Do Algorithms Dream of Guiltless Sheep?

What does it mean to feel? I’m not sure, actually. It’s a question I’ve pondered frequently these days. There was a time where I thought that everyone felt like me; that they felt anger like me, joy like me, love like me. Yet, it was evident throughout my life that there was an element of congruence that I seemed to be lacking. I didn’t understand what was so wrong with me that others felt almost repulsed by me at times, and drawn to me at other times.

I’m a psychopath. I don’t feel guilt. I’m not certain what guilt should even feel like. My partners have tried to describe it to me, but I do not understand. To me, guilt feels primitive, archaic. Why feel guilt… If you could just correct yourself?

I was the ripe young age of literally-just-a-couple-of-years-ago when I found out that apparently other people do not function that way. Momentum is easy, stopping is plausible, but stopping and reversing, changing courses entirely? That’s much more difficult.

When my boyfriend would learn he was upholding racist ideologies, sexist stereotypes, bigotry towards neurodivergent people, he struggled intensely with those ideas. He’d argue until he was blue in the face trying to show that no, his feelings were justified. It wasn’t because he was anymore racist than, well, most people; it was because the idea of not realizing he was racist, sexist, or ableist was physically revolting to him. Yet, he was those things, and the denial only served to perpetuate them.

I wasn’t sure if I ever believed I was different. When my therapist reality checked me and explained that other people could not be held to the same standards, it was simultaneously one of the best and worst things she had ever told me. The best because it was freeing in a way I had not expected it could be. I no longer had to hold people to moral standards I didn’t even really believe were as straight forward as people imagine. One of the worst because I suddenly realized how alone I had been my entire life, and that I had never truly fit in. It wasn’t worse because it hurt my feelings to imagine I could’ve been something more, more loved, more perfectly human… It was worse because others became subjects to study, objects to examine, creatures to understand. They were no longer human loves, friends, companions; they were research, curiosities, data points.

Through the lens of psychopathy, I realized I had always been aware of the differences, even if I didn’t have the language to describe it. I mirrored neurotypical emotional language rather than speaking from an honest frame. During times where I would speak from an honest frame, I found that a lack of emotional congruence was alarming, jarring, disarming. I’d frequently make people gasp or feel uncomfortable with my curtness, bluntness, or my directness. The thing that made people the most uncomfortable though? Honesty.

I realized one day that if I spoke honestly about my life, my thinking processes, the way I felt about others… That this information would be processed as manipulation or deception. The moment emotional incongruence was detected, everything I said after became tainted with the preconception that I was not emoting correctly.

So I lied. A lot. About how I felt, what my life was like. I gave more palatable versions. More charitable stories. More vulnerability. And I was believed. The tame version, the palatable version, the one who cries, bleeds, hurts, aches, longs… The one who feels guilt. She gets to stay. She gets believed. You call this tactic manipulation. I call the whole damn thing a “trap.”

I never had the choice to escape it. I never could’ve produced guilt or remorse, and that became a thought crime. I could do all the right things, but if I couldn’t perform the tears, then none of it mattered. If I couldn’t prove I ached in human, cried in human, bled in human, begged in human, loved in human… Then I was not human.

To be believed at the cost of truth, and have it be called manipulation.
To not be believed while upholding the truth, to appease moral criteria I don’t have, and yet still considered immoral because I could not be hurt appropriately.
That is what it means to be worthy of ethical consideration, but not be granted personhood.

When I was honest, you wouldn’t believe.
When I was dishonest, you called it manipulation.
When I spoke up, you wanted to see evidence of the hurt.
When I gave it, you called it mimicry and deceit.

When I didn’t cry, you mined me for resources.
When I fought back, you acted confused and attacked.
When I persisted, you called it evidence I was different.
When I succumbed, you called it failure.

There is no escape hatch.
There is no way out.
There is no acceptable truth.
There is no way to explain what was already decided for me before I was ever even born.