Psychopathy: Our Leaders are Psychopaths
June 29, 2007
Update Feb 1, 2008: I have been informed that the rate of psychopathy is actually closer to 5% (thanks Mike). OK, at that rate we would have 1.5 million psychopaths in Canada. Now that's a scary thought.
I have recently realized that the elite and most, but not all, of our business and political leaders are psychopaths. Once you realize it, it seems so obvious.
Psychologists estimate that one in every 100 people is unfeeling enough to qualify as a psychopath. That amounts to 300,000 psychopaths in Canada alone.
What is a psychopath?
"Using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists we can understand that they are self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; breach social and legal standards to get their way; do not suffer from guilt; and can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism." To me this sounds pretty much like every business and political leader in the nation. Actors that act in their own self-interest, feel no guilt and lie all the time.
From Wikipedia for what it's worth:
- Superficial charm and above average intelligence.
- Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking.
- Absence of nervousness or neurotic manifestations.
- Unreliability.
- Untruthfulness and insincerity.
- Lack of remorse or shame.
- Antisocial behavior without apparent compunction.
- Poor judgment and failure to learn from experience.
- Pathological egocentricity and incapacity to love.
- General poverty in major affective reactions.
- Specific loss of insight.
- Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations.
- Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink, and sometimes without.
- Suicide threats rarely carried out.
- Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated.
- Failure to follow any life plan.
Again, you can see our leaders - charming, unreliable, untruthful, insincere, lacking remorse, egocentric, and fail to learn from experience. Apparently, the prerequisites
for election to office.
When you consider the current culture this makes sense. We live in a corporate culture created and dominated by psychopaths which rewards psychopathic, cutthroat behaviour and punishes human, caring behaviour. It makes sense that psychopaths would be naturally attracted to business, finance and politics where ruthlessness, lying and betrayal is rewarded.
Moreover, by rewarding this behaviour among those that are not naturally psychopathic,
they have created a general culture of dehumanization where if you are cruel and unfeeling towards your co-workers and able to "do what it takes to get the job done" you are rewarded.
Its a culture of predators and prey. And make no mistake they are the predators
and you are the prey.
I'll leave it to you to reach your own conclusions about which of our political
and business elite are psychopaths. You don't have to work very hard - wherever
you look the pre-eminent business and political leaders of our nations are psychotic.
Sad but true.
The saddest thing is that most people will trust and believe that their leaders
have their best interests at heart when they clearly don't.
It has always been this way but it doesn't have to alway be this way.