What for criticism?

Apart from the rumored "covetous sociopath," I have not found sociopaths to be critics as a rule. They don't adhere to social norms and so often don't have much purpose for upholding the status quo or enforcing rules against other people. I think that sociopaths can be a terrible blow to one's self esteem or ego. People often become aware of facets of their personality that they didn't realize existed. But again, it's not because the sociopath is trying to make them swallow the bitter pill of truth. The sociopath isn't truth police. If they appear that way in one context, perhaps they are the equivalent then of a corrupt cop who uses his position to advance his own interests. Full disclosure -- I don't like to be the subject of fault-finding. Is there some better way to help people develop into the best person they can be, if that were to be our goal? When a sociopath is trying to pull out the best you in the seduction phase, does he do it through criticism, even so-called honest criticism (could there be such a thing? perhaps theoretically, but rarely can someone put aside their own ego so far removed from the content of their speech that the criticism doesn't drip with the critics' personal issues rather than the reality of the situation). No, oddly enough, people don't respond well to criticism, perhaps apart from the short-lived effectiveness of the pick-up artist's "negs", which quickly cease to be effective and become instead annoyingly presumptuous and insulting. Especially from people who apparently feel the pain of others (empathy), I'm amazed at how tearing into people has become the sport and spectacle that it has.

People are down on the devoutly religious for a lot of things, but this is one reason that I am glad that most people have a belief in the soul, an idea that we are all connected, and a realization that none of these little problems matter in the broader scheme of things.  From an LDS/mormon church leader, since deceased, President Gordon B. Hinckley:

[T]here is a terrible ailment of pessimism in the land. It’s almost endemic. We’re constantly fed a steady and sour diet of character assassination, faultfinding, evil speaking of one another. 

The negative becomes the stuff of headlines and long broadsides that, in many cases, caricature the facts and distort the truth—at least the whole truth.

The snide remark, the sarcastic gibe, the cutting down of associates—these too often are the essence of our conversation. 

I’m asking that we look a little deeper for the good, that we still our voices of insult and sarcasm, that we more generously compliment virtue and effort.

I am not asking that all criticism be silent. Growth comes with correction. What I am suggesting and asking is that we turn from the negativism that so permeates our society and look for the remarkable good in the land and times in which we live, that we speak of one another’s virtues more than we speak of one another’s faults, that optimism replace pessimism.

When I was a boy, my father often said to us, “Cynics do not contribute, skeptics do not create, doubters do not achieve.”

Let me urge you to desist from making cutting remarks one to another. Rather, cultivate the art of complimenting, of strengthening, of encouraging. What wonders we can accomplish when others have faith in us. 

Look for the good and build on it. There is so much of the sweet and the decent and the good to build upon.

I do not suggest that you simply put on rosecolored glasses to make the world look rosy. I ask, rather, that you look above and beyond the negative, the critical, the cynical, the doubtful, to the positive.