Punishing people

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I won't go into details, but Paddy789 did something unacceptable to me on this forum.

Lately I've been picking up the pace with my acts of kindness. One of my worries, however, is that people will foolishly come to believe not only that the wellspring of my generosity is due to my misfortune, but that they can bring about this generosity in others by harming them.

In order to prevent this dreadful state of affairs, I occasionally feel like I need to punish people, just to protect others from this kind of foolish behavior. In a way, my awful crime would become a heroic deed, would it not?

If not, then can I be assured that no one will be harmed in part due to my generosity?

What I normally do is continue my good deeds... but not direct those deeds towards those who actually harmed me. That way those who harm me see no direct benefit by doing so, and are less likely to try to harm others for similar effects.

As for feeling a need to punish people, I've felt that way too on occasion. It kinda goes with the territory of doing a lot of acts of kindness. Two sides of the same coin, so to speak.

Well Paddy's post has been deleted in your other thread.

I don't think many people understand the problem. Even when I'm all alone, trying to hide from all the social manipulation and maltreatment, I'll hear a voice say, "PSYCHOPAAAAATH." It's like there's no escape.

My acts of kindness include routine litter cleanup, tutoring with calculus homework, charity donations, feeding the homeless, and working for the disabled. When I come home after all my hard work and try to relax on my couch... there it is. "PSYCHOPAAAAATH."

I think someone or something is going out of its way to get me to throw a tantrum. It's not even fair. I don't want to be like this. If I have to, I will, but I don't want to be. My fury is conditional on my torment.

There are times when I wish I could just sock it to people about how little they care about others' suffering. These are total idiots who need to be taught a lesson in empathy. But how am I going to do that? By throwing up?

I feel like I am crazy all the time. The online warzone seems to be calming to me and a place where I can really punish the other team. Its always fun and always have a great feeling.

I have often seen very bad people cause pain and suffering. I wish there was a way to turn the tables on them without hurting anyone yet sending the right message.

There was this on time at the beach. I was on balcony and there was parking lot across the street and this guy was walking his dog and car came along and sped up and ran over his dog. Almost looked to be on purpose. Then the car stopped and the guy who had dog kicked it and yelled at them and guy got out and punched him or knocked him down. Was aways away and line of cars was in the way. He got back in car and him and his friend sped off after attacking the guy who's dog they just ran over. I felt bad for the guy who lost his dog. Wish there was a way to show the other two to feel the suffering. There are chains to society though and doing such a thing would likely break a few laws and I am not likely to have found them again.

But we areresponsible for changing mankind, one grueling day at a time.

I'm an active pacifist myself--and by that I mean I try to actively promote and live the lifesetyle of understanding, listening, acceptance, and letting others be who they are.

The only exception to this is in obvious examples of death and suffering, when one side is continuing the battle because they're legitimately crazy and just want to hurt people (generally those types end up in prison.) But before we lock these people up, we at least give them a chance to tell their story, and that's very fair. The US justice system is hardly perfect, but I do hope we're moving slowly towards complete understanding of each other, and letting be what we cannot. A sort of upgrade to the human condition.

I'm sorry to hear you're plagued by namecalling and scorn, especially in your downtime. At least we know that guy's "truth" is totally wrong, and his delusion is his own problem.

Yes, some people deserve to be punished--but we can't do it. Here's an example: a couple months ago, someone was hammering on the doorbell of my apartment. I went to the lobby and found this man escorting a younger man, whom he called "Skippy. " He was really frantic. Skippy had forgotten his keys and his older friend didn't want to drive back across town to get the spare key, so he was ringing doorbells to try and get someone to let him in.

I was uncertain, having never seen this man before, but they continued shouting through the glass. Then a woman showed up, and she was irate:

"Yeah, uh, I have a purse from Prada and a ring from Tiffanys, I don't think I need to steal anything from this place."

I almost lost it then, and she would have deserved it. Not a single police officer would have disagreed with my safe decision to keep the lobby locked, and besides, if she's so rich, then go call a locksmith and have another key made! Or go drive across town to who knows where, you've got gas money. Suck a lime, you neurotypical wenchbag.

But I kept my cool, and continued negotiations. Soon I found out the truth; Skippy was both blind and deaf, and had been living upstairs for 6 years.

So in short, through understanding and communication and acceptance, we bypassed a whole lot of shenanigans that would have made everyones lives more miserable, and now I know more about the people who live here and the conditions they may have. Had I stuck to my guns of the legal system and played it safe, that guy would have been locked out for the simple mistake of forgetting his keys, which is hardly fair.

Communication supersceded legal woohah, and brought us to understanding.

...okay I'm done with my text wall now.

I think you may be onto something deep about our lack of knowledge of others concealing the rationality (or at least understandability) of their actions.

Anyway, I'm going to continue trying to help the world, but I'll be watching everyone -- and I don't want to see any poor nerds beaten up by people who want them to become like me.

He's definitely on to something Mike, I personally think it's the single most important thing for people with no naturally developed theory of mind to remeber; we just can't know why people do things without actually taking the trouble to find out why and even then we could be wrong. I can't emphasise enough how important it is to keep this in mind.

Saying that it's no excuse for memebrs here abusing others because they don't understand them (made me quite angry just writing that) but I do believe where you talk about things makes a big difference on this site, PPR seems to be a place where the aspies with great rhetorical skills but no self control go to rip other less intellectual aspies to shreds. Any percieved weakness is pounced upon and ripped apart in there but I doubt it's actually personal very often more of a power thing since most aspies have little of that in real life. So if you're sensitive to that kind of thing stay out of there as I do because I am. You can still discuss the same things in random discussion but the people are different.

Oh really? See I got it wrong.

Mike needs to be clear if these are actual auditory hallucinations or wether he means internal dialogue? Advice either way is very different staying out of ppr wont help for that kind of thing.

They are auditory hallucinations I can barely control. It's humiliating.

They just say, "You're a freak, Charlie Brown," over and over. I have no actual thought disorder; something just insists on telling me that Charlie Brown is (or I am) a freak. The voice that says "psychopath" I can hardly help either.

For the record, I don't think I lack a Theory of Mind. I've written more about this in my essay, Rejection and Asperger Syndrome.