Answered on Quora.
I don’t think that psychopaths are deserving of much in the way of compassion personally.
Keep in mind that Quora is swarming with psychopaths and their supporters (I call them lieutenants or hangers-on) who are here to try to make it look like psychopaths are really nice people. This is part of the mask. Psychopaths need to adjust their image (hence the mask) so they can participate in society and mostly so they can access more of us to victimize, which is what they do. Why do psychopaths wear their masks. In my opinion, they have to wear their masks because this is the only way the rest of us will allow them to participate in society at all. What would happen if all psychopaths threw away their masks and showed us their true colors? The non-psychopaths would simply rise up and kill all of the psychopaths. And most would be acquitted too I suspect. This is actually the typical fate of psychopaths in more primitive societies.
You can feel any way you want to about psychopaths. If you want to like them, you can. If you want to hate them, it’s surely understandable. If you want to like some and not others, it makes sense.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Do you know any psychopaths? If you don’t, what difference does it make how you feel about them? If you have a psychopath near your life, you can decide whether to like them or not. I would advise wariness and mostly just getting away from them.
I have known a few people with psychopathic traits in my life. I have known others who become psychopathic in the midst of other illnesses like manic episodes. Although there were good times mixed among the bad (often true with these charmers), the end result was that they hurt and damaged me badly. My opinion is that if you are involved with these people for any length of time, you are going to get harmed or damaged. This is because psychopaths harm or damage others as a basic matter of living – this is simply what they do, how they function on a day to day basis.
Even borderline psychopaths could care less if they hurt you or not, and they may well do just that. Why wouldn’t they? If they could care less if they hurt you or not, what would stop them from doing it? These people could quit acting this way anytime they want to. They know what they are doing. They don’t want to get better. They don’t want to stop being psychopaths. They like being psychopaths. They don’t want to care about whether they hurt others or not.
If you can dredge up some psychopath out there who you think is prosocial enough to be friends with you or me, by all means show him to me.
Look, psychopaths are just not good people. Being a bad boy is one thing, but psychopaths are bad men, and that is worse than being a bad boy. A lot of bad boys are just rebels, and most of the rest are just trying to get laid. They aren’t really bad people. There are good people, there are bad people, and there are a lot of mixed bags. Psychopaths really are bad people.
A lot of people are pretty lousy human beings themselves, they like the idea of being bad, and they probably like psychopaths for being bad. You sound like you are a good person or are trying to be one. Why should a good person like psychopaths? There’s no reason. If any people on this Earth deserve to be disliked, it is psychopaths.
Don’t feel guilty about hating psychopaths, and don’t feel bad for them. These charmers are very slick, and they will always find new victims lift off their feet and fleece. The psychopath is a survivor. Sadly, many of their victims are not.
