How Sociopathic Power Changed my Life and What it Taught Me About War
by Aya Al-Hattab
_{Published in Solarpunk Magazine Issue #25 | January 13, 2026}

Many wars and acts of destruction throughout history have been driven by leaders displaying sociopathic traits, aggression, lack of empathy, and an obsession with control. By sociopathic, I don’t mean a clinical diagnosis, but a pattern of behavior rooted in manipulation, emotional detachment, and cruelty.

I didn’t come to understand this through history books. I learned it through a personal experience that quietly shaped how I see power.

In my first year at university, I met a young woman my age. From the very first day, we connected easily. We shared humor, impulsiveness, and the excitement of beginning a new chapter in our lives. She appeared confident and sociable. Someone who could talk to anyone effortlessly. Nothing about her raised concern at first. 

As our friendship deepened, we began spending nearly everyday together. She often visited my home, and our lives became closely interlinked. Slowly, however, troubling patterns emerged. She spoke badly about friends behind their backs, lied casually, and gravitated toward people who could offer her financial or social advantage. I dismissed these behaviors as flaws, the kind many people have. 

A warning came from an unexpected place. A friend of my mother, a schoolteacher who had once taught her, advised me to distance myself. She described her as deeply toxic. At the time, I didn’t listen. 

By our second year of college, the situation escalated. Two of her close friends decided to step away. In response, she approached each of them separately, fabricating stories and manipulating emotions until they turned against one another, destroying their relationship entirely. 

“as I watched Gaza being destroyed by leader’s making decisions from afar, I began to recognize the same pattern: sociopathic power operating on a vastly large scale.”

At first, I assumed this was simple revenge. I was wrong. 

Soon, I witnessed something more unsettling. A couple at our college, partners who had been together for years, fell apart after she inserted herself into their lives. Through lies and emotional manipulation, she engineered their separation. What disturbed me was the satisfaction she seemed to draw from the damage. 

Over time, a clear pattern emerged: constant dishonesty, arranged manipulation, and a complete disregard of the emotional wreckage left behind. Within a single week, chaos spread among our colleagues— accusations, conflicts, broken relationships. She repeatedly called me to blame others, until I realized she was the source of it all. 

When I finally confronted her and ended the friendship, she tried to manipulate my emotions, insisting I was important to her. I refused to engage. She attempted to create tension between my family and me, but by then, I understood the pattern of sociopathic behavior well enough to disengage completely.

My life slowly returned to calm. But the lesson stayed with me. 

Years later, as I watched Gaza being destroyed by leader’s making decisions from afar, I began to recognize the same pattern: sociopathic power operating on a vastly large scale. The manipulation, the emotional detachment, the ease with which harm was inflicted, all of it felt hauntingly familiar. 

What I had once experienced in a private, personal space was now unfolding across an entire population. 

Sleep in fear here in Gaza, even after a ceasefire was announced nearly two months ago. We sleep with terror lodged in our bodies. Death has not stopped. The bombing continues. Homes are still being demolished.

Meanwhile, the creator of this war sleeps comfortably. I, on the other hand, fall asleep each night carrying the shock of everything I have lived through, knowing that death was always close, yet somehow I survived. I survived artillery shelling, sniper fire, quadcopter bullets, and the smoke of rockets exploding nearby. 

While war criminals, who control the fate of our lives, sleep in their warm homes, untouched by consequence. They have no understanding of the cold of December and January. 

In Gaza, people sleep in flooded tents, soaked by winter rain. They dream of their warm, beautiful homes that were destroyed by the war, and they dream of their children who will never return, taken by bombs, by cold, by fear.

This is the fate of Gazans; chosen for them by war criminals; it is a harsh, miserable life they never imagined they would be forced to live. 

The hardest feeling I have ever experienced, and the hardest I will likely ever know, is the loss of agency— the inability to determine my own fate or make decisions about my future. I grew up making my own choices, shaping my life independently from a young age. 

Now, because of this war, even during a so-called ceasefire, I’m unable to decide what I will eat, where I will go, or even what clothes I will buy. These small, everyday decisions have been stripped away, alongside far greater ones. I did not graduate the way I had dreamed of. I did not celebrate my engagement as I had imagined. 

Most painful of all, I can not make any decision about my future. 

“Radical hope, for me, is not optimism detached from reality. It is the decision to see clearly how harm operates, and still insist on humanity.”

In September 2023, one month before the war began, I made my last visit to a bookstore in Tal Al-Hawa, Gaza City. Among the books I bought was Surrounded by Psychopaths by Thomas Erickson. Reading it after everything I had experienced helped me name what I had witnessed, not as a diagnosis, but as a structure of power without conscience. 

After reading the book, I gained a better understanding of the actions of presidents and politicians, as well as their ability to instigate destruction and wars. It seems effortless for them to manipulate and subjugate their people

In addition, sociopaths have the potential to destroy entire nations due to the deep-seated megalomania and control within their personalities, which fosters a belief that they are allowed to carry out any act of aggression.

Morally unrestrained leaders do not need to witness suffering to authorize it. Emotional distance makes destruction easier. When such traits rise to positions of authority, the consequences are catastrophic. Wars persist not by accident, but through the vested interests of leaders devoid of empathy, insulated from the realities their decisions create.

History has shown how such leadership can devastate entire nations, Adolf Hitler being one stark example, but living through this war has made the cost unmistakably personal. I have watched ordinary people in Gaza pay the price for decisions made by those who will never meet their victims, never feel their losses, and never rebuild what they destroy. 

Understanding this has not led me to despair. It has sharpened my awareness. 

This war would not have persisted without the vested interests of a political figure. Can a person, lacking empathy, truly care about anything beyond their own self-interest, disregarding the suffering of millions in the process? 

Recognizing sociopathic traits in power has made me more attentive to the values that matter: accountability, collective care, and justice. It has made me more committed to the community, to solidarity, and to resisting systems that normalize cruelty. This is not naïve hope, it is conscious, disciplined refusal.

Radical hope, for me, is not optimism detached from reality. It is the decision to see clearly how harm operates, and still insist on humanity. It is the belief that societies can be built around care rather than dimension, and that recognizing cruelty is the first step toward dismantling it.

In a world shaped by destruction, choosing empathy is not weekness. It is resistance.

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