Another view (part 2)

(cont.)

Your story of the socipath woman who was persecuted by the Aspies really struck a chord. I was bemused by your confusion at why such a person would approach Aspies for help understanding neurotypicals. To me it's entirely reasonable and even brilliant: Her style was probably wrong, but she was groping in the dark. The thinking would be simple: "Neurotypicals don't understand me. I thought I understood neurotypicals but now I realize I don't and a lot of my life has been fucked up because I misunderstood shit. Here is a group that gets together and strategizes on how to deal with neurotypicals. They may be able to help me." That's not dumb dude, that's way fucking smart. Aspies and socios should be able to offer each other all sorts of insights, actually, as any two people looking at the same problem from different perspectives will often help each other. Both could help each other overcome where they are weak, and also identify where they are stronger and better than neurotypicals.

I suspect extremely sadistic sociopaths (i.e. deriving strong pleasure from inflicting suffering for one reason or another--enjoying the sounds of screaming and the sight of blood spurting and the feeling of power caused by cruelty) are probably dangerous to the point where they probably need to stay watched at all times. But otherwise, I begin to suspect that if more sociopaths "outed" themselves a whole hell of a lot of them could be made useful to society and have happier, more productive lives for themselves.

Why should you care if you're more helpful to neurotypicals? First so you don't have to hide; hiding may be fun sometimes but is probably exhausting much of the time. Also, because you can have a life you just plain enjoy more and which allows you to accomplish more of your goals in straightforward, no-bullshit fashion.

A cynical stereotype would be to say that we use you when killing and other nasty business needs doing, but that's ridiculous oversimplification; a person lacking empathy could do all sorts of positive things that aren't in the least bit destructive, and wherein lack of empathy has no more particular value than the inability to see the color red or a tendency to be easily sunburned; just not relevant. A socio who has fully concluded, "it is in my rational self-interest to help people in ways X, Y, and Z, and to not engage in A, B, and C" could be a tremendously productive in all sorts of fields where their sociopathy would be irrelevant. In other areas, it could be an outright asset in an endless number of subtle areas where your blunted or nonexistent empathic reponse would allow you to clinically analyze and recommend in areas where other people's emotions cloud their judgment. If I were a manager I'd probably want at least one of you on my team, and not necessarily for "dirty work." I don't need "dirty work," I need someone who thinks dispassionately and logically and can see shit other people can't. At minimum, you'd be the guy to tell me in a business negotiation, "Stop with the goody-goody reasoning with that guy. He doesn't care. You're just irritating him." Or better yet, "You don't know how to deal with this guy, I do. Just let me do it. I'll close the deal, watch."

If you are a sociopath, for whatever reason you have a blunted or nonexistent sense of empathy. Although this has multiple ramifications, in the end that's all it amounts to. It may amuse you to know that I discussed this with a very serious-minded Christian (Catholic) friend and he said (at first to my surprise but not now) that indeed, there's absolutely no reason a sociopath could be not just a good Christian but an outright Saint; his basic line was "emotions are overrated, it's actions that matter. It doesn't matter how you feel about it, it's what you DO that counts."