A proposition

A reader offers:

I recently became aware of sociopathy and found your blog, which I have enjoyed reading today. It's difficult to find anywhere else online anything written from the point of view of a sociopath, and I've learned some valuable info from the posts and comments.

I have been studying astrology for twenty years and enjoy studying birth charts. If there are any blog followers here who believe they are sociopaths who'd be willing to provide thier birth data, I would like to study their charts to see if there are correlating aspects and placements that form a pattern. I don't think anyone's done this sort of astrological research yet, at least I haven't found any. Would you or your readers be game? If so, what I would need is the date of birth, the exact birth time, and the city in which one was born. Once I have a few charts, I can post the results on your site if you'd like.

One of the reasons that I am religious is that I refuse to accept truth only from state sanctioned sources, so to speak. I think that it is too limiting and that there is a certain amount of hubris in looking for truth only from those sources that you have pre-screened as being legitimate. So I replied:

Ah, very interesting proposition. I would be game, and I wonder if some of my readers would also be interested, in the name of science. I actually don't know exactly what I believe about astrology, though I tend to think it is interesting, accurate, and predictive, but of whether or not stars have any impact on our lives I am less sure. I've often wondered whether certain signs lead more to sociopathy, or whether certain signs lead to higher functioning sociopathy. (For instance, I am Cancer, supposedly a feeler. Does that make me a "softer" sociopath than most?)

Sensitive information like birth dates, times, and locations should not be posted to the internet. So I suggest that you email me if you would like to participate. Feel free to come up with a "fake" email address just for this purpose. I'll pass them along, and we'll make sure that birthdates and locations never get published.

You must be a gemini

Some people are just asking for trouble. And by trouble I mean sociopaths. As further proof that those who seek after and date sociopaths are asking for it, here's a response to this email after my original personal ad:

Okay, actually, I should have added a few more things to my list: sinister, promiscuous, flexible definition of the truth, emotionally unavailable, able to rationalize almost anything to myself, manipulative, prone to boredom, weak sense of empathy. Still very Jimmy Stewart-esque, right?

"Marty" responds:

you sound like a Gemini!! I am a Taurus....Marty

Marty, you sound like you're asking for it. I hope you get what's coming to you.

You can kind of see why Marty would guess Gemini because they are two-faced monsters. But sociopaths are not two-faced so much as one-faced with a mask. Maybe that seems like a distinction without a difference, but I have the sense that not many sociopaths are geminis. I've often wondered if certain astrological signs had more sociopaths than others. I think cancers may be prone to sociopathy, but I am biased being a cancerian myself. I also think that even though Geminis might not be great sociopaths, they can easily be narcissists. But I don't really have anything besides anecdotal evidence to base these assertions on. Thoughts on the astrological connection?