How to stop paranoid empathy?

Why are you trying to convince the internet that you're a good person OP?

I don't really know how to evaluate my levels of stress, I remind myself that I have nothing better to do and honestly, I space these events out well enough so that when I'm confronted I can play dumb.

I don't view much in terms of my self or my own ego, I harness words and thoughts from a source I don't bother to inspect and fantasise things in other people's lives and ways I might be able to improve them.

I have a voice in my head which tells me that this is temporary, because I need to "prove myself" first to myself (that I am capable of absolute goodness), but also to others, should I start taking things more easily, they will know I will never mean harm.

I'm stating the categories by which I justify the title of the OP, that I have, or think that I have "paranoid empathy". In no way do I consider the things I do energy-efficient, rather that they are simply things that nobody else with the same calibre of deception is willing to do. You're right in that the motive for this maybe elitistic, the fact that this kind of help is so rare that the helpee will associate the helper as a messiah figure.

And btw, part of me sees this logically as necessary. Social decay is no myth, and my generation (1999 onwards) are less enthusiastic and more self-focused than you'd think. People in my class are timid to everything outside of their friend-groups, there is no group-effort to overcome or negotiate a tyrannical lecturer, or maybe there is, and I'm simply preventing it from naturally taking place...

My language is also very simple and extremely dependent on who I am communicating to. I reuse words they use to ensure they know what I'm saying, I communicate complicated ideas (assuming there is no tempo) by randomly suggesting an anecdote and building on from there (I won't let them know I'm trying to tell them the complicated idea, rather they'll just learn it on their own). Part of this is to prevent "gaslighting" or "playing dumb" from the opposite side, and also if they do try to "play dumb", try to understand them better. Learn what conceptual lines they're willing to cross, how far they're willing to lie. Can they lie about something as objective as the colour of the sky, assuming there is no stress or fury to trigger that lie? A lot of this "selfless" behaviour is experimental.

And in my quest to understand people I have a list of so-called "sociopaths/narcissists" (or whatever name you dump on them) with which I have tested:

1. My brother: I was excessively nice to him whilst distant, would keep conversation telephone durations capped at 15 mins and would often discuss controversial topics. Whenever he would turn the conversation to an elitism (usually to appeal to me so that I develop a perverse loyalty to him), I would end the conversation ritually 1 minute later because of "pressing circumstances" in real life.

I would slowly tear at his power in speech in situations he'd least suspect. Moments where I had just rewarded him and where to acquire more rewards he'd need to maintain loyalty to me, I would then randomly overpower him in conversation in front of my mother. I tried to mindfuck him, and eventually, after all these repeated tests, proving to him that I was of objective value to him, but that I was also omniscient to him, he still tried to play a wild-card move of lying about small things to others around me and creating some chaos.

I guess I'm trying to figure out what exactly a narcissist/sociopath is, I want to understand why evil exists, and so far my results are inconclusive and the argument for "the human mind is too complicated" still holds. Even if they are seduced by pleasure and have no reason to act bad, whether by material habit or not, they will still act bad.

Others:

2. Someone I met through a mutual friend, would often try to use dark humour to degrade me in front of others (regardless that I was always giving to him), would "humorously" treat me as second-class in an elevator (just us and another), stopping me from moving forward, letting his weird girlfriend move first saying "ladies last". From the outsider's perspective, since both of us were "smart", we must've had an inside-joke going alone, but it wasn't that way. Shortly after these interactions we went to meet people, I persisted and ignored his attempts, while all the same rather feigning strong positive emotion, where they would expect a contribution from him, he gave none and remained quiet. His weakness became his silence and whenever we were present, he would always avoid me, and even his childhood friends, letting me to talk to them.

I tried probing him and seeing if he was willing to negotiate, and he immediately turned to attack me and magnify stories of conflict I had with others in the group. He tried to claim that "he knows my game", and that others who I had a vague conflict with claimed to him that I had lied about it all.

I am not sure if he lied about them or not (whether he was omniscient to the dynamics of my relationship with them), but regardless, he was still also unwilling to negotiate.

3. NOTE: this story is largely controversial and you will probably be quick to raise pitchforks against me, I am only stating this for its value:

My ex, she was overt about her selfishness, remarking that she was "rotten to the core", and that she believed in an "elitistic world". These claims were usually made in brief windows of supposedly "absolute trust", maybe we just had a sexual encounter, or she just acted very lovingly, she would tell me these and I would usually maintain a silence or try to rationalise it for her, or change direction by appealing to her vanity, asking for more sexual interaction.

The birth of the relationship was mostly desperation, boredom and cynicism on my side, but after the several enthusiastic, unique messages I'd send her, she became responsive. We also played several online io games together (though it lacked any teamwork, though I encouraged - she was very antisocial). Most interaction on her side was asking plainly how I was, if I was okay, and if I failed to meet this daily or even hourly quota, I would be reprimanded and in all the density of my overcompensating, she would accuse me of forgetting about her.

Asides from the details of the relationship itself, during the end was maybe the most interesting. It became a tug of war of her using unfair sources to back up her justifications against me, and me suggesting sources sources from the same timeframe to prove me objectively as innocent. Eventually, I was supposed to believe that she had "drastically changed", and she began hiding a lot of the details of her everyday activity. As incredibly strange as this may sound, I wanted out of the relationship, and actually tried to "trick myself" into cheating with another. I found someone who was very attentive to me and smart, who spent all night walking with me. I interpreted this vaguely as "ah, she likes me", I asked if she wanted to come over, and once there she asked if she could sleep over. cont.

Once she slept over, I immediately interpreted her undoing of her bra, combined with occasional hugging as her wanting sexual intimacy. I would respond and 50% of the time she'd respond back. I was deeply uncertain and eventually reached a decision-making phase of what I should do. I wanted to cheat and this girl couldn't have meant anything else. I ended up humping her with eyes closed, and 30 seconds or so later she "woke up" crying, to which I responded crying too. She immediately forgave me, and I came to learn that she had autism and was also a previous rape-victim. On her part, we went on to be "good friends", though she was still paranoid of me and refused to sleep in the same room alone with me. Eventually I temporarily (still for 6 months) cut this friendship because I viewed it as unhealthy for me and the friendship itself.

Somehow, outside of my ego and sadness, a rationalism outside of my awareness manifested and I instinctively told my ex immediately. In hindsight, this would shock her and also limit her previous options for manipulation. She couldn't take the easy route of "I'm breaking up because you cheated" because that would expose her too easily. Instead, she confessed to having partially cheated too, whilst also talking for months with an ex-boyfriend of her's, though after hours of abuse towards me.

The relationship afterwards was mostly sexual, though she seemed the exact as she was before. I used this as an excuse to cement our relationship further, since our high volume of meaningful communication was untainted. She could only justify her calmness on the basis of an an "introversion" or "innocence", both of which had now been ruled out. There was a space of emptiness, that she could not fill up with lies, and so she revealed herself.

In one of our last interactions, she was smiling smugly the entire time, claiming that we had nothing in common and that our relationship was built on a lie.

this is epic.......

She cited very specific novels I hadn't read, an interest in the game "assassin's creed" that I lacked (little does she know I played that game many times), claiming on those grounds that we weren't a good fit. I felt unpleasant and strange, the answer was universally obvious: she's a deranged bitch, but a staple of my weakness manifested. I was sexually attracted to her. I had spent everyday talking with her for months. Another unaware rationalism manifested and I decided to be upset at this and try to make the relationship continue.

More and more, I began to understand her. I can't put it into words, as it defines the very fabric that it is to be a person. I haven't properly given this topic thought either, and as dramatic as this sounds, I don't know how to describe these feelings in any real-life way.

This is very vague but maybe it is a strange-tasting breeze, the faint smell of charcoal and slight fragrance of flowers. A sickening perfume. It was the same I had felt at my grandmother's funeral, seeing her dead, except this person was animated flesh and bones.

From this moment on, I maintained a philosophy that evil was not only incapable of true, contained creativity, but also that it lived entire for pleasure. It was an illness of the mind that viewed pleasure as the only importance.

The greatest of the evil are those who have breadth in knowledge. Their evil does not impede their ability to memory, rather it impedes their ability to interactivity and play, their ability to engage into deep existential topics. They think dynamically, they treat the world around them as knowledge and themselves the vessel to fill. They lack the Platonic idea that the mind is a flame to be cultivated with passion.

And how can one think equally statically and dynamically? The mostly static thinker needs not mend themself as there is no interest in doing so. The static thinker is insulated by a wall of strong relationships and lives in their own subjective, beautifully self-transforming, while the dynamic miserably and bloodshot desires universal truths, desires a universal meaning.

Are the people I call "sociopaths", really sociopaths? Or are they like I have become, blindly and viciously interested in some kind of "universal truth", abandoning their previous structures of reality. Both have their utility, but if one can solve dynamic problems through static means, is he not the most valuable of them all?

The dynamic thinker enslaves themself to a duty until their soul is weary of it and succumbs to death. The static thinker lives for the beauty of everything around them, they are the dreamers, the dynamic thinkers are the realists.

Realists account for supplying resources to humans, each community needs one. Dreamers account for reality outside of logistics, dreamers are the strategists, not logicians. Though both often go hand-in-hand, the strategist realises that victory ultimately lies with the army that wins a military encounter. The canvas of creativity is infinite, so long as the logistics are sufficient enough.

And where do these logistics come from? Who is willing to do the dirty work? These "sociopaths"? Should we pay their ransoms so that they can continue to supply us with their consistent, neverending informational support? Is it maybe the fabric of a relationship itself rather that provides this information, than one of the persons? If the former is true, could we not replace these "realists" with artificial intelligence?

in what way?

I hope I didn't traumatise anyone with this story by the way, reading it back to myself as an observer, I get scared.

Nope not traumatised, bored to tears maybe. You need to get outside yourself.

Also I have noticed some people with a "spidey sense" towards things. These people usually lack any real intelligence, but have an intuition that scares me. A hotel manager who was completely lovely that suddenly became very bitter to my ex, ended up arguing, as she came to see me. A girl in my course that always smiled at me the first few days when she saw me, she had no idea who I was and I am certainly not nice-looking enough. I used to fear this spidey sense as a kid (I definitely believed it) because of how unsure I was of its reliability, and my pattern of thinking was often quite disturbing to the usual eye. I was worried about a clash of their intuition and intellectual minds, its as if they had two identities.

Now that I'm older, I nonchalantly deny this "intuitive wisdom", and believe that I can fake life. People still somehow see through me through non-conventional means, even if it is through text alone, and no amount of rationalisation can cover it.

Does anyone else have this "superstitious" fear of people with this strange intuition to truth? What if much of the radical left is basically like this on a wider level?

Why did you read it then?