Reddit mentions of Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight

Avoidance of responsibility is a primary characteristic of psychopathy. He ticks off all the other checkmarks, too. Only libel laws are protecting his ass from being called a psychopath openly. Educate yourselves about psychopaths -- I recommend these books I have read to understand my own lifelong contact with psychopaths, starting with my mother:
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work
Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
The Inner World of the Psychopath: A definitive primer on the psychopathic personality

He is commonly called a narcissist, but here's a handy rule of thumb. Not all narcissists are psychopaths, but all psychopaths are narcissistic. It's easy to understand why -- they don't see humans as humans, only objects to be manipulated for fun and profit. They, themselves, are the only conscious being, so nothing else matters. Their brains aren't wired to understand we have minds and memories, which is why they lie constantly to achieve their immediate needs. Strangely, the inability to experience emotions (and that includes fear, which is why Trump seems to never give a fuck about consequences) comes with no sense of past or future. There is only the "now."

1% of the population are psychopaths. You know more than one. Some say it's an evolutionary adaptation that exploits humans with emotions and morals, and that they are "intraspecies predators." There are professions that rely on psychopathic behavior, and you can draw your own opinions on them:
The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success

It is also commonly said that psychopaths are experts are reading people. This is false (because, to them, there is nothing to read). They are simply experts, from lifelong experience and practice, at putting people into situations with predictable reactions. For example, Trump likes to insult people because he knows it distracts them and takes them off their game as they try to defend themselves. Psychopaths like to do their manipulating in the background and behind peoples' backs (and in Trump's case, behind NDAs and hush money), thus Trump's biggest problem -- he's the world's most watched person and nothing goes unnoticed, so his previous tactics aren't working. He is thrashing more and more as he gets more desperate to deceive. He is not losing his mind or getting senile. He's a psychopath who can't understand why his old tricks are no longer working.

His apparent "humanness" is a practiced façade, as is true for all psychopaths. They learn, starting in childhood, how to fit in. Some learn how better than others. Trump is good enough at it to fool a large number of voters.
BTW, there's nothing saying a psychopath can't also be dumb as a brick or illiterate.

Apologies in advance for the wall of text here, but I think it's important.

The better question is why. Why is it that a significant portion of our population is hell-bent on enslaving the rest? What makes them different, how can we spot them and what can we do about it?

Any other layers that may or may not rule above these people (aliens, demons, whatever) are secondary in our initial quest to identify the first layer - the human layer. So this is our first job: to identify the human parasites. So, who are they? They are psychopaths, sociopaths or people with what is called Antisocial Personality Disorder. IMO, they are interchangeable. So let’s just call them psychopaths and get on with the next task at hand.

How do we identify them? You will not find the answers in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Why? Because this entire system was built by psychopaths and everyone at the very top of every important organization is one of them and they aren’t exactly going to show you their hand now are they? Okay, so what next? Other books, for a start. There are books written by psychopaths, themselves, (anonymously of course) to “explain” their disorder to the world - partly, because they enjoy it, and partly because they hope to earn sympathy so that when the gig is finally up, or when they are finally caught being exactly who they are, they can point to their sympathetic tale. This is one of those books: https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Sociopath-Spent-Hiding-Plain/dp/0307956652

Will it be the whole 100% truth? No, but a picture will start to emerge.

The frightening truth is that people with this disorder lack empathy, compassion, guilt and a conscience. They don’t feel love for other people and the don’t feel love FROM other people. And they are, quite frankly, everywhere. Not all of them break all of the rules, but all of them break some of the rules some of the time. They are doctors, lawyers, bankers, policemen/women, teachers, principals, boy scout leaders, church leaders and so on. Most non-disordered people wouldn’t even recognize them in their own immediate family or friend groups. They may recognize aspects, such as narcissism (and not all narcissists are necessarily psychopaths, but I think that’s splitting hairs if said narcissists lack empathy, compassion, guilt and a conscience.) You get my drift.

Another frightening truth is that it takes most psychiatrists decades to even realize they are dealing with a psychopathic patient. Many psychiatrists don’t even believe it exists outside of the Hollywood serial killer version, which should tell you something about their training and how the psychopaths rule that field as well, and hide in the shadows.

In closing, we haven’t even gotten to the “identify” phase, which is what we all should be focusing on. I don’t know how to not turn this into a witch hunt, except to say that if you do identify them, the only safe thing to do at this time is to cease communication with them and avoid them as much as possible. Until we have a game plan that’s all we really can do. So, we should be sharing our stories on anonymous forums and boards with other people who have direct experience with it. This is what we can do now. In a few decades, we may have a better handle on it and may be able to intervene during early childhood and potentially correct the faulty wiring. Until then, be safe, be aware, and learn more.

It's not really that far out there. Ever heard of this person?

https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Sociopath-Spent-Hiding-Plain/dp/0307956652

Hm, could it be possible your personality would fall somewhere on the psychopath/sociopath spectrum?

I don't know that much about this topic, but as I understand it, one of the hallmarks is not feeling any (or much) empathy for others.

This book is written by a woman sociopath who is described as "a diagnosed sociopath and the founder of SociopathWorld. She is not a killer. Quite the contrary, she is an accomplished attorney and law professor who writes regularly for major law journals, donates 10 percent of her income to charity, and teaches Sunday school."



https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Sociopath-Spent-Hiding-Plain/dp/0307956652

Yeah, she wrote a book. It was surreal to read. http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Sociopath-Spent-Hiding-Plain/dp/0307956652

https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Sociopath-Spent-Hiding-Plain/dp/0307956652

> Imagine that you are so wealthy and powerful that you can have anything you want, almost at the moment you want it.

Yes, what I would do is fuck several voluptuous Colombian hookers with really nice tits and asses. Guess what? They will be over 18 (but younger than 25 :) ). No amount of wealth and power is going to make me get aroused by a small child.

I like wide feminine hips and good size melons.

I think you are correlating it wrong. These people are rich because either they rose up or their ancestors did. Either way, they are fucking smart and fucking psychopathic. They feel no empathy and no fear. If they did not have these traits, they would not be where they are now.

There are plenty of writer's resources out there written by inmates and sociopaths and psychopaths and records of serial killers and just fascinating cases. You can find plenty of books on this by just checking the "social science" or "mental health" section of a bookstore.
For instance, I'm reading a book called "Confessions of a Sociopath". It's enlightening.

Yes, I agree with that.

My own view is shaped largely on introspection on my own recognition that I often fail to be motivated to act according to what I know is the right thing to thing to do, as well as autobiographical accounts of the lives of sociopaths and their descriptions of what kind of deliberation is happening inside their heads when they perform actions many of us find abhorrent.

I do recognize this is all contentious and there aren't clear answers in the internalism/externalism debate, but I responded the way I did given that your post was a bit ambiguous in describing sociopaths, since it made it sound like sociopaths don't really know right from wrong. Philosophically that may be right, but in the wider context of real world experience they do at least seem to have knowledge of right and wrong (even if we're using those terms in the "inverted commas" sense).

I'm still weary of the analogy though. If you're an externalist about these things then the sociopath:

-Possesses moral knowledge
-Fails to be motivated to act in accordance to that knowledge.

In the Aesthetic realm there are two possibilities:

-Possesses aesthetic knowledge (i.e. "I know this is a good beer")
-Fails to derive pleasure from it regardless.

Or

-Lacks aesthetic knowledge
-Does not derive pleasure from the object as a result.

I think the distinction between motivation and the ability to derive pleasure are big enough to make analogies like these a bit unhelpful.

But I'm being nitpicky and we probably don't disagree on much.