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
100% there.
look for local mutual aids, or political organisations fighting for your rights.
being active will make you feel better and will actually make the world around you better.
“They” want you to give up and doomscroll
I have considered joining NGOs, but they all require WhatsApp.
I feel overwhelmed a lot lately.
I think one of the causes for the situation in the U.S. is isolation. Both that the bad actors are too isolated from their fellow human, and that people of good will feel alone in facing rising assholedom.
It’s helped me to physically go to gatherings of people who are like minded. To be reminded that you’re not alone. We’ll never get everyone on our side, but I believe we can get enough.
How do you find these in person gatherings, most of my socialization with other Americans happens through work and I cannot be my authentic self at work because that has negative consequences in my experience, the American work culture is kind depressing, where everyone seems to be in some rat race to be the most busy and most productive or at least pretend to be so, most of my interactions lack human warmth and it all feels fake and performative, I have to be guarded about what I say so that it doesn’t come back to bite me even with colleague’s of the same level and I am tired of the expectations of overwork and constant threat of being laid off of the right people don’t have a high opinion of you.
For me I’ve been involved in an anti gerrymandering group, which definitely fulfills the “like-minded” category. But there’s still value just in connecting with people outside work even if it’s not ideological, so things like classes, hobbies, casual sports/exercise, anything that has regular meetings.
Many organizations - like churches and NGOs - offer some kind of organized approach to do community projects, like feeding people, repairing houses and things (especially for a single mother household that has fallen on hard times?), so you could join one of those?
If such is not done in your area, then all the more reason to start something on your own! 😉 (Or else find a new area)
Yes.
The rich used to take the same transport as the rest of us. They could be in a separate car on the train but they were still attached. Then they got automobiles and could drive on their own and we built highways to connect their favorite places. But can only get so far and planes were invented. Now they are stuck with the poors again but up in first class.
Now they have private jets and all the roads full of the regular people, the trains and the planes. They remote in or call in from their cellphone instead of being in the actual office.
The wealthy dont live like the rest of us anymore. And their social group is much more carefully curated to not let us in. They dont want to know regular people.
Which means theyre no longer human. Just animals to kill when you’re bored.
Sign a strike card, baby https://generalstrikeus.com/ we’ve got a long way to go but I’ve been handing out flyers on the street… Spread the decentralized jeezus-i-wish-we-had-labor-unions word. Please. No really… I’m begging.
I’ll participate, but I’m not giving out my info. I’d rather not be on as many lists as possible.
Labor unions are good, but they’re not the be-all end-all of wbat we need; they’re a moderate compromise measure. A good one, but if it atarts getting too bloody or hard to take a necessary internediate goal because the state deployed all its violence and disinformation, well… The state has already deployed all its violence and disinformation.
I’m right there with you. For all of you that say to just wait this out — how many of these am I supposed to wait out?! I’ve been doing this since Reagan, and it’s only gotten worse.
Insert (I’m tired boss) meme.
I just want out at this point.
Such a shame we cant mention it here.
Or at least a necessary step in it,
The first step is to organize, start a local community group and exercise your combined people power.
Watch the world burn.
George is not the sensible one
he had his moments
Given that this is Lemmy I suspect that OP’s “solution” is to repeat yet another failed geopolitical experiment.
Actually we’ll do it different this time, smartass
I see pedo Zionist meme I downvote
Vote.
*Protest-no-voters in shambles downvoting.
Definitely! Always vote, even if you have low confidence in the election’s integrity or your influence on the overall outcome. You have nothing to lose by voting anyway.
