You're right of course.
However, I would feel terribly uncomfortable in a room with a narcissist or a psychopath.
You almost certainly wouldn't even know. One of the major hallmarks of those lines of disorders is the ability to blend in to the rest of society. Real life is like neither Silence of the Lambs nor CSI,
most people with these disorders are
not serial killers.
Narcissists, for example, can actually be extremely generous as a way to win praise, bragging rights, etc. They're often extremely friendly and likeable. Only by spending a significant amount of time with such a person would you be able to start to piece together the facade.
You have to remember that while the priorities that have the power to move us can be different, social acceptability has more than one positive incentive.
A person can lack the potential to feel remorse or empathy, can be emotionally quite capable of all the worst things imaginable...and can still prefer to not live their entire lives in hiding. Even stripped of the ability to actually care about others, a person can still feel the need to "fake it" for the sake of maintaining a lifestyle.
And they do. And it can serve them
very well. The ability to outright lie with a straight face and no remorse, a lack of empathy, these things can be extremely effective in the business and political worlds.
The same way I would feel if I left my child in a room with someone who thought it was okay to molest children.
What precisely do you think a sociopath or narcissist thinks it's "okay to do?" I think you have mistaken notions regarding acceptability, and how such is determined by a person.
A person need not
care about others to simply
follow the rules.
I know a man who's been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. He alternates between being one of the most generous people I've ever met, and being a giant selfish dick, depending on how things are going for him. He's not usually a bad guy to be around at all. He's married, owns his own business, and has two dogs that he hasn't mutilated or anything. Once upon a time he was a very good used car salesman. He's not going to kill anyone, or rape anyone, or torture anyone.
The only reason I wouldn't ask him to babysit is his lack of patience, which is a trait shared by many who are not narcissists.
If someone thinks it is justifiable to act in an antisocial way I see no benefit for them to be in society.
Harsh? Very. But I'm not trying to defend my position, more to highlight it.
That's the thing - many people with "antisocial" disorders don't wind up
behaving antisocially. They don't go on murder sprees. They blend in. They fake it. Society places some pretty decent incentives to
not do things like that, even if you wouldn't
feel bad about doing it, even if you have the
urge to do it.
Ever had the urge to punch somebody right in the face with the sure knowledge that you wouldn't feel bad in the slightest, and still not done it because you didn't want to come across as violent to other people, or risk jail, etc?
Empathy is not a
requirement for ethical action if the proper incentives and disincentives are set up. Laws (the obvious ones like "don't kill people," "don't steal from people," etc), in fact, are largely intended
not for those who possess sufficient capacity for empathy that they would avoid antisocial behaviors anyway, but rather for those who
don't have that capacity for feeling, and who need the rules laid out for them.
Most of these people are actually
productive members of society, despite their disorders, simply because society rewards them for being productive even if they couldn't care less about the welfare of other people.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers