B. U. G. S.

A commenter said that I was no longer on his pedestal. I said that was great. I meant it.

This made me think about the whole business of being “liked.” For a psychopathic, and in a society totally run by psychopaths as ours is, everybody wants to be liked. Everybody liked Ted Bundy, including the judge who sentenced him to death.

For Ted Bundy, being liked was a hundred percent benefit. The only real downside of being liked is that you can hurt someone who likes you, and Bundy was incapable of caring if he did.

Now let’s look at the other end of this spectrum. First, let me point once again at this psychological wheelchair I am sitting in. I had to beat the Feds big time to prove I deserved nine years of BACK disability pay. It’s on the record. But you can’t SEE it.

But since this whole blog is my psychology dealing with your psychology, it is critical to me that you recognize this problem I have. It is as humiliating for me to keep pointing to it as it would be for a person in a wheelchair to have to REPEATEDLY point out that he cannot sprint.

And this is EXACTLY why being liked has a big downside for me that a society where all advice is sociopathic would never describe. I miss birthdays. I miss making compliments I should make, all because of attention deficit and a slew of other problems. And I am cursed with eight or ten times the empathy a normal person should have, much less a sociopath. So I ALWAYS hurt people who like me.

On the other hand, after a lifetime of the sort I have had, dealing with enemies or people who hate me is duck soup. I don’t have to hold back. I am cursed with such a load of empathy that I even hate to whip up on my enemies too much, but it beats hell out of one more deeply disappointed person who genuinely wished me well and whom I have, inevitably, hurt.

You have the same problem to some extent, which makes this worth mentioning. When someone tells YOU they like you, it is not an unalloyed pleasure. But I have never heard anybody else mention this.

Our society goes along the lines of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” I am not being cynical here. The reason you read my stuff is to get a DIFFERENT perspective on things. So while I am not the late Dr. Carnegie’s enemy, it would be silly for me to do nothing but add onto the heaps of praise he has received. So in a lot of cases where someone has received nothing but praise, I tend to sound cynical because a different perspective is GOING to mean that I see a downside to them. That is not cynicism. That is just not being a bore.

So in my mind Carnegie’s HWFIP was the sociopath’s cookbook. He made it clear that people want you to remember their NAMES. I have seen congressman with a talent for remembering their constituents’ names reelected again and again, and that congressman had as much empathy as any other sociopath. A constituent who was charmed by Ole Bill’s concern for him and secure in the knowledge that Old Congressman Bill, his Buddy, remembered his name, would be astonished when the found out that Ole Bill had screwed him to the wall decade after decade.

But remembering somebody’s name is not a sign of affection. The time a person spends concentrating on your name and face is time he is NOT spending on your interests. Carnegie taught that people don’t really give a damn about their own interests as long as you remember their names. I have seen the truth in this all my life. The cost of getting your name remembered is staggering.

Ted Bundy was marvelous at remembering names.

I do not think I have read anyone else say that being liked has a downside. It is like being trusted. Being trusted is extra responsibility. They PAY you to take on extra responsibility. If extra responsibility is not an unalloyed joy, why should being liked be an unalloyed benefit?

The answer is that, for a sociopath, extra responsibility is fine as long as it does not involved extra RISK. A sociopath would demand more money if his extra responsibility meant he stood a better chance of the IRS going after him, but the sort of responsibility that wore me down, taking other people’s lives and fortunes into my hands because I happened to be the best there was to do it, would not bother a sociopath, or a society advised entirely by sociopaths, in the slightest.

Being complimented has a downside for me. It means that whoever is doing the complimenting will soon tell me how “disappointed” they are. I find an outright insulter much easier to deal with than someone who puts me on a pedestal and expects me to stay there.

So I can do very well without admirers. Any normal human being finds admirers a bit disconcerting. But MY PSYCHOLOGICAL WHEELCHAIR makes them a burden. It is humiliating having to remind people of one’s disability. That’s heavy enough. But to have to remember just what to say to each person you don’t want to hurt is a monstrous burden for me. I have spent a lifetime getting sick beyond measure of the constant, “Oh, Bob, I USED to think so much of you but …”

I am here to give you ideas, concepts, basics. If you like THEM, that is what maters.

That reminds me of why I go queasy every time somebody announces to me he is a “Christian.” It means that he thinks I am on God’s side but any day he can go bananas because I have Betrayed the Doctrine.

I want to influence IDEAS, not people. I do not aim to “win friends” because I have had too much experience with people who say they are your “friends.” If someone asks me “is he/she a friend of yours?” I answer, “Well. I am a friend of his/hers. I’m not inside their head, and their mind will change any minute.”

Once again, people think I am being cynical or trying to sound smart. I’m not. It just sixty-five years of a very hard life talking.