Psychopaths in society and in power positions

[Random witch]

Given the amount of psychopaths there are in society, their attraction to power positions and the difficulty to spot them due to their good pretnse. Would it be possible in future to have relatively more healthy and integrated society despite psychopaths existence?

Would early education of people to spot psychopathic behaviour in order not deal or trust them would be effective or it just would make psychopaths more sofisticated and harmful?

 

 

[vizual]

You should have people by their actions and the results they produce. Labelling someone a psychopath is not going to create a better world.

I’ve also been called an asshole, psychopath, bad person, heartless etc. Is that true? No. The truth is that sometimes people are bitter and they will look to blame someone for their failures. Another truth can be that I made a mistake or bad judgment and that person used that mistake to label me as something evil.

If an employer fires an employee doesn’t mean the employer is an evil psychopath, but it can feel that way from the perspective of the fired employee. It all depends on the circumstance. And the more powerful the employer is, the note difficult positions he had to make.

It’s easy to be a ‘good’ person if you have no responsibilities, because then you can’t really fuck things up with a single bad decision.

[Preety_India]

Society needs Psychopaths. 

Psychopaths are highly intelligent and functional people. They have a complex brain. 

Psychopaths aren't just someone who commits a crime. Psychopaths are also those who organize like a mafia. This is necessary to take effective decisions during war. 

If any country becomes Stage Turquoise, it will be destroyed within minutes. Therefore I always used to emphasize that you need stage Red as an armour, if you have a God you always need a godfather. That godfather is a gangster, a psychopath. But magically this same Psychopath is protecting you from other psychopaths. 

 

That's why in Hinduism we have Kali and snake. These look intimidating on purpose but their role is protective. We have a concept in Hinduism which means you need evil to defeat evil, poison to beat poison. 

You cannot beat a psychopath with a Saint. You need another psychopath for the job. It follows from the popular saying - "it takes one to know one." 

 

[PurpleTree]

it's a huge issue imo

these people will always rise 

let's say there are 500 peaceful pacifist people, 1 psychopath with a goal could easily terrorise and bully them or destroy them

[abundance]

5 hours ago, Preety_India said:

Society needs Psychopaths. 

Psychopaths are highly intelligent and functional people. They have a complex brain. 

Psychopaths aren't just someone who commits a crime. Psychopaths are also those who organize like a mafia. This is necessary to take effective decisions during war. 

If any country becomes Stage Turquoise, it will be destroyed within minutes. Therefore I always used to emphasize that you need stage Red as an armour, if you have a God you always need a godfather. That godfather is a gangster, a psychopath. But magically this same Psychopath is protecting you from other psychopaths. 

 

That's why in Hinduism we have Kali and snake. These look intimidating on purpose but their role is protective. We have a concept in Hinduism which means you need evil to defeat evil, poison to beat poison. 

You cannot beat a psychopath with a Saint. You need another psychopath for the job. It follows from the popular saying - "it takes one to know one." 

 

I disagree. For hundreds of thousands of years humans organized their societies in a way that kept sociopaths and psychopaths in check. And we did just fine. Psychopaths holding positions of power is a relatively new and unique phenomenon relative to the amount of time humans have organized themselves on this planet.

It is my opinion that our current civilization incentivizes psychopaths and in some ways necessitates their existence. And look at where it has brought us. Yes, we have advance technology but the suffering of humanity and all the living beings we share the planet with is immense. And we're actually on the precipice of destroying all of it. 

Edited March 3, 2022 by abundance

[Phil King]

11 minutes ago, abundance said:

For hundreds of thousands of years humans organized their societies in a way that kept sociopaths and psychopaths in check. And we did just fine

How were psychopaths kept in check hundreds and thousands of years ago? and how was society fine? Society was way more brutal than you could ever imagine hundreds and thousands of years ago. Emperor Nero was a psychopath who led a genocide of catholics. How was he kept in check. Back than, psychopaths could literally be born into a position of absolute power. 

Edited March 3, 2022 by Phil King

[BlueOak]

I've learned people get the term by not acknowledging reality and demonizing others.
I've also learned people give the term by not acknowleding reality and demonizing others.

The best breakdown I saw on psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists was:
 

Its estimated in 1 in 200 people are actual psychopaths, more become sociopaths but that is a learned behavior. 

[gettoefl]

exercise healthy skepticism towards everything and everyone

trust but only if you verify

all the answers are inside you

be enslaved to no one, likewise be wary not to enslave others with you own behavior, let no one fall dependent on you

the above is what it means to be a mature adult

[abundance]

1 hour ago, Phil King said:

How were psychopaths kept in check hundreds and thousands of years ago? and how was society fine? Society was way more brutal than you could ever imagine hundreds and thousands of years ago. Emperor Nero was a psychopath who led a genocide of catholics. How was he kept in check. Back than, psychopaths could literally be born into a position of absolute power. 

I am talking about how we organized ourselves much further back in time. Many forager groups had no designated absolute leader and everything was equally shared. That isn't to say life wasn't hard because it was. However, if a member of the tribe/group became too boastful and prideful, they would be ostracized and shamed. There is even evidence to suggest some early more complex societies weren't repressive, had no central leadership, and therefore no absolute ruling psychopath to control everyone.  Over time we organized ourselves into less egalitarian societies and have mostly forgotten that its possible to organize ourselves in any other way.

My overall point is that psychopaths aren't required to maintain a complex society and move it forward. We ultimately have a collective choice to choose how we want to organize ourselves. I think this is something we have forgotten as a collective.  There is nothing set in stone that says humans must have an absolute leader at the helm to progress.

 

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by abundance

[gettoefl]

some good musings

https://www.reddit.com/r/spirituality/comments/t5j7rl/why_does_god_create_psychopaths_and_then_condemn/

[Random witch]

8 hours ago, vizual said:

You should have people by their actions and the results they produce. Labelling someone a psychopath is not going to create a better world.

I’ve also been called an asshole, psychopath, bad person, heartless etc. Is that true? No. The truth is that sometimes people are bitter and they will look to blame someone for their failures. Another truth can be that I made a mistake or bad judgment and that person used that mistake to label me as something evil.

If an employer fires an employee doesn’t mean the employer is an evil psychopath, but it can feel that way from the perspective of the fired employee. It all depends on the circumstance. And the more powerful the employer is, the note difficult positions he had to make.

It’s easy to be a ‘good’ person if you have no responsibilities, because then you can’t really fuck things up with a single bad decision.

But there are real people around us who have no real empathy for other people, who gain pleasure from others' suffering or are very indifferent to it, and at the same time, they make people around them believe that they have good intentions. It is dangerous to have a real psychopath neighbor but it is much more dangerous to have undercovered psychopaths in power positins. This is probably the case, just by observing our world.

7 hours ago, Preety_India said:

Society needs Psychopaths. 

Psychopaths are highly intelligent and functional people. They have a complex brain. 

Psychopaths aren't just someone who commits a crime. Psychopaths are also those who organize like a mafia. This is necessary to take effective decisions during war. 

If any country becomes Stage Turquoise, it will be destroyed within minutes. Therefore I always used to emphasize that you need stage Red as an armour, if you have a God you always need a godfather. That godfather is a gangster, a psychopath. But magically this same Psychopath is protecting you from other psychopaths. 

 

That's why in Hinduism we have Kali and snake. These look intimidating on purpose but their role is protective. We have a concept in Hinduism which means you need evil to defeat evil, poison to beat poison. 

You cannot beat a psychopath with a Saint. You need another psychopath for the job. It follows from the popular saying - "it takes one to know one." 

 

I'm glad for them that they are highly intelligent (although I read somewhere that they aren't more intelligent than the average person and even less intelligent), and that they are highly functional or even complex. But society can exist without them.

I'm glad that they have the ability to be so cool while making decisions during wars, but why do we need wars at all? And aren't they the types that create those wars in the first place?

I don't know much about the Turquoise stage, but I assume this stage wouldn't be destroyed within minutes, since it would integrate stage Red, Blue, Orange, and Yellow very well, so it should be a very powerful country of intelligent, strong and flexible people. Sages who are also warriors and strategy wizards.

It does make sense that it's easier to beat the enemy that resembles you, but when you are a whole person who was integrated what we call the 'evil' and the 'good', you have the flexibility to be good with good people, and bad with bad people.

 

7 hours ago, Knowledge Hoarder said:

Emphaths are also capable of cruelty.

I'm sure we are all capable of it in various degrees, depending on the circumstances. It might be useful in emergency cases.

For empaths, it's very difficult to cause someone else harms because they literally feel the pain of others. Empaths also have very developed emotions like guilt, shame, and regret, and if they do wrong, their conscientiousness might torture them and prevent them from causing harm in the future. Psychopaths are the complete opposite. They can do harm forever, without feeling any regret and they won't stop until someone stops them. It is more dangerous to have psychopaths in power positions that are responsible for millions of people rather than have empaths with the same responsibility.

4 hours ago, PurpleTree said:

it's a huge issue imo

these people will always rise 

let's say there are 500 peaceful pacifist people, 1 psychopath with a goal could easily terrorise and bully them or destroy them

So you say that humans are doomed to be bullied by other psychopaths humans forever? That there is no hope that it would change?

 

2 hours ago, Phil King said:

How were psychopaths kept in check hundreds and thousands of years ago? and how was society fine? Society was way more brutal than you could ever imagine hundreds and thousands of years ago. Emperor Nero was a psychopath who led a genocide of catholics. How was he kept in check. Back than, psychopaths could literally be born into a position of absolute power. 

There are assumptions about that, that psychopaths were on check for millions of years.

I know it sounds odd, but think about it. For most of our existence as a species, we were at the purple stage, we lived in tribes.

What you've described on the cruelty of societies thousands of years ago, is relatively new to our species, although is a natural stage of our evolutionary development.

I don't want to idealize stage purple and say that there was no cruelty at all because there probably was. But the conditions of this stage and its characteristics weren't encouraging psychopathic behavior as much as in later stages. In the essence of the structure of a tribe, everyone has to contribute what he or she can, and you must share what you have. You can't hide it because there is no privacy at this stage and also you're dependent on the tribe. If you are too greedy, arrogant, or heartless to your tribe, the tribe simply will abandon you because you're a burden. 

Psychopaths often tend to be arrogant, greedy, heartless, so that makes sense.

I believe that psychopaths began to thrive only when tribes started to fight and trade with each other, (Due to limited territory food and resources) their personality type became essential for the survival of the tribe.

2 hours ago, BlueOak said:

I've learned people get the term by not acknowledging reality and demonizing others.
I've also learned people give the term by not acknowleding reality and demonizing others.

The best breakdown I saw on psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists was:
 

Its estimated in 1 in 200 people are actual psychopaths, more become sociopaths but that is a learned behavior. 

I don't argue and it may be the case, 1 psychopath to 200 people sounds a little, but don't forget that they are attracted to power positions and you might find in power positions a higher percentage of them. 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by Random witch

[Phil King]

1 hour ago, Random witch said:

I don't want to idealize stage purple and say that there was no cruelty at all because there probably was. But the conditions of this stage and its characteristics weren't encouraging psychopathic behavior as much as in later stages.

This is just not true. There was so much more cruelty and brutality in earlier tribes. Early human society was not like the garden of Eden where everyone was eating fruit and having sex. Survival was so difficult and death was all over the place. The lower you go on Spiral dynamics, people tend to be more psychopathic and selfish. In the tribal days of stage red and purple, it was probably necessary to have psychopaths and warlords. There were no laws or police discouraging killing and raiding rival tribes so you needed people who were willing to kill.

Today psychopaths cannot go around murdering whoever pisses them off because we built a society that extremely discourages that. So instead of killing people, this psychopaths find different ways of gaining and abusing power. In a stage orange society like the USA, this looks like wall street executives and CEO's who are ruthless and metaphorically step on peoples necks to get to the top(Which is a lot more preferable to murder and pillaging)

1 hour ago, abundance said:

I am talking about how we organized ourselves much further back in time. Many forager groups had no designated absolute leader and everything was equally shared.

Those forager groups who had no leader and shared everything equally would be slaughtered by psychopathic warlords. If you look at tribes in Africa or other stage red and purple societies, they will slaughter you if you believe in a different god or are of a different culture.

The small forager groups without a central leader is also a poor example of how to organize a society without psychopaths. How could you organize hundreds of millions of people without a leader when 90% of people are sheep who want to be led. Those people will always follow the person with the strongest and most compelling vision which usually are psychopaths

Overall, as society progresses into higher SD stages, psychopaths will be less and less common, but psychopaths tend to pave the way for higher stages. 

Edited March 3, 2022 by Phil King

[Reciprocality]

@Phil King That stage red is a more developed stage than beige does not make it less cruel.

The beige and purple societies hundred of thousands of years ago worked far more empathetically towards eachother ingroup-wise than the emperial states did outgroup wise.

If you define psychopathy to be the mere lack of empathy towards particular other groups then you have defined it out of the psychological context of not having the capacity in the first place.

At no point so far as we know were there more psychopaths than there are today, and certainly no substantial difference, unless the words gets defined by the very object you have now found it useful to be labeled under. As in constituting no meaning relative to its actual use case.

That there are no substantial difference in proclivity (not capacity) to be empathetic towards others of the same species can be seen in primates and in the animal kingdom in general.

Empathy is inherent to every stage, the only substantial thing that changes in this axis is what gets defined as in and out group.

[hello1234]

@Random witch I think you need to check for empathy, if a person doesn’t appear to have empathy, they should not be allowed to be in positions of power where human lives/wellbeing are concerned. There should be standardized tests of empathy, most likely using technology to measure brain responses to certain stimuli so that no one can be fooled.

[PurpleTree]

3 hours ago, Random witch said:

 

So you say that humans are doomed to be bullied by other psychopaths humans forever? That there is no hope that it would change?

how would we get them out? they cling to power etc. would we need to become violent? then also we could become the bullies.

certainly i would love to see a world with empathic/conscious people in positions of power

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by PurpleTree

[Leo Gura]

Most of the people who you hate and disagree with are not psychopaths, they just have a different worldview and survival agenda than you.

[Random witch]

2 hours ago, hello1234 said:

@Random witch I think you need to check for empathy, if a person doesn’t appear to have empathy, they should not be allowed to be in positions of power where human lives/wellbeing are concerned. There should be standardized tests of empathy, most likely using technology to measure brain responses to certain stimuli so that no one can be fooled.

I think that's a good idea, to check the empathy level by technology

 

1 hour ago, PurpleTree said:

how would we get them out? they cling to power etc. would we need to become violent? then also we could become the bullies.

certainly i would love to see a world with empathic/conscious people in positions of power

 

I don't think either that it would be useful to use violence. I didn't implied to that. But there might be some solution... Or not?

 

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Most of the people who you hate and disagree with are not psychopaths, they just have a different worldview and survival agenda than you.

I didn't refer to psychopaths as a offensive name to people who I hate or disagree with but to people with some fixed personality traits who are antisocial, not empathetic, manipulative, indifferent to others' suffer, extremely opportunists with superficial chram.

[gettoefl]

9 hours ago, Random witch said:

 

I didn't refer to psychopaths as a offensive name to people who I hate or disagree with but to people with some fixed personality traits who are antisocial, not empathetic, manipulative, indifferent to others' suffer, extremely opportunists with superficial chram.

good list ... seems that the only difference between a psychopath and a realised master is that the former wants to exercise power over you to be your leader to force you to live your life a certain way and therefore will use the law or violent means to achieve such a goal ... which is good to know 

[axiom]

23 hours ago, Random witch said:

Given the amount of psychopaths there are in society, their attraction to power positions and the difficulty to spot them due to their good pretnse. Would it be possible in future to have relatively more healthy and integrated society despite psychopaths existence?

Would early education of people to spot psychopathic behaviour in order not deal or trust them would be effective or it just would make psychopaths more sofisticated and harmful?

 

 

This in itself is harmful. 'Psychopathy' is hugely overdiagnosed, particularly by those reeling from painful breakups. The buzzwords peddled by mindless media pundits during the years of the Trump administration were "narcissist" and "psychopath". And sadly, this zealous appetite for labelling with impunity spread out into the wider culture.

Early education to "spot psychopathy" would merely serve to increase paranoia. And paranoia is the real problem we're facing.