This article (originally posted here: https://crust.piefed.social/c/long_reads_rss@crust.piefed.social/p/128158/mefi-how-to-spot-a-psychopath) is intereting because the research behind it is interesting, and as most of you assumed on sight it goes where you think it does, but it actually goes further.
I had not heard of or considered this before but it references:
The idea of a “pathocracy”, a democracy of normal people taken over by psychopaths, was conceived by an obscure Polish psychologist, Andrew Lobaczewski, who had lived under both the Nazis and then Soviet-era communists. His ideas never landed, because “the psychology publishers thought it was too political, and the political publishers thought it was too psychological,” according to editor and blogger Harrison Koehli. It’s unfashionable to the point of being taboo in psychiatry and psychology now to ascribe personality disorders to public figures. “One of the perils of bringing psychology into politics is that it’s very easy for anyone with any given political perspective to look at their political enemies or rivals and say: ‘OK, well, they’re all psychopaths,’” says Koehli. There’s also the Goldwater Rule, which established as a psychiatric principle that professionals are not allowed to diagnose public figures they haven’t had clinical contact with or met (this was after 1,189 psychiatrists declared Barry Goldwater unfit to be president in the 1964 election). Viding, however, finds the fixation with diagnosis perhaps irrelevant in this context. “I always find the obsession with diagnosing these people interesting. You don’t need to diagnose them, there are a set of personality traits, and you can recognise individuals with those traits. If someone’s in political power, you can see those exemplified in behaviour, and most people are perfectly capable of making an assessment of what that signifies.”
It’s like a light going on over “why does it feel like we’re living in crazytown?” It’s not just the one guy.
The article is worth a read.
They don’t necessarily seek it, Capitalism rewards ruthless behavior.
CEOs cannot generally become CEOs without having to leave their empathy at the door. Guess who can’t feel empathy to begin with? Eureka.
If capitalism rewards ruthless behavior, why do we teach our kids in schools to be nice to each other?
Because it makes it easier to control them. Pro-social behavior should be valued and prioritzed but there is also a risk people become too people-pleasing and are not taught to protect themselves and importantly not how to be an “asshole” when necessary.
All three are necessary but the last is its own form of dark magic.
I mean… It would be in the interest of those with power, who are more likely to be psychopaths, to encourage empathy development in the broader public.
So we can blame “bad behavior” on children instead of their shitty parents or the shitty systems that make life unbearable.
How many schools teach kindness? Mostly, the schools I went to taught that “if you defend yourself, you will be punished.” “If you do everything right but someone else won’t be quiet, the whole class will be punished.”
I went to public schools in the bible belt. It was nightmarish. School shootings are tragic, but unsurprising given how children are treated.
It was called “citizenship”, we received it as a separate grade in public grade school, but that was in California.
Guy who went through the all grades in California, never heard of that. Maybe its cause I’m in the Inland Empire or maybe it predated or postdated me but yeah.
What makes you think the elites’ schools do the same?
According to search, private grade schools also teach citizenship, and that it includes honesty, kindness, sharing, and following rules.
The sociopaths need people to follow rules so they can be controlled.
Oh, honey…
That’s not an answer. Humanonearth’s hypothesis was that we have a capitalist system that is predatory, so then I wondered (and let me rephrase slightly), why don’t we teach our kids in schools to lie and deceive, basically to be psychopaths, if that’s what brings in the big bucks in the corporate world?
Your response made me think of the following line in the article which I’ve formatted as bold:
I assume we don’t teach kids to be like psychopaths because the system only can take so many. Unlike the image portrayed by propaganda, even American life doesn’t mainly consist of competition but of cooperation. There is competition to fill roles in companies, sure. But once in a role one is supposed to cooperate with coworkers to achieve something larger than one could alone.
If everybody saw life through the lens of a psychopath I guess we’d end up in a Mad Max scenario. Modern cooperative society with a system of division of labour simply wouldn’t work anymore.
On the other hand I’m morbidly curious how a society entirely without psychopaths would look like. Would it be better or worse? (And for wich definitions of “better” and “worse”). I can only assume we’d have much less wars, for one.
It wasn’t an answer! I think this is the most text I’ve ever gotten back for a two word response, I’m proud of you and your ability to ascribe deep and significant meaning to it.