Editor’s note: A reader who identified himself as a sociopath recently posted this comment on the Lovefraud Blog, and sent it to me in an email. I am posting this piece because it provides a good description of how sociopaths view themselves, and explains why they are quite comfortable taking advantage of the rest of us. Be sure to read the question I asked him, and his response, at the end.
We are uniquely gifted
“Sociopath” is a misleading word: it implies a disorder, something wrong and unnatural with the person, and this couldn’t be further from the truth. We, the people you refer to as sociopaths, have nothing wrong with us. We are instead, the uniquely gifted. Our gifts have been mischaracterized and maligned and it’s time someone set the record straight.
What the experts call superficial charm, I call having a natural ability to win friends and influence people. What experts call manipulative and conning, I call an affinity for persuasion based upon an innate ability to pinpoint others personality strengths and weaknesses. What the experts decry as a lack of compassion, I call pragmatism and clarity. What experts call a “problem with authority”, I call embracing personal power and celebrating the independent spirit. What experts call “delusions of grandeur”, I call self confidence and optimism. What experts call “shallow emotional affect,” I call freedom from the tyranny of irrational emotions. And finally, while the experts say that guiltlessness is a disorder (because it is the lack of guilt that separates the sociopath, psychopath and Machiavellian from the general population), I say it is the enhanced ability to do the things that build civilizations and keep societies going, the very things that the guilt afflicted shy away from. It is no coincidence that our lack of guilt so often comes with abnormally high intelligence and charisma.
We are born to lead and many of our traits support this conclusion. We are born knowing this and the rest of you know it when you see us. It is these very traits that make us necessary for the survival and success of the human species, especially since the dawn of civilization. It’s why you elect us, follow us, and often give your very lives by our command. Though we are found disproportionally in prisons we are found with even greater frequency in your governments, your corporations, your military. Who else but someone devoid of conscience could order thousands of soldiers to die, regardless of how noble the cause? Who can fire hundreds of workers to save a company from bankruptcy and then sleep peacefully that night? Who can so elegantly tell the lies that must be told, to protect the very people to whom the lies are told? It takes one of us to make those calls, the calls that the rest of humanity cannot make.
And yet a distressing number of us become the very thing you fear us all to be; criminals and abusers. This creates a cycle of ignorance, as all the “sociopaths” identified by the news are killers or wife-beaters, and so we identify this collection of gifts as evil, as pathological, and thus those of us in our proper roles feel the need to disguise ourselves for fear of being labeled evil. A similar cycle of ignorance has kept homosexuals oppressed for decades; homosexuality has been associated with child molesters and perverts, drug use and disease, and it was called “evil” for this.
We are not evil; you simply do not recognize the “good” ones as the same phenomena. Google “sociopath” and all you find are ways to recover from contact with a sociopath, information advising you to run from relationships with sociopaths, and misinformation that will claim that “sociopaths cannot feel love” or that we “cannot think of others as human beings” or that we are “parasitic”.
It is very distressing to discover, for a child who has always known that he was different, that he is a monster… that he is doomed to live a loveless life and become a criminal, that he will never be able to hold a job or raise a family. Indeed, one must wonder how often do one of us accepts the mischaracterization of our abilities and instincts as things to be repressed and rejected due to ignorance? How often do the young among our frequently demonized minority discover what he is, buys into the paranoid misinformation and simply does what he is expected to do, withholding from society the very qualities it needs and secretly wants to maintain itself and imprisoning himself in a state of confusion and needless pain as a result?
What is the so called sociopath? A sociopath is one of your potential leaders, labeled by the fearful and unreasoning masses as something sick and evil. “Sociopath” is a negative label which only serves to further alienate people who simply need to be allowed to embrace their gifts. Getting rid of this misleading term should be the first step towards fully understanding who we are and the role we play in this world. We are not the embodiment of a pathology. On the contrary; we are instead the uniquely gifted.
Editor’s note: I sent the author this question: “How do you justify lying and deception?” His reply:
Justify? Did you forget the “no guilt, no remorse” part already? We have no need to justify the lying, as we don’t see anything inherently wrong with it. Deception is merely a means to an end. Nor is it necessarily malevolent. We simply act in our own self-interest. We know what we want and the easiest way to get it. It’s a gift.
Dupey, I’m sorry you chose to break NC again, but I have no words for you that you don’t already know. I have no wisdom for you that you haven’t cast aside.
When someone takes a hammer and keeps hitting themselves in the thumb and then crying because their thumb hurts, what can I say? Don’t do that again? Don’t do that again?
Ask yourself why you are not learning from your experiences, though you keep saying “this time I learned.” “THIS TIME I LEARNED?”
Thanks, Ox, perhaps I will find those answers sooner or later.
This has been the most devastating experience of my life!!!!!!
I appreciate your thoughtfulness and understanding.
You have a nice day too; okay?
Dupey
Dupey ~ Please don’t do this to yourself anymore. Remember, you have to gain strength for that trip to see your daughter. I just know that can happen and that is all that is important, not that jerk face freak show.
Love
Thank you (((MiLo))) for your thoughtfulness and understanding. I have switched counselors and actually have one who was married to one of these things…
I feel confident in this therapists hands.
This has been like the MOST traumatic time of my entire life and I have seen a lot. Trust me.
Nothing ever changes.
I went back, over and over, to see if ‘life’s lessons’ have taught anything and no, they haven’t; it has only gotten colder and uglier. Sooner or later, I will get the point that I have just lost my best friend.
Love back xxoo
FAIL.
Oh, poor baby. You were DISTRESSED as a child?
Poor widdle sociopath. Yes, there IS something wrong with you. You’re not like the rest of us. You are damaged. Even more, you are UNWANTED. Oh well! Poor you! Sorry you felt “distressed”. Maybe it’s because you suck. Maybe it’s because you’re unnecessary.
You’re not good enough for us. We don’t want you here. And we’re the majority.
Saying that all sociopaths aren’t evil is like saying religion isn’t evil because some religions help the poor. Whatever. Evil is evil. Don’t be fooled by outliers or confused by exceptions. The majority of sociopaths do nothing but ruin lives.
Once you set up the construct of a society that includes sociopaths, nothing good can come of it. There is no reason that sociopaths need to exist. They give NOTHING to this world.
You are our leaders? Hey, guess what? If you didn’t exist, we’d have empaths as leaders. What you are implying is not that you are needed but that you are IN THE WAY. Your logic is faulty. Don’t confuse the fact that you lied your way to the top with some fucked up ideal that we WANT you there. You just happen to be there. Because you lied.
Get it?
The rest of us get where we want in life by being TALENTED. You have to lie. If you could feel, you’d know how pathetic you are.
Tricking people into loving you does not mean you are loved. It means you are empty inside.
People like me. In fact, people LOVE me. Naturally. They like who I am. Because I’m awesome. And artistic and funny and, well, you know. You watch me. You watch and you want. You crave what I have.
In order to get people to like you, you have to study me and pretend to be me.
You have to act. I am just AM. You have to pretend. I just wake up and go.
You only wish you could be me. You take my qualities and emulate them. Because you’re nothing. You’re a poser.
You’re nothing without me.
And yet you claim that I need YOU?
People without empathy are not wanted here on this earth. Needed? It’s not important as to whether or not you are needed. You are not wanted. And guess what? There are more empaths than sociopaths. If there was a war, you’d lose.
In my world, there is a war.
Bottom line: if I could push a button that would kill every sociopath, I would.
And no, I wouldn’t feel any guilt. But that’s not because I don’t have the capacity to feel guilt. I’m an empath. I could love you if I wanted to.
You CAN’T love. I can. I simply CHOOSE not to love you.
You’re pathetic. The fact that you had to write this letter defending yourself shows how much you hate yourself inside.
You know there’s something wrong with you. You’ll never be like the rest of us. That’s why you write bullshit like this. To try to justify what it feels like to be a sociopath.
Sorry you felt distressed. Maybe it’s because you have the equivalent of brain AIDS.
Fuck off. Die. Etc.
K
Bravo robinhood! Bravo! Bravo! I couldnt have said it better myself. My EXACT sentiments! They need to be wiped off the face of the earth but it is not easy. Come on, must give them credits for their high intelligent. The best weapon against them is to IGNORE them, dont hate them, dont love them, just spit them out your mouth like a sputum. Narcissist main strength is being incognito so that they can learn and feed on dummies like us. But now they are out in the open, I think this is the beginning of their demise. Once bitten twice shy, our shields are now up and now is the time to fight back.
Convenient for this person to change definitions of words to suit themselves while thinking they are fooling others! Let us substitute “sociopath” with another word and see how it reads with no other words changed:
“Pedophile”it implies a disorder, something wrong and unnatural with the person, and this couldn’t be further from the truth. We, the people you refer to as pedophiles, have nothing wrong with us. We are instead, the uniquely gifted. Our gifts have been mischaracterized and maligned and it’s time someone set the record straight…
Now I am sure a pedophile can justify their deplorable deeds but only to themselves. Perhaps something like “little boys and girls need love too”. As a well-known Dr. might say “That dog don’t hunt”.
Sociopaths survive simply because we let them, we help them, we gave the beneifit of doubt and ultimately because homocide is illegal. It is that simple. Liars and thieves are liars and thieves not story tellers and gifted borrowers.
There is a headstone on the grave of an American figure who lived during what is called the “Wild West”. His epitaph reads simply: He Never Killed A Man Who Didn’t Need Killing”.
Chew on that a while sociopath. And stay out of my way as well, at my age a life sentence is not that long.
I would like to see the world 20 or 30 years from now. I’m convinced at this point that our acceptable “normal” will be far different from what it is today and what it has been in the past.
Why? Because of the Internet and technology.
Prior to our current rapid exchange of information and open laws and policies, most people were subject to whatever the favored few told them. The courts, governments, religion, education, and commerce were dominated by males who legally or otherwise regarded the majority of humanity as chattel. Most people did not have a voice let alone any rights. Most people have been at the mercy of a favored few.
That thinking began to crumble centuries ago because most people are not sociopaths. That’s why we’ve had revolutions, the elimination of slavery, the creation of labor unions, and laws pertaining to women, children, and privacy.
Technology has simply thrown these changes into ultra-high speed. It has supported people overthrowing dictators, called politicians on the carpet, and exposed all sorts of financial misdeeds, sexual misconduct, coverups, exploitation, and indifference. People are informed, talking, and continue to educate themselves. Even this website is part of the positive changes.
Most people want lives that are fair for everyone and are willing to support what it take to achieve that. Unfortunately, we still have a ways to go because the legacy of the favored few has left many waiting for “sombody” to do something about what’s wrong.
That passivity is deeply ingrained in our culture because not only we have been told that the powers-that-be know better, there has been precious little we could do to challenge that power.
The protection that little or no information readily available to the masses has afforded these people is gone. Technology and the Internet have revealed that these powers don’t care about majority, that the spin is just that – empty words masking activities that are destroying the lives of many, and that for a certain few it has rather been about “what’s in it for me” and their egos.
We cannot continue to live quiet lives waiting for somebody else to better our situations. Many people have yet to realize that the power lies with them, not an unidentified “somebody” else. We’re no longer sending representatives off on horseback to deal with entities far removed for our communities to hash out issues that may or may not eventually impact our lives. We have laws and incidents that change our world overnight.
We need to switch from believing somebody else will take care of things to realizing how much we need to be involved. That will happen in time. We have lost so much already. People rally because they need to survive. Politicians are already running scared.
Even as soon as 100 years from now, I suspect that historians will regard this period (post WWII to 2020) as when sociopathic thinking had a grip on society. This period will be one that historians and sociologists will study as a pivotal point in social evolution.
Despite anyone claiming that we “need” sociopaths to lead us, that war must happen etc., those things are not what most people want. If anything, our current time period will crystalize into an example of how bad things can get when sociopathic behavior goes unchecked.
Ultimately, sociopathic leadership will not survive because it isn’t the only way of doing things, it’s an aberration not a gift, and most find that behavior contrary to the good of all.
G1S unfortunately, most of the world still lives under the despotic rule of the “favored few” or the “ultimate one” (think North Korea) and the middle east is under the religious zealots who still convict raped women of being whores, and allow the noses and ears of young women to be cut off if they try to escape the essential slavery of their husband’s families.
I wish I could say I think you are right but I dont, because the psychopaths in many countries still have the ULTIMATE rule and the population is hoodwinked. Unfortunately I think the Arab Spring is going to bring on more rule by the zealots and more persecution of women. In countries where it is legal to beat your wife, I don’t have a lot of hope for any changes soon (100 years) China is changing some but it has a LONG way to go.
Out right financial slavery and sexual slavery is still rampant in India and many p arts of Africa. Anywhere you have utter poverty and food hunger you have slavery of one form or another. Usually “illegal” but not enforced or prosecuted.
We here in the US and other “westernized” cultures have come a long way, but sometimes our “tolerance” and “inclusion” is used against us (read: 9/11)
Unfortunately there will never be a dearth of psychopaths, but maybe we can educate some of the people to spot them some of the time (Forgive me Mr. Lincoln!)
G1S,
I agree, there will be a huge change in the next few decades. We are starting to come to terms with what “culture” is and how we can dramatically alter it by modeling the behavior we want others to follow.
Spaths have no values. There are two things they want: wealth and a good-looking spouse to show off- (oh and the attention they get by having those 2 things). That’s only because they know that other people value these things. These are not complicated values and they can understand them. Besides, these things are splattered as “values” in all the advertising, which tells us what we should desire.
The way to change the world is to change what we value. The REAL sheep are the spaths. They look to us to figure out what to want, then they try to take it from us. When our values are “not of this world”, it will leave them totally confused.