The core human problem is Sociopathy / Narcissism (Cluster B Personality Disorders). 5% of people cause 95% of all problems. And it has always been that way.
No matter what systems or institutions you put into place, public or private, and no matter how rock-solid your constitution or by-laws or institutional culture is: eventually and inevitably, one day, sociopaths and narcissists will conspire to take it over, by hook or by crook, and ultimately they will succeed.
Government, company, charity, church, club, movement, whatever; they all fall to sociopathic takeover, no matter how initially well-led, well-planned, well-founded. In fact, the more successful your organization or movement, the more lucrative a target for takeover it becomes. Corruption, therefore, is inevitable. The best you can do is keep it at bay as long as you can before the cycle of corruption, destruction, and renewal takes place.
It’s the ever-perennial Problem of Evil.
No one has ever solved it, though many have tried.
You cannot educate it away, you cannot religion it away, you cannot forgive it away, you cannot shame it away, and you cannot punish it away. It keeps coming back.
You cannot teach Character. For example, Seneca attempting to tutor Nero into becoming a man of Wisdom and Character is a tragic tale as old as human time. To a Narcissist, everything is merely a tool for gaining power and influence, even lessons in Ethics and Character. Pearls before swine.
Only a Sisyphean resolve to constantly and persistently RESIST, every hour, every day, every generation - every moment that one can, no matter what, and knowing that bullies and a control-freaks will always be with us, and the struggle to resist and restrain them will ever be refreshed anew with every sunrise, that is all we have right now.
Learn the signs of Malignant Narcissism. Be proactive. Protect yourself. Stand up to bullies.
I mean there are some options for dealing with that.
A. Early monitoring in childhood followed by extensive therapy
B. Eugenics if a genetic link is identified (least savory option and likely not possible)
C. Rebuild our social circles and communities
To expand on C, I think a lot of what you’re identifying as narcissistic behavior or sociopathy is actually caused by the destruction of our communities. The way our society is built it rewards anti-social action with money and it’s cold and depersonalized. It’s easy as a upper executive to fire 500 people you’ve never once met and you will never meet. You don’t have to know them beyond a few spreadsheets of data. People will absolve themselves of personal responsibility and refer to the financial aspects. Additionally, our communities have been destroyed. The addition of the nuclear family structure encourages you to provide as much as possible to as few individuals instead of valuing extended family and community. Plus in some places in the world it is possible to go days or weeks without ever interacting with members of your community.
Well it would be nice if we ever return to normalcy to overturn CU and clamp down HARD on the issues that enable the rampant abuse of the system. Like I’m talking union busting levels of “No you’re complicit in this more than X% you are out, forever”
Yeah some inbred ancient greek ivory tower assholes couldnt teach someone to be good in between beating their slaves and fucking their kids and believing lightning came from an old guy with a big fluffy beard whike changing nothing about their surroubdings. Someone else tried one thing three thousand years ago, and im all out of ideas. guess it’s impossible. Shows great passion for the subject.
This is all fundamental elemental unchangeable nature of humanity. Our social system has no effect on what that is or how it manifests. the system has zero culpability for the outcomes it produces, it could have been no different.
And we obviously know this. You can look at neoliberal colonialist empires where they eat baguettes and neoliberal colonialist empires where they eat deep fried twinkies and neoliberal colonialist empires where they eat poutine and neofascist empires where they eat borscht and neoliberal colonialist empires where they eat fried rice(i know, but too many distinct regional cuisines) and neoliberal colonialist empires where they eat sushi. Plus accounts from a bunch of their current and former subjects, and historic accounts of monarchic slave societies. Weve got data on people from all kinds of society. All kinds of culture. And they all turn out some percentage of shameless manipulative bastard-monster. Allof them! Every possible kind, even the cutthroat neoliberal one that just eats boiled sheep! So obviously no ither proportion of humanity is possible. Weve even done formal studies on upperiddle class male college students from a couple of these places to confirm it!
And, look, heres where we get into much harder science: it’s in the DSM as a disorder. That means its always bad and always gonna be bad. There’s no social arrangement or technology that can make it benign. Just cant be done. That’s not just some shit some guy decided so he could get home and start nursing the hangover from his four martini lunch and the mountainous pile of cocaine he snorted for his daily insight into normal humanity-that’s a fact.
The core human problem is Sociopathy / Narcissism (Cluster B Personality Disorders). 5% of people cause 95% of all problems. And it has always been that way.
No matter what systems or institutions you put into place, public or private, and no matter how rock-solid your constitution or by-laws or institutional culture is: eventually and inevitably, one day, sociopaths and narcissists will conspire to take it over, by hook or by crook, and ultimately they will succeed.
Government, company, charity, church, club, movement, whatever; they all fall to sociopathic takeover, no matter how initially well-led, well-planned, well-founded. In fact, the more successful your organization or movement, the more lucrative a target for takeover it becomes. Corruption, therefore, is inevitable. The best you can do is keep it at bay as long as you can before the cycle of corruption, destruction, and renewal takes place.
It’s the ever-perennial Problem of Evil.
No one has ever solved it, though many have tried.
You cannot educate it away, you cannot religion it away, you cannot forgive it away, you cannot shame it away, and you cannot punish it away. It keeps coming back.
You cannot teach Character. For example, Seneca attempting to tutor Nero into becoming a man of Wisdom and Character is a tragic tale as old as human time. To a Narcissist, everything is merely a tool for gaining power and influence, even lessons in Ethics and Character. Pearls before swine.
Only a Sisyphean resolve to constantly and persistently RESIST, every hour, every day, every generation - every moment that one can, no matter what, and knowing that bullies and a control-freaks will always be with us, and the struggle to resist and restrain them will ever be refreshed anew with every sunrise, that is all we have right now.
Learn the signs of Malignant Narcissism. Be proactive. Protect yourself. Stand up to bullies.
I mean there are some options for dealing with that.
A. Early monitoring in childhood followed by extensive therapy
B. Eugenics if a genetic link is identified (least savory option and likely not possible)
C. Rebuild our social circles and communities
To expand on C, I think a lot of what you’re identifying as narcissistic behavior or sociopathy is actually caused by the destruction of our communities. The way our society is built it rewards anti-social action with money and it’s cold and depersonalized. It’s easy as a upper executive to fire 500 people you’ve never once met and you will never meet. You don’t have to know them beyond a few spreadsheets of data. People will absolve themselves of personal responsibility and refer to the financial aspects. Additionally, our communities have been destroyed. The addition of the nuclear family structure encourages you to provide as much as possible to as few individuals instead of valuing extended family and community. Plus in some places in the world it is possible to go days or weeks without ever interacting with members of your community.
Well it would be nice if we ever return to normalcy to overturn CU and clamp down HARD on the issues that enable the rampant abuse of the system. Like I’m talking union busting levels of “No you’re complicit in this more than X% you are out, forever”
Has anyone made a tarpit for these types? Some sort of scoring system to trap them in.
Fascist uprisings are the closest we’ve come.
Oh my god this essentialist bullshit.
Yeah some inbred ancient greek ivory tower assholes couldnt teach someone to be good in between beating their slaves and fucking their kids and believing lightning came from an old guy with a big fluffy beard whike changing nothing about their surroubdings. Someone else tried one thing three thousand years ago, and im all out of ideas. guess it’s impossible. Shows great passion for the subject.
This is all fundamental elemental unchangeable nature of humanity. Our social system has no effect on what that is or how it manifests. the system has zero culpability for the outcomes it produces, it could have been no different.
And we obviously know this. You can look at neoliberal colonialist empires where they eat baguettes and neoliberal colonialist empires where they eat deep fried twinkies and neoliberal colonialist empires where they eat poutine and neofascist empires where they eat borscht and neoliberal colonialist empires where they eat fried rice(i know, but too many distinct regional cuisines) and neoliberal colonialist empires where they eat sushi. Plus accounts from a bunch of their current and former subjects, and historic accounts of monarchic slave societies. Weve got data on people from all kinds of society. All kinds of culture. And they all turn out some percentage of shameless manipulative bastard-monster. Allof them! Every possible kind, even the cutthroat neoliberal one that just eats boiled sheep! So obviously no ither proportion of humanity is possible. Weve even done formal studies on upperiddle class male college students from a couple of these places to confirm it!
And, look, heres where we get into much harder science: it’s in the DSM as a disorder. That means its always bad and always gonna be bad. There’s no social arrangement or technology that can make it benign. Just cant be done. That’s not just some shit some guy decided so he could get home and start nursing the hangover from his four martini lunch and the mountainous pile of cocaine he snorted for his daily insight into normal humanity-that’s a fact.
For fascists, sure. If we killed all the sociopaths, who would cut us up when we’re sick/injured and run into our burning buildings?
If we kill all the mentally ill, who ths fuck would make our art? The actually good stuff?
Fucking YES. Thank you, extremely well said