the continual pounding and spent many agonising days in bed trying to recover.
When we finally drove into our house, it was like driving into a magnificent botanical garden. Huge indigenous trees complimented manicured lawns and gardens that supported a large population of bird life. The trees were so large and lush, we felt like tiny insects in comparison and the heavenly scent from some of their sumptuous flowers was intoxicating. The gardens sprawled luxuriously over several acres towards the sea and there was a bewildering array of brightly flowing plants and leaves of varied textures and colours.
A crushed coral and limestone path led from the spacious tiled patio to a gigantic outdoor eating area and then continued winding its way to the warm, clear and inviting waters of the ocean to the west of the house. The dazzlingly white path was in sharp contrast to the lush green lawn and overhanging trees that formed a corridor through the garden. Huge Casuarina pines grew close to the ocean edge and their drooping, dark green needles hung casually from their reddish brown branches. Dappled light danced on the bright coral path and the huge jungle foliage shone the most magnificent, translucent green we had ever seen. A carefully constructed free-standing, limestone fence, roughly one metre high with gaps in the construction to allow the local villagers easy access to one another and their favourite fishing areas, marked the boundary of the estate.
The most noticeable difference between our former lives and our life in the jungle was the lack of noise. There was just the natural ambience of surf brushing against the rocks, birds calling to each other, villagers laughing and talking and the wind gently rustling the massive leaves of the trees and bushes. The banana palms, with leaves sounding like sheets of thick plastic, would rattle chaotically if the breeze became a little more enthusiastic. It was quiet; in the morning, we could hear the island roosters crowing for kilometres and the wonderful sound of small birds as they woke for their daily rituals. On a still night, we could hear nothing at all and we slept like the dead.
Unlike the cities we were used to living in, there was no continual low frequency rumbling, no sounds of vehicle engines blasting into our eardrums and keeping us on edge and distracted for most of the day and night. The beautiful silence allowed us to relax and actually think about our environment, our society and us. The lack of continual loud noise was like an elixir for the soul that put us back in harmony with our environment and allowed us to explore our own humanity. We had forgotten the wonder of silence since leaving the isolated countryside of our youth. We had forgotten our own incredible inner spirituality and humaneness. We had forgotten how to look from the inside out. We had forgotten the simple wonder of life. We were ’grounded’ by the simplicity of the jungle reality around us.
We gained insight into our current society, our old society and the people around us. On our own island, there were intriguing riddles that we found solutions for, by being away from distractions. As an example, just after we arrived in paradise, Australia arrested an island diplomat en route to a foreign destination in the Brisbane airport. The entire diplomatic party, including the then Prime Minister, unceremoniously found themselves on Australian soil, taken aside and treated appallingly by the Australian Federal Police. The island Prime Minister limped back home and promptly booted out the Australian Federal Police, effectively severing diplomatic relations with Australia. I doubt if this got a big mention in the Australian press, but it was a penultimate moment in Asian politics as it allowed Asian government’s unrestricted access to yet another Pacific island.
The move by Australia to arrest an island official in an Australian airport was nearly as diabolical as the moment Australia sold its gold reserves and exacerbated the collapse of some Asian economies in the '90's. After the removal of the Australian Federal Police, Asia and Indonesia in particular, quickly flooded the Prime Minister's government with cash, farm machinery and vehicles and I would imagine his private company and bank balance benefited significantly as well.
Asian governments embarked on numerous civic projects including a brand new, state of the art Convention Centre. The government had just spent millions on a huge new convention complex at a beautiful resort and we wondered why they needed another convention centre. After all, who in the islands would be able to raise enough cash or interest to attend conventions? Everything was ticking along beautifully and Prime Minister settled back into his routine of kicking every ex-pat in the guts with outrageous new legislation.
Then we had an election, the economy collapsed completely as millions of dollars were removed from circulation by villagers attempting to ensure political success of their preferred candidates. Government hopefuls stood at polling booths with handfuls of cash in an attempt to sway voters. Ultimately, the old Prime Minister was re-instated, but shortly after the election, a bloodless coup saw a new contender installed as Prime Minister.
Everything returned to tropical bliss and Australian diplomats managed to grovel back with promises of major infrastructure upgrades to the roads. This assurance quickly became another broken promise by a change in Australian government. The new Island Prime Minister stopped the ridiculous new convention centre project and promised ex-pats relief from the crippling legislation of the former Prime Minister. Everybody settled back to enjoy the new golden era of politics on the Island.
At first, we noticed a trickle of Asian businesses starting up in in the town, but soon a flood of Asian projects engulfed us, including never before seen large malls and other new shopping precincts. There were now numerous new businesses springing up in our tiny town and we wondered who was going to buy products from the new stores, considering the economy of the islands was in ruins, tourism had stalled and the natives had less than no money to spend. Restrictive and expensive licensing hobbled us from starting new businesses or even adding new products to our existing businesses.
The new government attempted to introduce legislation ensuring every new business in the islands required 51% citizen or native ownership, effectively crippling investment in the area by Europeans. We were clouted from every direction by Asian infrastructure and suddenly work started on the cancelled convention centre project once again. The newly installed Prime Minister mumbled something about ‘being tied’ to the previous contract, but the convention centre was the key to discovering the covertly corrupt story. We still wondered who would want to go to conventions in our small town or how the Asians were able to start new businesses and we couldn't. We thought the Asians must have been marrying poor unfortunate island women to gain citizenship. Little did we know?
The new Prime Minister stopped an existing contract to upgrade the local airport and runway with very reasonable repayment terms (Free), with a new Singapore based contract that would effectively cripple the country for decades with massive debt. Not only was the main airport to be upgraded, but also every airport in the island chain would be upgraded; fascinating, we thought. The new airport upgrades would allow large commercial aircraft direct access from the Asian mainland. Now the pieces were starting to fit together. The Asians set the wheels in motion for new manufacturing projects for the area and the newly installed Prime Minister spent more time in Asia than he did in his own country.
The island press was still able to report political news stories and the New Zealand press in particular, was excellent at fossicking gems of truth from the slagheap of untruths supplied by the island government. They discovered a scheme in Hong Kong, set up by the island government that allowed Asians to buy citizenship for a fraction over US $3,000.
Once you become a citizen in the island nation, none of the crippling business restrictions applies and you are free to build new businesses, trade with total freedom and vote in island elections. As ex-pats, we had to reside in the islands for ten years before we could apply for citizenship. The New Zealand press caught the government beautifully and within two weeks, the island government whipped in a new constitution that allowed anyone to buy citizenship in their country. The difference was, the Asians still paid US $3,000 and all other nationalities would have to pay nearly US $500,000 per person and only issued with a seven-year semi citizenship and all the crippling business rules still applied.
We discovered the Asian government paid for the construction of new business premises on the island for their citizens and supplied stock, free of charge for one year. If the owner of a new store was unable to make a set amount of turnover within twelve months, they were replaced with a new proprietor. How's that for a level playing field? When we first noticed the increase in Asian businesses, we were puzzled why the proprietors were living in the native villages with few facilities. We later realised, that unlike the early Asian businesspeople in the area, the new proprietors never owned their businesses. They were working under their old communist model and state supplied materials effectively removed competition and non-Asian people from the area.
Now it all started to make sense. We discovered the new Prime Minister, was an Asian stooge, with a long history of Asian association. He hated us ex-pats vigorously and publicly poured shame on all Australians for their treatment of the island natives in the late nineteenth century servile trade. During this period, ‘Blackbirders’ ripped natives from their pristine, tropical paradise and forced them to work in the cane fields of north Queensland, Australia and according to the Prime Minister, that mistreatment in the 1800’s was entirely our fault.
We suspect that in a cleverly orchestrated plot, the Asians had tipped off the Australian Federal Police about the wanted diplomat passing through Australia and set the whole Asian takeover of the island in motion. With Australia out of the way and their political stooge waiting in the wings, the Asians were free to move in. Now the convention centre and the new shops made sense. The airport upgrade would allow Asia direct flights to the islands. Hey! Now they could have conventions in paradise and trek through the hundreds of new Asian shops and malls ready to cater for them in their own language! Moreover, they could launder their liberal amounts of dirty money in the casinos while they were there. Well done Australia! To add insult to injury, the new multimillion-dollar convention centre reared out of the ground next to the Australian embassy.
All this would be of no interest whatsoever to people in Australia, who have forgotten the strategic importance of the Pacific Islands in World War II. Our island nation had some of the best deep-water harbours in the world and a million American troops used the islands during the war for that very reason. The islands are still a strategic military position, a fact that Asia have surely factored in to their quest for island acquisitions. With few distractions, we were able to fathom out many other island, global and personal mysteries that had plagued us for years.
We had no television, no radio, no daily newspaper and only an arthritic Internet connection that refused to work when it rained (which was frequently). As we weaned ourselves from the propaganda vision medium, we realised that it was no co-incidence those in power used the word ‘program’ in relation to television. Television is the most successful social programming device ever created.
The peace and quiet of our jungle paradise provided solace from the distracting, frantic city existence we had just come from. Natives who had fled the violence of one of the nearby islands surrounded us and some of them were the gentlest, most caring humans I have ever met. We would often see Erik, the gardener, carrying his small daughter Caroline through the beautiful garden. The look of love and pride on his face is a look I have never seen from his western counterparts. Erik was a kind, strong and generous man, who brought us fruit regularly and shared his meagre reserves of water when our local water supply dried up. We were able to observe Erik's relatives as they laughed and lazed their way through the endless days of tropical beauty. The village women would bring their Tappa mats under the wide, protective trees near their village and groom each other. They would sleep soundly as their children quietly moved around the group, playing games with the village dogs, pet pigs and each other.
Once again, our friends who visited could never understand how the natives could spend their days lazing under a copious tree, apparently doing nothing, but the longer our friends stayed, the more they unwound and I'm sure it wouldn't have been long before they fully understood the beautifully relaxed lifestyle of the natives.
Naturally, the natives never did 'nothing,' they had their daily routines of crushing manioc, catching fish, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes and caring for children, but they did have an incredible amount of leisure time to enjoy themselves. Whenever we went to the main town on a Friday, we would always ask the native girls working in the shops what they were doing on the weekend and the answer was nearly always the same. “We are going to sleep.” They would say, and sure enough on Monday morning, they would tell us how they enjoyed their weekend snooze.
It was so very different from our old country, where people HAD to be doing something. Running here, running there, taking the children to friends and sporting events, fishing, playing golf, catching up with friends, going to movies, parties, mowing the lawns, renovating the house, shopping, catching up on household chores, watching television and never admit to actually stopping and doing nothing. They could never stop! It was as if some invisible force was pushing them, which is exactly what was happening. They could never be allowed to stop. They suffered transcendent dislocation that prevented them from connecting with their inner selves. The action of always having to do something, see something or listen to something prevented them from relaxing, listening to their authentic selves and considering the incongruity of their social structure. It seemed people in western society were becoming philosophical zombies, starring in a horror movie of their own making.
The natives' lives were very different from our own. Our western society’s indoctrination in the belief that money was the ultimate goal we should attain. Economic growth, jobs and fiscal policy was the never-ending headlines force fed to us through the media. The televised media deluged us with absurd graphs, charts and serious, authoritative individuals telling us how important money and monetary policy had become. This focus towered above all other social and environmental considerations. Money would buy us happiness. Money would find us the perfect partner. Money would get us the latest model car, a beautiful house and respect in the community. Money would solve our problems. Money, money, money. We would sacrifice our lives to the pursuit of money. We would prostitute our beliefs and our morals to the corporate gods that ruled us. We would join many of our friends and wear the yoke of debt in order to keep up with the Joneses. We would literally work ourselves to death and sacrifice our relationships in pursuit of money. Material possessions were the measure of success in our western society and dying as the person with the most assets and money in the bank was our ultimate goal. Materialism was the padding we used to shield ourselves from the cold, brutal, compassion crushing unreality of our social system.
The island natives we observed had little use for money; they had everything they needed for very happy, healthy lives. And they were happy. In all my life, I have never seen so many beautiful, laughing, happy people and children as I saw in the remote island villages. Even in the main town, I saw people dancing, singing and laughing happily in the streets. The remote village focus was on caring for family and sustenance, their day was for them to enjoy, from daylight to dark – day after day – year after year - century after century.
It was ironic to watch the tourists huffing and puffing hurriedly around the island in an attempt to soak up a few seconds of the idyllic island lifestyle the natives took for granted. The tourists had been saving their precious money, sometimes for years in an attempt to break free of slavery for a few days or weeks. Most of the tourists had no idea they were witnessing a different reality, no idea of a society poles apart, but equally as valid as their own and no idea their western life style held them tightly in a grip of debt-induced subjugation. It was no co-incidence travel agencies on the mainland used the word 'escape' in their advertising. If the western lifestyle and ‘freedom’ they upheld and were prepared to die for was so amazing, why did they need to escape?
For many, a trip to our island justified the tourist's belief in the superiority of their society and lifestyle based on material possessions, money, technology, centralised, corporate government and unsustainable consumerism. In contrast, we saw the natives needed none of this materialism, money or governmental interference to have wonderfully fulfilling and incredibly happy lives. When we returned to Australia on business, the people we talked to had no idea what we were saying when we described the island way of life and the illusion of money and centralised government. We may as well have been gibbering Swahili.
At last, we had time to ourselves to slide the pieces of the social jigsaw together. We accelerated our research into anti-social behaviour and discussed this with medical researchers and psychiatrists. The more we studied Psychopathology, psychopathic behaviour and conferred with professionals, the more the affliction fitted my mother in-law. My brother suffered emotional dislocation from childhood trauma and although he quickly aligned to Psychopathic behaviour, he was not a psychopath.
The Psychopath has been deliberately portrayed by the media as Hannibal Lecter type people in 'Silence Of The Lambs' and although many psychopaths have no hesitation in murdering you, chances are, you are already dealing with them in your day to day life and you don't even realise it. With a conservatively estimated 1% to 4% of the population (or up to one in every 25 people you have contact with) suffering from various levels of Anti-So cial Personality Disorder. There is a very real chance you are in a relationship with one, have had a relationship with one, have one in your immediate family, are employed by one, you have one in your street or you are one, yourself.
At first, we thought my mother in-law was suffering Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), a debilitating anti-social disorder in itself, but her homicidal tendencies, pathological lies, lack of conscience and disregard for society's rules meant she was suffering serious psychopathic traits. Every piece of research we studied, every psychologist we talked to, every test we compared her to, seemed to add to the conclusion my wife's mother may be a psychopath. I am going to use the word 'psychopath' even though I know this is a layman term for the Antisocial Personality Disorder(ASPD) as described by the APA and the World Health Organisation's, Dissocial Personality Disorder recommendations.
‘Psychopathy’ is deliberately not recognised as a category in the psychiatric DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual; partly because the concept of personality disorders is still being debated and so many of the symptoms coincide, such as narcissism, antisocial behaviour and lack of empathy. As you will discover later, there is another very important reason psychopathy is not officially recognised. There are varying degrees of anti-social behaviour and the studies of these conditions are beyond the scope of this document.
Some researchers have described ASPD/APD as the 'Dark Triad' whose traits consist of narcissistic and selfish actions, cunning or deceitful Machiavellian behaviour and psychopathic tendencies. For the purpose of this article, these people, particularly those known commonly as psychopaths, are the most evil, cunning and dangerous life forms on the planet.
So what is a Psychopath?
They are often -
1) Charming and generous.
2) Intelligent.
3) Confident and charismatic.
4) Impressive.
5) Inspiring.
6) Incredibly attractive.
7) Alert.
8) Able to tell great stories.
9) Love public speaking.
10) The 'life of the party.'
But, hang on! Haven't I been saying how dangerous these people are?
And that's the problem – these are the magnetic, hypnotic, superficially cultivated traits of a psychopath. That is why they are so difficult to discover at first. That is how they hide so invisibly in the society they manipulate. They use these deviously copied emotions during the 'interview.'
The interview is the process they use to find people on a first meeting to get what they want. It may be sex, power or money, but rest assured they are after something to benefit them – not benefit you or society. In the world of the psychopath, it's all take and no give. The interview is a series of rapid questions designed to discover vulnerabilities and status of a victim. Their human prey will naturally feel the psychopath is interested in them as a person from the attention they receive, with no idea they are being coldly analysed and assessed. The psychopath will use the information they obtain to create pseudo interest in a victim's hobbies or activities, provided the victim is of sufficient interest to their hidden agenda.
If you are their target, you are in danger – even mortal danger. They will use your emotions to play you like a fiddle. Your human feelings are the joystick they use in their game of control, mayhem and theft. If they are looking for sex, they will be the most appealing individual you could ever meet. They will turn on the charm, be attentive, shower you with gifts, treat you like royalty and sweep you off your feet. They make you feel special, tell you everything you want to hear, listen to everything you say, respond to every little whim, it all seems very wonderful and that's exactly the way the psychopath prepares their victim. I say victim, because there is no way an association with a psychopath is going to be beneficial to a feeling human being. You are simply a means to an end, disposable and a plaything to alleviate boredom and they may even murder you to relieve their boredom for a few moments.
Getting the picture yet?
Let me say it again. A psychopath/sociopath is the most dangerous and controlling life form on the planet! If you stay around long enough or survive long enough, the fictional caring mask of the psychopath will soon slip and you will see the real psychopath as -
1) Pathological Liars, capable of lying to a spouse, a jury, a whole nation.
2) Having grandiose self-importance seeing themselves as the centre of the universe; feeling “no one else is human, only I.”
3) Lacking guilt with no conscience.
4) Brutally callous.
5) Having absolutely no feelings or empathy for others.
6) Emotionally shallow with undeveloped childlike reactions to normal emotional intercourse.
7) Parasitic.
8) Sexually promiscuous.
9) Aggressive.
10) Irresponsible and inept.
11) Having poor money skills.
12) Failing to accept responsibility for their actions.
13) Impulsive.
14) Having no long term, realistic goals.
15) Manipulative.
16) Cunning and devious.
17) Having a history of juvenile delinquency.
18) Skilled at faking emotions, including love, sincerity, regret and bereavement.
19) Easily bored and needing constant stimulation.
20) Unable to maintain long term relationships.
21) An extreme desire for vengeance.
22) Constantly humiliating others physically, verbally, emotionally, psychologically or sexually.
23) Denigrating their own children or partner.
24) Abusive and will torture living creatures.
25) Underestimation of their own anger.
26) No sense of responsibility for their actions.
27) Contempt for those who “play by the rules.”