Article: What To Do About It

The methods sociopaths dream up to control others—the schemes contrived to ensure "wins"—are quite various, and only a few of them have to do with physical violence. After all, violence is conspicuous, and unless performed against the utterly powerless, such as children or animals, it is likely to get the perpetrator caught.¶ In any case, though they are horrifying when they occur, brutal murders are not the likeliest result of consciencelessness. Rather, the game is the thing. The prize to be won can run the gamut from world domination to a free lunch, but it is always the same game-controlling, making others jump, "winning." Evidently, winning in this fashion is all that remains of interpersonal meaning when attachment and conscience are absent. When the value of relationships has been reduced to nearly nothing, dominance is sometimes asserted by murdering people. But more often, it is accomplished by killing frogs, or racking up sexual conquests, or seducing and using friends, or exploiting the copper in Chile, or stealing some postage stamps just to see people scramble.