On Psychopathy and Power
I often say that we have found ourselves ruled by psychopaths because we have a system wherein (A) those who are willing to do anything to anyone are rewarded with immense wealth, and (B) immense wealth translates directly to immense political power.
Add in the fact that studies have shown that wealth itself kills off empathy and compassion, and youโve got yourself a perfect recipe for a plutocratic dystopia dominated by antisocial personality disorder.
Iโm not really interested in getting into the specific clinical diagnoses of psychopathy and sociopathy for the purposes of this discussion.
What Iโm talking about here is a specific slice of humanity that is neurologically wired in such a way that they experience the world more as a series of puzzles which can be manipulated around to get them them whatever they want regardless of who it hurts, rather than experiencing a world full of fellow sentient beings with whom you can have deep, meaningful connections and interactions. Not all people who are diagnosed as psychopaths are high-functioning enough to manipulate people at high levels, and not everyone who manipulates people in this way would necessarily be diagnosed as a psychopath or even a sociopath. Feel free to mentally substitute whatever term you prefer.
Whatever you want to call it, people who have this condition (and are able to avoid prison) tend to do quite well for themselves by our societyโs standards. Because they donโt see other people as anything other than tools and resources, they donโt let empathy and compassion stand in their way when viciousness and exploitation will help them achieve their goals. Because they donโt value connections with other people, they donโt see narratives and descriptions as paths toward deeper understanding, but as tools which can be twisted and distorted in order to secure themselves more wealth, status, sex, or whatever else they want. They quickly rise to the top in corporate and financial settings, in media institutions, in government agencies, and in politics. In modern society this ability is a natural advantage that the rest of us simply cannot compete with.
Given that (A) those who lack empathy are able to do whatever it takes to make the most money, (B) studies have shown that immense wealth kills empathy, and (C) money translates directly to political power, it is only natural that we now find ourselves ruled by sociopaths.
โ Caitlin Johnstone โณ (@caitoz) August 19, 2018
But itโs not just our current iteration of society which elevates psychopaths to the top. A casual glance through recorded history all around the world reveals an essentially unbroken track record of genocide, slavery, torture, exploitation and degradation as far as the eye can see, with the driving characters time and again being depraved dominators, conquerors and mass murderers. Research some of the horrors that were inflicted upon the Aboriginal people of Australia and the indigenous populations of the Americas and youโll see that the whole thing was driven by a total lack of empathy for those human beings. Throughout history our main problems have been caused by the way we keep designing systems which elevate psychopaths to positions of leadership, who then go on to make psychopathic decisions.
Given the fact that people who are indifferent to truth or human suffering have always been so adept at ascending to power positions, itโs hard to even imagine a society where we donโt find ourselves ruled by psychopaths. George RR Martin set out to tell a story about a cast of characters all vying for power in an epic game of thrones, and that story wound up being populated almost entirely by psychopaths and sociopaths. It makes for a compelling tale because itโs very believable based on what we all know deep down about human behavior patterns, but itโs also a relentless assault on the audienceโs empathy center.
So what can be done, then? How can we ordinary, feeling, caring human beings protect ourselves from this segment of the population which has been driving us into disaster after disaster since the dawn of civilization before they get us all killed?
Psychopathic leaders have never had any trouble figuring out how to get rid of segments of the population who they deem problematic: they round them up and exterminate them. This would obviously be out of the question for many reasons, not the least because in order to implement it weโd need to become psychopaths ourselves. Weโd be โcuringโ the sickness by becoming the sickness.
Passing a bunch of laws against manipulation and deception wouldnโt work either. Manipulators actually love rules and laws, because they can figure out how to manipulate them and use them to their advantage. Julian Assange is currently awaiting extradition hearings in Belmarsh Prison because a bunch of psychopathic manipulators decided to pretend that it was very, very important to respect a series of laws and rules ranging from bail protocol to whistleblower source protection to government bureaucracy to embassy cat hygiene, and they were able to engineer a result that just so happens to look exactly the same as imprisoning a journalist for exposing US war crimes. All the worst atrocities in human history have been perfectly legal.
Hereโs what a psychopathโs brain looks like http://t.co/pj7qcMVEjx pic.twitter.com/x7repIoRpv
โ Business Insider (@businessinsider) July 22, 2015
Iโve seen some people advocating mandatory brain scans for anyone seeking a leadership position. It is true that a psychopathโs brain shows up differently from the rest of us on a PET scan, and it is possible to envision a future where the collective is so aware of the pernicious dance between psychopathy and power that such a policy might be set and enforced. The problem of course is that manipulators manipulate, and there are many ways to manipulate oneโs way around such a system; theyโve been inserting themselves into unofficial leadership positions for ages, for example, which theyโd never need to be tested for. Plutocrats, advisors and propagandists are all in unofficial leadership positions.
Maybe youโve got your own ideas about this, but I personally canโt think of a single solution to the fundamental problem of psychopaths inserting themselves into positions of power which doesnโt involve drastic, unprecedented changes in our civilization and our culture. Even if you completely tore down capitalism, ended plutocracy and replaced the entire system with a government-planned economy, you would still have positions of power and the absolute certainty of psychopaths manipulating their way into those positions sooner or later.
Iโm talking about changes as drastic as the end of anyone having any power over anybody at all. A society where the idea of having power over anybody became so culturally taboo that even an unequal power dynamic between spouses would be seen as outrageous and ugly, to say nothing of governments or police forces. Such a society is very far from what weโve got now, but it would surely be a very inhospitable environment for psychopathy. There would be no positions of leverage for one to manipulate their way into in order to force others to give them what they want, and if you started trying to create one everybody would immediately point at you and yell โHey! What are you doing? Stop that, thatโs weird! If you want something from us you need to form consensual collaborative relationships with us, just like weโre all doing.โ
Itโs also possible to imagine a culture in which manipulation is seen as an unacceptable taboo which immediately draws public backlash in the same way. In such a culture children would learn from the youngest age what honest and sincere interaction looks like, with examples of deceit and manipulation clearly illustrated for them in all forms as something gravely disordered. Advertising would cease to exist in such a society, as would propaganda in all its forms. And psychopaths would be like fish out of water, because manipulation only works when it isnโt recognized as such.
One can also imagine a culture which values empathy, compassion and helping others instead of valuing wealth, accomplishment and conquest. In such a culture weโd see the ability to connect with people and work for the good of the whole elevated, rather than seeing the ability to do whatever it takes to claw your way to the top of the heap elevated. In such a society psychopathy would actually be an immense disadvantage, rather than an immense advantage.
And that, in my opinion, would be the marker of a healthy society: one in which psychopathy and sociopathy become grave mental handicaps that the afflicted need to actively seek help for. A society that is so empathic and collaborative that having a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder isnโt such a big deal because your neighbors work with you and help you with what you need rather than pushing you to conform and achieve, while having psychopathy or sociopathy is a debilitating disorder which will turn you into a pariah sleeping on park benches if you donโt get help. Right now we have the opposite: people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses are treated like worthless hindrances to a society which values achievement over empathy, while psychopaths and sociopaths almost never seek help unless itโs court-ordered.
A healthy society would flip this. It would reward the things psychopaths are unable to do, and it would reject the things that psychopaths excel at. We can actually look at what psychopaths are and are not good at, and from there kind of reverse-engineer an idea of what a wholesome society would look like.
Is such a society possible? I donโt know. I recently put together some evidence which seems to suggest that our species may be on the verge of a drastic shift in consciousness, which would be the only facilitating agent I can think of that would make such massive cultural changes feasible. We seem to be headed for either huge changes or extinction relatively soon, so if thereโs a future humanity on the other side of whatโs coming, it likely exists because it made extraordinary changes in both its behavior and in its relationship with the phenomenon of psychopathy. Weโll either make the jump or we wonโt.
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Charles Higley
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With the premise that psychopaths are born and sociopaths are made, one could say the Islam is a sociopathic religion or even cult as it teaches people to lack empathy for huge parts of the population including non-Muslims and Muslims of other sects. And, even worse, they have empathy for their own sect members but only as long as their behavior is perceived as acceptable; if not, they can be punished or killed. A religion that says convert or die is a psychopath religion, because it was born that way (in the beginning of Islam Mohammed approached other tribes and said covert or die) that trains sociopaths.
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Herb Rose
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Hi Charles,
Letโs not ignore the Christians. During the crusades they killed all the infidels, starting with the jews in their own countries. In the inquisition that saved people by, after torturing them into making a confession of heresy, they forgave them then promptly burned them at the stake so they could not relapse thereby ensuring they went to heaven,
Psychopaths use religion to commit atrocities since if God did not want them to do these things they wouldnโt be able to do them.
John Rockefeller missed a train to a meeting in New York. The train crashed and all aboard it were killed. Rockefeller took this as a sign from God that he was chosen by God for important work and his piety allowed him to destroy anyone in his way by whatever means necessary.
People find noble reasons to justify doing what they want to do.
Herb
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Jeffrey Stewart
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Herb, you have listed historical events.
However, you reach conclusions based on your atheist belief.
Pilgrims
wonder at the spectacle of buildings, pay their tithes and practice in their beliefs. The culture survives BECAUSE faith in religion.
Otherwise, you are entitled to demean religion โ you are not the first nor the last.
โLike a grain of sandโฆโ
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Herb Rose
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Hi Jeffrey,
I have no problems with peopleโs religious beliefs. I have problems with churches who use peoples beliefs to promote their own interests. What a person believes is what is good for them. The problems come when they insist that their beliefs are right for everyone else. God is not limited to your concept and everyone has a belief that is suited for them. To try to homogenize those beliefs and make them a credo that all must conform to is what churches do and their efforts are about power and control not religion.
Herb
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tom0mason
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At the risk of voicing an unacceptable taboo, all this psychologizing BS is just that BS!
People are individuals and have unique virtues and vices all of their own.
All this clownish pigeon-holing, and demented categorizing of perceived personal traits is just job creation for psychologists (and all the other pycho-trained adherents). Peopleโs personalities are NOT arranged in a kind of periodic table of types, people vary greatly, and as their life proceeds they experience more of the world and other people, so they change.
This latest craze about โempathyโ is just more of that BS.
So you internalize how you think someone might feel about some circumstances โ thatโs all about you and NOT about the other person!
โEmpathyโ is a selfish belief whereby you believe that you know how someone else thinks and feels โ NO YOU DONโT. You can only know how you may feel in someone else position . You are not the other person and have not had their life experiences โ โwalk a mile in my shoesโ.
Have sympathy for someone in difficult circumstances, take measures to try and alleviate those circumstances if you feel you can and must, but donโt run around saying โI know how you feelโ or worse โI feel your painโ because you donโt. So stop running around pretending you know how others feel and develop a better sense of sympathy. A sense of sympathy that allows you to accurately judge when and when not to take action to alleviate the pain and suffering of others. Be generous about other peopleโs failing for maybe they have jet to experience a life changing moment when they can change for the better.
On the whole most people are trying to be good for others and themselves.
Some others are perceived as bad or wicked because they are just utterly selfish. Only the utterly selfish have trouble with self reassessment, and change very little as their life proceeds.
Hence Soros โ once and SS Officer always and SS Officer.
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tom0mason
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The cultural marxists authority figures wish to foster emotional weakness on as many people as possible. This makes the populace less resilient and self-reliant, more dependent (on the authority), easily scared (by the authority), and so easily controlled (by the authority).
So sheeple donโt pull back the curtain, unfilter your mind and emote more and continue to empathize with everyone and everything โ you know it make sense, your authority told you so.
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