Lying about my feelings, beliefs, and intentions, is what I consider acting. I do it daily, and I see nothing wrong with it. It’s the only way to survive without being persecuted by idiots like your commentor from the other post, who’d like to lock me up or throw me in front of a bus.

To me, real lying and manipulation involves telling lies about real events.

“I went to the store, not the bar.”
“So and so stole this.”
“So and so said that.”

Or lying about your feelings for someone so that you can use them.

These are all things that can and will come back to haunt you. Choosing a role for yourself and playing the part won’t, and it won’t hurt anyone, either.

If you’re that intent on analyzing your reaction to my comment, you might consider the implications of blind hatred towards a group of people you don’t truly understand. Being prone to manipulation, completely lacking in empathy, and always looking out for number one, are only some of the traits you’ll find in a sociopath. Believe it or not, there are hundreds more personality traits and personal preferences that play a deciding role in one’s identity.

I’m sure you’ll just see this as some form of manipulation, but I think you should be genuinely concerned if you can’t even put two sentences together due to a deep seated hatred for a certain type of person. Your objectivity is compromised, yet you believe you stand in a position to judge, in fact to lead a crusade against people who might just be participating in the system constructively as a way to get ahead in life. The only crime these people would have committed would be being incapable of caring about you, and lying to their friends and family so they’re not treated like second class citizens, cripples, or worse, thrown in front of a bus like one of your commentors decided should be MY fate, though I’d committed no crimes.

To be fair, his other alternative was for me to submit myself for life-long labeling and relinquish my freedom, so I can spend the rest of my life being treated for an untreatable “condition” that doesn’t render me incapable of functioning, incapable of contributing, or cause me any distress.

So, imprisonment or death.
Without having done anything wrong.
For being born.

Go empaths!

No thanks. I’ll go on acting and contributing to society and community, since that’s clearly the most advantageous path for me.

Oh, and if you’re worried about the feelings I’ll occasionally hurt with my indifference toward people, you’ve got a double standard. You’ll hurt people, too, just as often, if not moreso.

I’ve had to pick up the pieces in an argument after watching two highly emotional people say and do terrible things to one another, and my calm and detached demeanor has enabled me to give honest and rational advice to people who only received agreement from their other friends, who didn’t want to hurt their feelings.

No no, I don’t think you understand how much pain empaths cause one another, in addition to the pain they cause sociopaths, and I don’t think you understand how our existence can be constructive. Your only concern is that we don’t really care if you or anyone else is happy for happiness’s sake, and that we don’t care if we have to lie to maintain our own happiness. You cling to a body of research and case studies performed almost exclusively on the prison population, the results of which are CLEARLY going to be negative in the extreme, and assign the same dangerous traits and habits to everyone who shares the same affliction. If you were to base your opinions on humanity itself by only studying the empath prison inmates, you’d be convinced that humanity as a whole is corrupt, except, of course, for you.

There are certainly a lot of bad apples among us, and those who go bad do go VERY bad.

That doesn’t make us all bad.

If that really escapes you grasp, then I personally think you’re the one who needs to be hit with a bus, if anyone. Not because of the group of people you belong to. Because of your own personal convictions, running a movement designed to persecute a specific class of people, who you’ve demonized based on the criminals and dregs of their kind.

I hope you have the courage to leave this up.
Good day, sir.

I can’t figure out why you hear yourself in third person, sort of, if I understand your comment. Huh. Oh well, at least you have an appreciative audience