Psychopaths can be drawn to power hierarchies. That surely includes government institutions. Though lobby groups are more likely to suffer such infiltration: as they involve licensed bad behaviour plus power without accountability.
There is also a reason why past societies tended to have character tests. To try and select out the morally disordered.
Interesting and thought-provoking essay, Harrison.
Once the ability to see how psychopathy is a thread running through the warp and woof of society's fabric has been obtained, it's no longer possible to "unsee" the behaviors employed by psychopaths.
As you point out, it is common for people to go to great lengths to redefine those behaviors and develop apologia for them.
Having observed the consequences of my own history of redefinition and apology for the psychopathic behavior of others, I cannot look askance at others for doing so.
We can see how this works, quite readily, in the everyday conduct of business. Take just one activity; dismissal of employees. One manager will justify retaining a psychopathic employee by focusing on that individual's metrics and simultaneously ignoring that employee's effect on the metrics of others, and of the psychopath's methodology employed in achieving those metrics.
And then, there is the retention of psychopathic managers. One manager dismisses employees with reluctance, and only after careful evaluation, part of which will be analysis of the individual's affect on the performance of others. This managerial type rightly views dismissal as a potential personal good for other employees, but views it only as a necessary duty. The psychopathic manager, on the other hand, enjoys dismissal for the distress it may bring, often delaying a necessary dismissal because the employee causes enjoyable distress to other workers while remaining employed by the organization.
Many business owners knowingly hire and retain psychopaths, thinking that they can control them and direct their conscienceless activities in furtherance of profit. These owners seldom conceptualize their psychopathic hires as such, but that's part of the way ordinary people deceive themselves on a daily basis.
Once seen, it cannot be unseen, only obscured. To think that politics is excluded from this dynamic, is delusional.
This article came at just the right time. Hubby is working from home for the rest of the year and needed to get some “training” done. Some of it was fairly innocuous, dealing with certain work software, etc. But the biggest section dealt solely with Anti-Harassment training. He found himself getting worked up over the first section early on; and curious, I asked him to show me the material. Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. Not having worked in any kind of major corporation for many a decade, it was truly shocking to see the kind of thinking that is going on in this world, and how relentlessly they brainwash/manipulate the employees.
I cannot help but think that the people up at the corporate top, those running H.R. departments and DEI officers are psychopaths. It was glaringly obvious to me they are grooming all the underlings to deny reality and accept their new reality of racism and oppression and victimhood everywhere. To go along with that there were repeated calls for the whole “see something, say something” culture. You must never try to handle it on your own, but at the same time it called for one to feel obligated to insert yourself into anything you observe (even if not a participant); no “potential” illegal or hurtful actions can be ignored. The ultimate answer was to report whatever you thought was “problematic”. Literally a call to arms for all snitches and rats. Psychopathic manipulation at its finest. It’s causing us all to devour and attack one another, while the evil ones above the plebes no doubt sit back with pleasure and sneer and laugh at how gullible we are. All while self-replicating new batches of psychopaths-in-training.
My better half thought it was hysterical as the expletives flew from my mouth in a nonstop stream. And he has been subjected to a steady stream of this BS for decades now. Helps me understand how so many have literally been programmed to view the world in a very false way and believe whatever someone above you tells you as the only truth which can be held. It’s turned business into the perfect hunting ground for these predators.
Upon reflection I feel the need to ask, is it possible to make people psychopathic by constant brainwashing and psychological manipulation? Or is that a bridge too far? It sure looks like we are overrun with them at every level. Not that all psychopaths are equal. I guess like many fish they grow to the size of their tank.
“Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds an awful lot like the work done by intelligence agencies and Big Tech.”
Zing ! Nice one, there are a bunch of PhD theses to be written there. And you once met a researcher who was adamant that there couldn’t be any psychopaths in the CIA. Well let’s consider that for a moment just using simple inductive reasoning.
I think it’s clear that a psychopath could be a very successful secret AGENT if not necessarily a controller.
It’s a documented fact that Western Intelligence agencies have used organized crime networks, American/Italian Mafia, Asian Triads, South American cartels and so on. Secret intelligence agencies and secret criminal societies are a natural partnership, they both operate in the same shadowy underworld, they do the same jobs, such as moving contraband, money and people covertly, creating false identities and shell companies, collecting and creating compromising material, and occasionally causing people to permanently disappear.
Those criminal organizations would seem to offer excellent job opportunities for psychopaths. They’re cool under pressure, can lie easily, adopt false personas convincingly and can carry out all sorts of objectionable tasks without qualms or hesitation.
Give a Mafioso a pistol and he’s an assassin, give him a camera and he’s a spy. It’s a versatile skill set. So why could such a psychopath not also be found working for a covert government agency ?
How close is an undercover cop to a criminal ? It would seem that they need at least a little dog’s blood in their veins to succeed. The guard dog, police dog and sheep dog are literally cousins to the wolf, that’s why they’re so effective.
All that remains to be seen is how high such a wolf could rise in the organization and that would depend on the organization itself. Weren’t the Mafia Dons once street level triggermen themselves ?
Thank you for the response. I had some girlfriends who kind of led me down a bad path as a teenager. Makes sense. And I snapped out hard eventually. So reason for hope despite the parasitic psychopaths.
Somewhere I read that during caveman days, when someone was determined to be a psychopath, the group together would run them over a cliff. Sounds like the proper course to follow if the group wishes to avoid becoming a victim.
Nov 21, 2022·edited Nov 21, 2022Liked by Harrison Koehli
Wow! So, are our current politicians just completely self delusional and incapable of seeing the lies they have to tell themselves, or are they psychopaths?
Love Robert D. Hare - just now re-listening to "Without Conscience", sparking my interest to get into more psychopathy study after a long time looking at schizophrenia (although I feel I've only scratched the surface there too!).
Sounds like you've been studying psychopathy for many years - would that be right?
"Their extreme narcissism was apparently mistaken for a “positive leadership trait,” and the murky morality and internal chaos typical of the mergers, acquisitions, and takeover environment seemed perfect for their type".
I was targeted by one such narcissist. My CEO fell for his lie, Result I was fired.
I am almost completely convinced psychopathology is a norm of the economic system and not an aberration. Not the most extreme, which is a norm of the Organization Man, but in a milder form of lying or misrepresenting. In a way I think it has to be this way to sell a product vs. the competitor selling a product. No employer rewards a salesperson for not meeting quota and no employer is overly concerned how quota is met. Bottom line is not social benifits but private gain. We admire clever tounged sharpies. I think back to the Confidence Man by Melville.
I was somewhat expecting - but not, at the same time due to evolving information - that you might be leading up to analyzing SBF and his part in the FTX-Alameda fiasco. There’s definitely something off about that boy. Nonetheless, I appreciate you doing this Substack, Harrison; I’m learning much!
Psychopaths can be drawn to power hierarchies. That surely includes government institutions. Though lobby groups are more likely to suffer such infiltration: as they involve licensed bad behaviour plus power without accountability.
There is also a reason why past societies tended to have character tests. To try and select out the morally disordered.
Interesting and thought-provoking essay, Harrison.
Once the ability to see how psychopathy is a thread running through the warp and woof of society's fabric has been obtained, it's no longer possible to "unsee" the behaviors employed by psychopaths.
As you point out, it is common for people to go to great lengths to redefine those behaviors and develop apologia for them.
Having observed the consequences of my own history of redefinition and apology for the psychopathic behavior of others, I cannot look askance at others for doing so.
We can see how this works, quite readily, in the everyday conduct of business. Take just one activity; dismissal of employees. One manager will justify retaining a psychopathic employee by focusing on that individual's metrics and simultaneously ignoring that employee's effect on the metrics of others, and of the psychopath's methodology employed in achieving those metrics.
And then, there is the retention of psychopathic managers. One manager dismisses employees with reluctance, and only after careful evaluation, part of which will be analysis of the individual's affect on the performance of others. This managerial type rightly views dismissal as a potential personal good for other employees, but views it only as a necessary duty. The psychopathic manager, on the other hand, enjoys dismissal for the distress it may bring, often delaying a necessary dismissal because the employee causes enjoyable distress to other workers while remaining employed by the organization.
Many business owners knowingly hire and retain psychopaths, thinking that they can control them and direct their conscienceless activities in furtherance of profit. These owners seldom conceptualize their psychopathic hires as such, but that's part of the way ordinary people deceive themselves on a daily basis.
Once seen, it cannot be unseen, only obscured. To think that politics is excluded from this dynamic, is delusional.
This article came at just the right time. Hubby is working from home for the rest of the year and needed to get some “training” done. Some of it was fairly innocuous, dealing with certain work software, etc. But the biggest section dealt solely with Anti-Harassment training. He found himself getting worked up over the first section early on; and curious, I asked him to show me the material. Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. Not having worked in any kind of major corporation for many a decade, it was truly shocking to see the kind of thinking that is going on in this world, and how relentlessly they brainwash/manipulate the employees.
I cannot help but think that the people up at the corporate top, those running H.R. departments and DEI officers are psychopaths. It was glaringly obvious to me they are grooming all the underlings to deny reality and accept their new reality of racism and oppression and victimhood everywhere. To go along with that there were repeated calls for the whole “see something, say something” culture. You must never try to handle it on your own, but at the same time it called for one to feel obligated to insert yourself into anything you observe (even if not a participant); no “potential” illegal or hurtful actions can be ignored. The ultimate answer was to report whatever you thought was “problematic”. Literally a call to arms for all snitches and rats. Psychopathic manipulation at its finest. It’s causing us all to devour and attack one another, while the evil ones above the plebes no doubt sit back with pleasure and sneer and laugh at how gullible we are. All while self-replicating new batches of psychopaths-in-training.
My better half thought it was hysterical as the expletives flew from my mouth in a nonstop stream. And he has been subjected to a steady stream of this BS for decades now. Helps me understand how so many have literally been programmed to view the world in a very false way and believe whatever someone above you tells you as the only truth which can be held. It’s turned business into the perfect hunting ground for these predators.
Upon reflection I feel the need to ask, is it possible to make people psychopathic by constant brainwashing and psychological manipulation? Or is that a bridge too far? It sure looks like we are overrun with them at every level. Not that all psychopaths are equal. I guess like many fish they grow to the size of their tank.
Thank you for the truly outstanding article.
“Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds an awful lot like the work done by intelligence agencies and Big Tech.”
Zing ! Nice one, there are a bunch of PhD theses to be written there. And you once met a researcher who was adamant that there couldn’t be any psychopaths in the CIA. Well let’s consider that for a moment just using simple inductive reasoning.
I think it’s clear that a psychopath could be a very successful secret AGENT if not necessarily a controller.
It’s a documented fact that Western Intelligence agencies have used organized crime networks, American/Italian Mafia, Asian Triads, South American cartels and so on. Secret intelligence agencies and secret criminal societies are a natural partnership, they both operate in the same shadowy underworld, they do the same jobs, such as moving contraband, money and people covertly, creating false identities and shell companies, collecting and creating compromising material, and occasionally causing people to permanently disappear.
Those criminal organizations would seem to offer excellent job opportunities for psychopaths. They’re cool under pressure, can lie easily, adopt false personas convincingly and can carry out all sorts of objectionable tasks without qualms or hesitation.
Give a Mafioso a pistol and he’s an assassin, give him a camera and he’s a spy. It’s a versatile skill set. So why could such a psychopath not also be found working for a covert government agency ?
How close is an undercover cop to a criminal ? It would seem that they need at least a little dog’s blood in their veins to succeed. The guard dog, police dog and sheep dog are literally cousins to the wolf, that’s why they’re so effective.
All that remains to be seen is how high such a wolf could rise in the organization and that would depend on the organization itself. Weren’t the Mafia Dons once street level triggermen themselves ?
Thank you for the response. I had some girlfriends who kind of led me down a bad path as a teenager. Makes sense. And I snapped out hard eventually. So reason for hope despite the parasitic psychopaths.
I love your writing. Exhaustive detail like yours is required to really instil in us readers what dread and dross walks among us.
Somewhere I read that during caveman days, when someone was determined to be a psychopath, the group together would run them over a cliff. Sounds like the proper course to follow if the group wishes to avoid becoming a victim.
Wow! So, are our current politicians just completely self delusional and incapable of seeing the lies they have to tell themselves, or are they psychopaths?
Love Robert D. Hare - just now re-listening to "Without Conscience", sparking my interest to get into more psychopathy study after a long time looking at schizophrenia (although I feel I've only scratched the surface there too!).
Sounds like you've been studying psychopathy for many years - would that be right?
Your phrase of "snakes in suits" reminds me of this book about snake oil missionaries in suits.
http://www.herinst.org/sbeder/Books/missionaries.html
This is excellent. I also recommend Robert Sutton's book, "The No Asshole Rule."
"Their extreme narcissism was apparently mistaken for a “positive leadership trait,” and the murky morality and internal chaos typical of the mergers, acquisitions, and takeover environment seemed perfect for their type".
I was targeted by one such narcissist. My CEO fell for his lie, Result I was fired.
Seeing how the magic trick is done like this is useful. Educating as many people as possible on this even more so.
I am almost completely convinced psychopathology is a norm of the economic system and not an aberration. Not the most extreme, which is a norm of the Organization Man, but in a milder form of lying or misrepresenting. In a way I think it has to be this way to sell a product vs. the competitor selling a product. No employer rewards a salesperson for not meeting quota and no employer is overly concerned how quota is met. Bottom line is not social benifits but private gain. We admire clever tounged sharpies. I think back to the Confidence Man by Melville.
I was somewhat expecting - but not, at the same time due to evolving information - that you might be leading up to analyzing SBF and his part in the FTX-Alameda fiasco. There’s definitely something off about that boy. Nonetheless, I appreciate you doing this Substack, Harrison; I’m learning much!
Ronald Reagan was of course the "God"-father of the now time version of the collective psychosis that is now being dramatized all over the planet.
This reference describes his fragmented "character" and the applied politics that extended from it:
http://psychohistory.com/books/reagans-america
The Psychohistory website specializes in describing humankind's collective psychosis.