Perspective

People don't understand how powerful their minds are. Our world is exactly as we want to see it, as we have trained ourselves or allowed ourselves to see it. And yet, it is very difficult for most people to be open minded. It reminds me of the story of one of the very earliest films from the Lumière brothers. From Wikipedia:

L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (translated from French into English as The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station) is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Auguste and Louis Lumière.

This 50-second silent film shows the entry of a train pulled by a steam locomotive into a train station in the French coastal town of La Ciotat. Like most of the early Lumière films, L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat consists of a single, unedited view illustrating an aspect of everyday life. There is no apparent intentional camera movement, and the film consist of one continuous real-time shot.

The film is associated with an urban legend well-known in the world of cinema. The story goes that when the film was first shown, the audience was so overwhelmed by the moving image of a life-sized train coming directly at them that people screamed and ran to the back of the room. Hellmuth Karasek in the German magazine Der Spiegel wrote that the film "had a particularly lasting impact; yes, it caused fear, terror, even panic." However, some have doubted the veracity of this incident such as film scholar and historian Martin Loiperdinger in his essay, "Lumiere's Arrival of the Train: Cinema's Founding Myth". Whether or not it actually happened, the film undoubtedly astonished people in the audience who were unaccustomed to the amazingly realistic illusions created by moving pictures. The Lumière brothers clearly knew that the effect would be dramatic if they placed the camera on the platform very close to the arriving train.

What does this have to do with sociopathy? A lot maybe, or not a lot, but sociopaths seem unusually skilled at geting out of their own perspectives and see things from different angles. They also seem better than most at holding multiple perspectives at the same time. Has anyone noticed this? Sociopaths may have their own perspectives, perhaps one in which they are the best in the world and a more realistic perspective that allows them to function in real life aware of their potential weaknesses, and be able to live in both at once. I actually think the ability to shift perspectives is what makes them such skillful manipulators--they can see the perspectives of the people they regularly associate with and into their head to predict their every thought and movement. Sociopaths understand better than most that perception is everything.