Psychopathic Leaders
I'm not really interested in getting into the specific clinical diagnoses of psychopathy and sociopathy for the purposes of this discussion. What I'm 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 society's standards. Because they don't see other people as anything other than tools and resources, they don't let empathy and compassion stand in their way when viciousness and exploitation will help them achieve their goals. Because they don't value connections with other people, they don't 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.
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) August 19, 2018
But it's 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 you'll 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, it's hard to even imagine a society where we don't 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 it's very believable based on what we all know deep down about human behavior patterns, but it's also a relentless assault on the audience's 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 we'd need to become psychopaths ourselves. We'd be "curing" the sickness by becoming the sickness.
Passing a bunch of laws against manipulation and deception wouldn't 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.
Here's what a psychopath's brain looks like http://t.co/pj7qcMVEjx pic.twitter.com/x7repIoRpv
— Business Insider (@businessinside
