From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   People with the “antisocial personality disorder,” also known as   
   “sociopaths,” are known to be experts at manipulation. I have a good idea   
   as to why that is.   
      
   These people do not have what is thought of as regular human emotions. If you   
   do not have regular human emotions, then you will have to use your mind to   
   figure out what everyone else takes for granted. And that will give you   
   profound insight into the    
   subject, that will then give you an ability to understand – and successfully   
   manipulate - other people.   
      
   There have been many people with mental illness – such as Nietzsche, Blake,   
   R.D. Laing, Dostoyevsky and Thomas Edison – who developed brilliant and   
   original insight. They were not like other people, but they understood other   
   people better than other    
   people understood themselves. Similarly I, as a non-native English speaker, am   
   frequently praised for my command of the English language. That is because I   
   had to learn English consciously rather than unconsciously. And if you learn   
   something consciously    
   rather than unconsciously, then you will understand it better than someone   
   whose learning has been unconscious.   
      
   I am not a sociopath; far from it. My score on the sociopath dimension of DSM   
   has been less than that of an average person, and a woman with education in   
   social work told me that I am “psychopath's jelly”: Someone naïve enough   
   to fall for their gag    
   and someone strange enough that they can blame me for it. But I take objection   
   to the idea that sociopaths are evil and can only be evil whatever they do –   
   as someone said on the Internet, they by definition cannot be good people.   
   That idea is    
   completely irrational. Anyone with a capacity for choice can choose to act   
   rightfully, even if they are sociopaths. Yes, many of these people use their   
   skills for wrong things. But they can also use them for ends that are   
   rightful, and there are many    
   sociopaths who become CEOs, surgeons, CIA agents and other highly contributing   
   citizens.   
      
   Indeed I posit that many of these people, if they make an effort to choose to   
   act rightfully, will not only be good people but be better people than people   
   who are good-natured. There were many people in the Bible who started out as   
   scoundrels but then    
   came to God and became not only good but effective preachers of good. There   
   are many alcoholics who join AA and learn in AA good values and moral   
   character, and any number of them develop a better character than many   
   non-alcoholics. The man who wrote “   
   Amazing Grace” started out as a slave ship owner; then he educated a man in   
   England who became a parliamentarian and ended England's use of slaves. If you   
   have come from Point A to Point B, then you will understand what it means to   
   be at Point B than    
   someone who's always been there. A person who started out as bad and then   
   became good will understand what it means to be good better than someone who's   
   always been good.   
      
   In short, a person who has to learn something consciously will understand it   
   better than someone whose learning has been unconscious. A person who does not   
   have regular human emotions will develop a keener understanding of people than   
   would a normal    
   person, and this will allow him to either manipulate people for selfish ends   
   or to understand people enough to do rightful and meaningful things. If   
   someone is a sociopath, the correct solution is to give him a functional   
   ethical structure. Then he will    
   use what is in many cases extraordinary home-bred knowledge for ends that are   
   rightful, and he could become not only a good person but also a major   
   contributor to the world.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)