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Now That We’ve Incentivized Sociopaths–Guess What Happens Next
Now That We’ve Incentivized Sociopaths–Guess What Happens Next
As long as central banks create and distribute trillions in conscience-free credit to conscience-free financiers and corporations, the incentives for sociopathy only increase.
“Sociopath” is a word we now encounter regularly in the mainstream media, but what does it mean?
Here is a list of 16 traits, many of which are visible in lionized corporate and political leaders and entrepreneurs.
One key trait is a lack of moral responsibility or conscience; the sociopath feels no remorse if he/she takes advantage of people or exploits them.
Sociopaths are masters of superficial charm, intelligence and confidence, and adept at massaging or misrepresenting reality up to and including outright lying to persuade others or get their way.
Like all psychological syndromes (manic depression, autism, bipolar disorder, etc.), there is a wide spectrum of sociopathological traits, some of which may offer some adaptive benefits (and hence their continued presence in the human genome). In other words, an individual can have a few of the traits in greater or lesser proportions.
Thus the modern BBC Sherlock Holmes (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) describes himself as a “high-functioning sociopath” (though many contest this diagnosis of the original Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories).
Anyone who has read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs can readily see manifestations of sociopathy in Jobs: his famous “reality distortion field,” his refusal to accept that he’d fathered a daughter, his lack of empathy, his wild emotional swings (from verbal abuse to weeping), his dietary extremes, his charm, so quickly turned on or off, his uneven parenting, and so on. His obsessive-compulsive behavior was also on full display. Yet Jobs is lauded and even worshiped as a genius and unparalleled entrepreneur. Was this the result of his sociopathological traits, or something that arose despite them?
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Sociopathy & Politics
COMMENT: What you discuss in “Are we Rewriting Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf” and “Hillary Advocates Violence Unless Democrats Win” are the ice people described in “The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout.” These are people with no conscience. Because your blog reminded me of the book, I am re-reading it. As the author says:
“Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task.”
“If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100 percent that you are dealing with a sociopath.”
There are clearly those who fit this profile in your two blogs. I recall, many decades ago, where some complained that making certain groups “other” made it easy to harm them because they weren’t then seen as human. Making groups “other” is clearly a deliberate strategy being used here.
I believe there are also troubled others whose consciences have been numbed by indoctrination and propaganda from such leaders to believe the violence they do by eliminating or silencing “others” serves a greater good. Nowadays, many of their leaders call out openly for these zombies to act.
Having worked with a sociopath, I initially fell for her pity party on how she was abused earlier in life, I fell for her sweetness and vulnerability and became friends. Then I saw her engineer a complaint to ruin a man to achieve her business goal. She also tried to ruin me, but the details are not important now.
It was only luck that I saw the author being interviewed at the time and realized immediately what type of person I was actually dealing with: a velvet-covered razor blade who uses and abuses people’s genuine sympathy and concern to achieve an end.
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