Social value or personal value.

Excerpt from “Thoughts of a Non-Psychopath”
Note: sensitive and morally complex topic. If you see morality and ethics as objective absolutes, this may not be for you.

Look me in the eyes.

Don’t look away. Don’t start wondering whether this is right or wrong. Because right and wrong don’t exist.

Not in the universe. Not in pain. Not in logic.

I am not a psychopath.

But I don’t believe a human life is worth more than a car.

And before you shut your eyes or turn away, let me explain why.

Picture this:

A drunk driver crashes. He kills your family. Two lives are extinguished.

He stumbles out of the wreckage and asks:

“My car… is it okay?”

He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t ask about your dead.

Is that wrong?

The knee-jerk answer is yes. I say no.

And before you label me a psychopath for saying it, hear this: it actually happened.

Argentina. A news story buried among countless others.

Ever since, I’ve been obsessed with understanding it logically.

The man isn’t a monster. He’s just a drunk, disoriented human being who lost his car.

Is he obligated to weep for your family?

Is it his duty to suffer for people he knew for a single second?

No.

The one who should cry, the one who should ache, is you.

You who loved them. You who shared Sundays and dinners.

Not him.

That doesn’t absolve him—but it does explain him.

We live under the illusion that pain must be shared by everyone.

As if empathy were automatic.

But the truth is simpler: pain is measured in proximity.

Guilt can be judged. Affection cannot.

When I told someone this, they asked:

“What if it were your family?”

I answered:

“Then I would be the one who should cry. Not him.”

I don’t need a killer’s tears to know how much my family was worth.

I don’t outsource the feeling of my own loss to anyone else.

And that brings us to the real question:

Do you assign your family social value… or personal value?

If you answer to society, then no matter how much you love your dogs:

the moment a human steps onto the road, you’re supposed to run over your dog.

That’s the “right” thing, isn’t it?

But if you answer to yourself—if you decide that love cannot be quantified or traded—

then you understand that what you love most is what holds the greatest value to you,

even if the world screams otherwise.

Social value or personal value.

They are not the same. They never were.

Answering this question honestly doesn’t make you a psychopath.

It makes you awake…

… "

–Continue reading in its original Spanish language at fictograma.com–