Comment by empath75
4 months ago
When people are described as sociopathic it’s not about any particular lie, but the relationship that the person has with the truth, which is that they will lie when it suits them and tell the truth when it suits them and they don’t seem to distinguish morally between them. And more than that, they treat people the same way, and will use them while it suits them and then dispose of them when they are inconvenient.
Perhaps that is some of the problem. That is not what a sociopath is. There are specific criteria, and while it may come as a shock to some, there are ethical sociopaths out there. They do the right thing not because they feel it to be the right thing to do, but because they think it is a rational way to live their lives.
What you are thinking of are people who do bad things. Most of those people are not sociopaths. Often they are hurting in some way, sometimes they are just living the only life they know. Most of them feel they are doing the best they can. It is extremely comforting to pathologize these people because then it's not something we could have prevented by providing a better society. It rules out the hard options of empathising with them, or reasoning with them to find common ground.
The term othering has come into use in recent years. The concept has existed through the ages, but that's the latest label for it.
This is what it looks like.