The Importance of a Moral Code

I have found it to be the case that people like me, while completely free from the guilt that so entangles everyone around us, still like to make decisions based on some kind of morality. The reasons for this for the average traveller are unclear to me, but I can certainly explain the purpose of my own.

The first reason is, as it usually is, convenience. There aren't many situations in which you are presented with both a moral dilemma and the time to think it through. In such cases, it can be of great value to have a decision already made, and the ability to override the default if necessary.

The second, more insidious, reason is that there are only so many doors that we can open before we lose grip on ourselves completely. Giving up control of myself is something that I do with great trepidation. As soon as a rule is broken once, it no longer exists for me, and losing all of my rules would create a person who would be terrible to behold. At the moment, I wish to retain the option to blend into society.

I had a thought today. It really is only a matter of time before I become a violent shadow of a man. As Bateman said, I can feel the mask slipping.

Stealing Women.

 The thing that shocks me when I start manipulating people is how remarkably easy it is, like they want to be manipulated. It's hard for me to understand, because I can feel someone begin to manipulate me before they even start talking.

Women are easier to manipulate than men. I don't know why. If you want to steal someone's girlfriend, it's a relatively simple process.

1. Establish Connection.
Initial contact should establish you as an acquaintance. Be interesting, but not interested.

2. Wait.
You're waiting to observe the flaws of their partner and find common ground with your woman.

3. Step in.
Once you see a rough patch in their relationship, talk to her. Reassure her that she is with the right man. Now, compliment the areas that you observed as weaknesses in her boyfriend. She will seem relieved and happy. Everything will be okay, she thinks. Those were the things she was just worrying about, and if you see these as strengths, she must just be overreacting.

4. Wait for the time bomb to go off.
She is now faced with the conflict of reality and image. She will start questioning why she's with the guy in the first place, and, more importantly, believe that he has changed from the man she once knew (the image of him that you planted in head).

5. Pick up the pieces.
As long as you struck a balance between standoffish and clingy during this whole ordeal, you'll be the one she turns to when her relationship goes up in flames.

Good Luck.

Never reveal yourself.

Unless you want unnecessary conflict and to be left alone... which I'm assuming you do. Maybe revealing yourself to another is like a simple process of elimination. If the person you confess to is a fellow traveller, then you will have made a real friend for the first time in your life. If not, they'll try to walk away. If you let them go, then it will be better for them in the long run, I think.

For me though, I have a tendency to see people as pawns in a game I play to amuse myself. I try to learn all of the different ways that emotion can be activated, and learn key phrases that control each person. Therefore, by the time someone has gotten close enough to me to find out about me, I have enough knowledge of their workings that I can easily manipulate them. I make them stay around, not because I care deeply about them, but because of the amount of work it would take to replace them.

Death.

If you're one of them, you'll be familiar with the feelings that are associated with the death of a loved one. Even if you've never felt it yourself, when someone tells you that their son or daughter, their closest firend maybe... has died, you know. You can see it in their eyes, hear it in their voice, see it in their gait, feel thier emotions seeping from every pore of their body, I'm assuming, because I can. The difference is, I assume, that when you see things like this, you feel what they feel, where I simply feel uncomfortable.

Maybe uncomfortable isn't the exact word choice I was looking for. The thing is, faking it is pretty easy in situations you've been in a million times. Presented with a novel situation such as that, with no reference point to work from, all that I can do is go quiet and put on the same "sympathy" face that I would use when someone says that they had a bad day. How do you correctly adjust the magnitude of emotion to display?

Hello there.

I often wonder why it is so hard for normal people to detect us. The way we see the world is so fundamentally different from them. It's tempting to add this to the list of reasons we have to look down on them.

A shrink would tell you that the phenomenon is known as projection; that people naturally see their own emotions in others when they see similar facial expressions to ones that they've made themselves, or see people in situations that they have been in in the past. It's charming, but naive. It's not their fault, of course. They have no other point of reference. They're trapped in their own box, they can only see the world one way: the normal way. If they weren't such a vast majority, maybe we wouldn't have to pretend to see it that way too.

I suppose I first realized that I was different while I was in Africa at the age of twelve. I wandered the slums of Korogocho, met five year old glue addicts, witnesses the plight of orphans and street children with nobody in the world to turn to, and the thing that hit me the hardest was this: None of what I saw made me feel anything. I looked around at the other white people that were there with me, and I saw compassion on their faces, tears in their eyes, and empathy in their hearts. The things that they saw affected their behaviour; cut them right to the soul.

I watched.

I tried to copy them as best I could. Fortunately we were all on an antimalarial medication that apparently has some neural side effects so I could blame any inconsistencies on the drug's side effects. I used that excuse more than a couple times on that trip.

The worst thing about being this way is that it's impossible to convince anyone that you aren't just being overdramatic. No one who has felt emotion will ever believe that you can't. They think you're just being strong. They think it's a phase.

Let's get one thing straight before I continue. It's not like I'm some kind of monster. I don't kill people or animals. I keep myself to a very high code of morality. The difference between me and you is that if you break your code, you are tortured by your subconscious, whereas if I break mine, I merely continue to exist in the same empty state I began in.