I have just read a very interesting book. It's called The Sociopath Next Door. It, unsurprisingly, is a book about sociopaths and sociopathy. Sociopaths are people with completely nonexistent consciences, people who have absolutely no feelings of guilt or remorse, ever, and think that ever one else who does are idiots to be taken advantage of. About 1 in 25 people are this way. The book has ancedotes of the lives of a few different sociopaths, how they think, what they do. The two most interesting portions, for me, was when she described how to tell if someone is a sociopath, and why having a conscious is better in the long run. The author says that the surest way to tell if someone is a sociopath is they consistently, when being confronted for bad behavior, do, as she puts it, a "pity plee," meaning they act pathetic in an attempt to make you back off.
The author also makes a pretty convincing argument for why having a conscious is better. Quite simply, most sociopaths burn out from sheer boredom. They place absolutely no value in society, or other people. They neither want or need any friends, lovers, or any other meaningful relationship. Without that, there isn't much to live for, especially if you don't have enough talent or intelligence to be especially successful. The only possible goal is to improve your money, status, or personal well being at the expense of others, and this proves tiresome.
Thinking about it, I have known for certain two sociopathic people. At one point, a few years ago, my uncle was dating a woman called Becky. Becky had 2 children, a boy and a girl. It later turned out that both the mother and the son were sociopaths. Luckily, my uncle managed to extricate himself without undue trouble, but that was probably due more to chance than to anything else. The scary thing is I probably know a lot of other sociopaths, just as aquaintances, without knowing it. After all, they are 1 in 25 people.
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