Sociopath Community

I would appreciate that kind of abrupt honesty on a first date. I prefer efficiency over bullshit sappy sentiments when I'm about to get naked. At the very least, that statement would determine how to split up the bill for dinner, how much effort I'd have to put into protecting someone's fee fees, and whether or not I should leave as soon as the sex is over.

I'm getting too old to spend weeks and months trying to figure out whether or not a potential fuckbuddy loves me if s/ he doesn't and never will.

emotions are logical, impulses are not.

learning to control your emotions is important.

emotions deliver to you information about your status.

emotions are alarms.

emotions are not connected to morality. they are mere guidance.

if you have a stable life, your emotions can only help you guide on the path that would be most successful in your personal life. this however might not work carrier wise.

however if your emotions are damaged, this can lead to different dysfunctions and problems, as your emotional alarms signal at the wrong times, with the wrong frequency, at the wrong events.

am i wrong on any of these points?

Correct and congratulations. ^ That's the foundation of cognitive empathy right there :)

I would add to 2 of those points, tho.

1) The connection between emotion and morality is so intricate and subjective (there is a broad range of intensity even among healthy feelerz) that it is highly debatable. Hence the reason for umpteen thousand extra words added to the English language for the sake of arguing over our possessions in our various legal arenas. Yes, emotion does and should play some part in moral reasoning. But that's just my opinion/ observation. Not sure if a large majority or even a majority share it.

2) The definition of "damaged" is also subject to reinterpretation. A good number of us become unusually, but temporarily agitated/angry when we're hungry or tired. I've met people who are--again, temporarily-- more easily provoked to crying jags when they don't get enough sleep. Other environmental factors can affect mood to different degrees. Prolonged bouts of dieting will sometimes throw me into a mini-depression that goes away when I eat good protein rich foods for a few days. Privileged people might consider excessive dieting "damage"

I only consider an aspect of a person's functioning to be damaged when it causes him/her or the person's close family and friends extreme distress for over 2 years, and if the person has a long term (10 years or more) pattern of getting dumped by their friends. 

Yep. : /

Emotions can be logical.  Doesn't mean they are.  They're based in a need, but that need isn't always logical or practical.

Depends on what you mean by that.  If you mean that learning to control your behavior is important, then yes.  If you mean self-analyzing until you've discovered the root cause for negative emotions is important, then yes.  If you mean repressing emotions that you'd rather not have is important, then no.

Guidance is a form of connection.

If you have a stable life, emotions can also fuck it up for you.

Of course damaged emotional states can lead you astray.  But so can any emotional states, if you misinterpret them or neglect to regulate your behavior with logic.

Yes, emotions give you information about yourself and your situation.  They can also enrich your life and contribute to your accomplishments.  However, this absolutely does not mean that they're a suitable source on which to base personal ethics.

"emotions are logical, impulses are not."
Logical as in they make sense, or logical as in dictated purely by logic? If the former, somewhat, as while they can be explained through science as well as basic observation, it still tends to confuse people on some level. If the latter, I do not agree, because as far as I understand it emotions are impulses. If you're hurt by something and express sadness, it was triggered by something that caused that result to occur. Seems like an impulse to me.

"learning to control your emotions is important."
Learning to control emotions makes sense at least it learning how to hold them back so that they don't get in the way, but you can't control them in the sense of "I'm going to be happy now" beyond something like Method Acting, where you dissociate yourself from your current context to feel as you did in another moment. It works great for the stage, but method acting through life strikes me as a dangerous coping mechanism.

The more one can "control" their emotions, the less that they typically and genuinely feel (they're usually the ones told to "Let Go"). That's at least how things seem from what I've seen, but that could be argued to have come from a limited sample. It seems like those who wildly express have less control with stronger and more vibrant feelings, making the way for stronger ups and downs.

"emotions deliver to you information about your status."
What do you mean by status?

"emotions are alarms."
But without the emotions themselves, these things might not affect the subject at all. Emotions are at times the only reason something has an impact at all. It makes about as much sense as calling a trumpet an alarm in the fashion of it announcing itself.

"emotions are not connected to morality. they are mere guidance."
Makes sense as long as "guidance" is allowed to be wrong about things.

"if you have a stable life, your emotions can only help you guide on the path that would be most successful in your personal life."
There are people whose lives are otherwise stable if not for their inability to live with themselves from how they perceive things. In this sense, emotions could cripple what otherwise was going so smoothly, but emotions could also have been how they got to that point of success in the first place. If both are present at once, they might have to live in pain to be successful, a situation where turmoil is their means toward stability in the first place while a lack of turmoil would mean a different pain.

For the inverse, perhaps it is only through vices that they can "feel good". In that sense, following emotions as a guide could lead to addictive behavior that leads to their downfall instead of some great success, while fighting that nagging urge to "feel good" could be the road to success.

I'd say it's closer to emotions being perceived differently from person to person than anything that general, as what's good for one could cripple another. Even if the emotions themselves may root from the same sorts of things, that does not mean that they'd value or remember it the same way. Perspective plays a big part in this, and emotions can't be either accepted or denied in an overly general sense since one persons sadness might be a healthy means toward recovery while another person's sadness could be potentially dangerous.

Just because someone has a good life around them does not mean that they carry a good life in their own minds. For some, that stability could even be the source of their discomfort.

"however if your emotions are damaged, this can lead to different dysfunctions and problems, as your emotional alarms signal at the wrong times, with the wrong frequency, at the wrong events."
So in a nutshell, "If the above doesn't apply, they must be "damaged"."? I don't think it could be that simple. With such a model, it'd be more common to be damaged than functional, as I have seen emotions ruin otherwise stable situations far more often than helping it.

"am i wrong on any of these points?"
My only gripe with it would be in assuming that it could be so simple. There's too many factors to simplify something to this degree.

by WW2

emotions are logical, impulses are not.

learning to control your emotions is important.

emotions deliver to you information about your status.

emotions are alarms.

emotions are not connected to morality. they are mere guidance.

if you have a stable life, your emotions can only help you guide on the path that would be most successful in your personal life. this however might not work carrier wise.

however if your emotions are damaged, this can lead to different dysfunctions and problems, as your emotional alarms signal at the wrong times, with the wrong frequency, at the wrong events.

 

 

am i wrong on any of these points?

By and large you’re correct. In a normal, healthy psyché there’s no dichotomy / dischord between intellect and emotions. Ideally, emotions work away in the background, much like your bodily functions (digestion etc.) - unnoticed until some problem crops up, same as with bodily functions. (Like, you’re not acutely aware of your internal organs until something starts to hurt or malfunction.) When emotions become dischordant with the intellect, then likely you have a disorder at hand - communicates a cause of alarm indeed. 

by Stayonhere

 Psychopaths cannot love

Psychopaths are NOT NORMAL because they are missing the traits that are essential to our humanity. According to Dr. Liane Leedom, psychopaths have no ability to love. 

 There’s no such medical condition as “psychopathy”, it’s a laymen’s umbrella term overused by sensationalist journalism. If you dig around a bit, all those “psychopaths” turn out to have various specific diagnoses - BPD and paranoid / delusional schizophrænia being pretty common, also learning difficulties / retardation, and, well, AsPD.

Also, if people don’t love you back, it doesn’t mean that they are heartless psychopathic bastards incapable of love. They might love someone else but not you, that’s all. 

by AerynFrellMe

 Privileged people might consider excessive dieting "damage"

Excessive dieting is indeed abnormal, whichever way we look at it. But how "privilege" comes into it?  Do you  consider normalcy a privilege? Sounds a bit screwed up if you ask me..

Without the emotions, you will have problems changing your behavior when its harmful to you and/or others. This is one of the most important functions of emotions. Frankly i cant find any other reasonable reason.

As people are heard animals and one of the main functions most(all?) mammals have is reproduction, emotions also help you in that regard: to get social status, so you are more valued by members of the other gender; to give you a sexual drive.

From here you have to protect your social status too.

--

a stable life is when things are going fine or better then fine for you in general, you have comfort. you are mostly content with moments of happiness(at least). ofc you can have moments of dismay from time to time.

an unstable life is when you are either way too often content(though you wont be chaotic or anything, but your life will be missing out on many things) or when you experience discomfort/misery/depression/dismay/stress way more often then being content and happy.

--

things are always simple at their core.

edit:

emotions are also based on your intellect. you wont get sad if you see someone die in a movie and you know its acting. but if you think its real you might feel bad.

so if you destroy your stable life due emotions, then you must be stupid, in someway. ofc you can fix this and learn.

"Without the emotions, you will have problems changing your behavior when its harmful to you and/or others. This is one of the most important functions of emotions. Frankly i cant find any other reasonable reason."
I'd argue it's without intellect that one would have problems changing their behaviors. Emotions don't learn, they just cause behavior that someone's intellect could learn from. The only real problem I'd see with lacking emotions would be having the mimicry feel unnatural.

"As people are herd animals and one of the main functions most(all?) mammals have is reproduction, emotions also help you in that regard: to get social status, so you are more valued by members of the other gender; to give you a sexual drive."
Emotions could both help and hinder ones chances toward reproduction, as their emotions could very well get in the way of getting to that point in the first place, while someone with a lack of them could simply play the part needed to get where they want to go. Even with a lack of sexual drive, if reproduction is what is valued to "the herd", they might still pursue it in the name of status and the perks it carries beyond emotional gratification. The emotions themselves depend strongly on what is displayed, how it's displayed, and why it's displayed, which varies from person to person.

"a stable life is when things are going fine or better then fine for you in general, you have comfort. you are mostly content with moments of happiness(at least). ofc you can have moments of dismay from time to time."
Original Statement: "if you have a stable life, your emotions can only help you guide on the path that would be most successful in your personal life. this however might not work carrier wise."

So if they feel good about their lives, then their good vibes will guide them toward greatness? I do not agree at least in the fashion of believing it to always be the case, nor in believing it to be a predictable constant. Life has too many chance elements to just will it to work out.

It is when someone is their most comfortable that they make way for sloth, for mistakes. It is when someone is their most comfortable that they are their most vulnerable, and most likely to give into vices or be duped into error by others (for example, gambling). Giving in to comfort could very well become the beginning of their end, as the current status one has does not dictate the future status they will carry from it.

It could be one's comfort that allows a con-artist or parasite to squirrel away their good fortune, for with comfort comes duller senses. A big enough mistake would likely cripple one's personal life unless what they possess and value more than all else cannot be taken from them (such as one's faith).

"an unstable life is when you are either way too often content(though you wont be chaotic or anything, but your life will be missing out on many things) or when you experience discomfort/misery/depression/dismay/stress way more often then being content and happy."
So what's the scale? What is too content and not content enough? I was about to have my say until I realized that, with the range unidentified, they could be brushed aside from vague factors.

"things are always simple at their core."
Until you dissect further into it anyway.

"emotions are also based on your intellect. you wont get sad if you see someone die in a movie and you know its acting. but if you think its real you might feel bad."
More like emotions are the impulsive responses to your intellect.

"so if you destroy your stable life due emotions, then you must be stupid"
This one had me laughing a bit. People as a whole must be rather stupid then, as emotions are quite commonly the source of one's fall.

Love throws all sorts of wrenches into the works.

Right, there was an original topic:

"Does any person this sight love anyone but themselves?"
I don't love myself. I'm self serving, but I am personally not a fan.

I've felt something pretty damn close to love, or something, apparently. I don't think I like it.

I love meself and i care about me daughter.