Corruption

Sociopaths can be toxic, and not always in the good Britney Spears way.  From a reader:

The problem with living a life like mine is I can't have friends at all. Not what other people call friends. My girlfriend accused me of being a virus. She says everyone around me becomes corrupted. I thought about it. I look back on the relationships I have with people and they root back to a time when they were just flirting with the darkness. People get caught up in me sometimes. They start hanging out with me all the time. Soon they are wrapped into what I was doing. The longer I'm around them the more they accept that what I'm doing isn't really that bad. Soon I start taking things even further. Ill do things way over the line and act like toning it down is a favor. Really its making further steps into my purposes seem like a compromise. Around this point they come to me with a dependency. Its not hard for me to get them to now do what they originally thought was 'bad', as they now see it as not being a big deal. After all its business as usual.


I realize what she says is reality. I don't even do the manipulation on purpose it is second nature to me. I don't associate with people who are not useful for me. I see them as liabilities. Why would I open up to somebody with no lot in my life? Instead I associate with people who fit in my goals. Everytime I do, I find that I don't even need to ask them to do anything. They are only to eager to offer themselves.


Ironically, the greatest strength I have is peoples empathy. It is their empathy that allows them to see things from my point view. It allows them to label me into a grey area where normally they would have seen black and white. I do this by acting like its perfectly normal for me to do what I'm doing. Its another day at work. Busniness as usual. People don't question things when it becomes a daily ritual. It becomes normal.


Some call me a parasite. I wouldn't call what I do parasitical. I find peoples needs and I provide for them. In return I only ask for them.

My reply:

I'm interested in the corruptive effect you have on your associates. It's fine to use people (we all do), but I think sociopaths struggle with not letting that toxicity creep into all aspects of our lives, infecting all of our associates, family, and friends.

I think some of your associates may have what I want to refer to as "Tinman syndrome." In the original Frank Baum Wonderful Wizard of Oz series, Tinman used to be normal, human woodsman but was stripped of everything that once made him human and had it replaced with his current tin parts -- stronger in some ways, but more vulnerable in others (rust). Read about his origins here.

If you believe this analogy, then you are like Ku-Klip, the tinsmith that replaced his human parts with tin. Like Ku-Klip, you made them stronger but you forgot to give them hearts. They need to realize that although you believe that the world is terrible and most people in it, you still believe that things you do in this life make a difference. If you make it clear to your associates that you think what you do in this world has consequences, I think that could be a way to stem the spread of corruption.