I enjoy seeing elite athletes perform. (Many in baseball play for my favorite team.) I like elite chefs, or at least the dream of having a meal from one.
Elite scientists, politicians, the faith-moved, bankers, architects, and artists and all that -- I'm cool with it.
It's when the elites go psychopathic and sociopathic that I start to feel uneasy. That's pretty much what's happened, pretty much the world's entire political and money classes.
I could be wrong. I am not a psych- professional. But I think what follows is a fair statement of the general, non-professional, meaning of those words.
In essence, we use psychopathic and sociopathic to speak about people who steer their course in life by unwholesome, even unhinged, fantasies in their dealings. People who see no reason to let any rules or decency get in the way of doing whatever the hell they want, with no penalty. Whatever it costs someone else or everyone else. In the psychopath's case, if it costs someone else, there's the joy of the thing.
I'm sure the professional definitions of these words are illuminating and good to know. Well, whatever phrase a person wants to use, it's got to convey the kind of people who kill the oceans, poison the air, destroy the rivers, ravage and poison the land, take the lives of innocent people, forces most to poverty, takes over the resources, and generally fucks up the place.
My friend Lorraine, long before the internet, said we should take out newspaper ads. And the ads should look something like this:
To: You Know Who You Are.
Look, you’re already rich, You’re already powerful. Why can’t you just do things which work out for everyone, not just yourselves? You can do both!
Please, Just Tell Us What You Want!
Parades? We’ll give you a parade every week. Medals? We’ll give you so many you can’t walk within a mile of an airport without setting off alarms. Groupies? Hey, they’re ready, they’ve always been ready. Now, there'll be even the better looking liberal ones for you! Great houses and property all over? How many you need, one for each month of the year? you got it!
We Can Negotiate. You Do Not Need to take Hostages!
We have the one request: get together and help make this world work. You piss your lives away playing for petty advantages, when immortal fame, thanks, and praise await you. And it would be soooooo easy for you.
Reset the banking game, find a way to squeeze out the debt, and keep as whole as possible the bottom 90% of humanity. Let us build on real things. Humanity will love you, they’ll create a stream of prosperity and you'll get your beak wet, heck, soaked. Why do you have to have it all? So you can be remembered as the biggest piece of crap on a desolated plain of ruin?
Stop killing the earth! Stop fighting wars to control the means of killing the earth. If you need a full listing of things which you could do to improve the world instead of destroying it, we will supply it for you.
You Know Who You Are. Please, Just Tell Us What You Want!
PS: Look we all know a bunch of your peers have a screw loose. It just takes courage and foresight on your behalf. Remember! You ARE superior. Ignore them: future generations pissing on your grave (and descendants), or singing about your glories? Just go for it. Do what helps us all for a change. Don't fear.
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Anyway, that's sort of Lorraine's plan, and I for one think it has a chance of working.
Maybe not, but what's been working so far? Or working fast enough. I don't see how we get things going our way without a great nation-wide, post-partisan, moment of saying "Hey! Corruption Is King! And He's Nakedly Insane!"
'cause damn, he is.
Well, there's the outlandish idea part of the diary. If you go on, it ain't pretty or funny from here. It's about the reality of the pathologies we suffer.
Pathocracy and the Study of Political Evil
And not outlandish, more of "not noticed." But invaluable, imo. The Theory of Political Ponerology was developed over decades by Polish psychologists who lived under Hitler and/or under Communism. It was a group effort, and done, as you can imagine, in secret. With the only copy of the mss having to be burned twice (iirc) and then reconstructed.
They borrowed the term "ponerology" from Christian scholarship, and it means the "study of evil." Not as a abstraction, but as it manifests in human actions toward others and the world.
They speak of a form of government called Pathocracy and I don't see how that doesn't describe world elites today.
The ultimate cause of evil lies in the interaction of two human factors: 1) normal human ignorance and weakness and 2) the existence and action of a statistically small (4-8% of the general population) but extremely active group of psychologically deviant individuals. The ignorance of the existence of such psychological differences is the first criterion of ponerogenesis. That is, such ignorance creates an opening whereby such individuals can act undetected.
The presence of such “disease” on the individual level is described in the Almost Human section of this website. However, depending on the type of activity of psychopathic and characteropathic individuals, evil can manifest on any societal level. The greater the scope of the psychopath’s influence, the greater harm done. Thus any group of humans can be infected or “ponerized” by their influence. From families, clubs, churches, businesses, and corporations, to entire nations. The most extreme form of such macrosocial evil is called “pathocracy”. ...
...Living in a world whose morals and customs are meaningless to them and even seen as oppressive, psychopaths dream of a "happy" and "just" world where their depraved worldview is accepted as reality. They seek, by any means necessary, to achieve positions in government where their dreams can be brought to fruition. If injustice does exist in a society, their statements regarding the 'unfairness' of their situation can resonate with those who actually do experience such injustice. Thus, revolutionary doctrines can be accepted by both groups for diametrically opposed reasons.
Ponerogenic groups are those with a statistically high number of pathological individuals, to the point that the group as a whole exercises egotistical and pathological behavior. Deviants function as leaders and ideological spellbinders, and while normal people may act as members, they have typically accumulated various psychological deficiencies. Those not susceptible to such influence are excluded from the group. ...
...After its takeover by psychopathic elements within (e.g. the Neoconservative takeover of American Republicanism), the ponerogenic group is protected by a “mask” of the group's traditional values. This will happen in spite of the fact that these values are obviously distorted and disregarded. For example, such a group will pass legislation and behave solely to benefit those in control, often becoming violent and starting wars of aggression. Normal members of such a group naively protect such deviant behavior, not realizing it is the work of deviants. Its pathology remains hidden by those who do not wish to see it objectively. Justifications and prepared ideologies are promulgated; subconscious selection and substitution take place, and the pathology is effectively cloaked behind a mask of sanity.
(My bolding above)
The Republicans are a good example, on a smaller scale, of the political, financial class as a whole. They are the easiest demonstration of the principle most Democrats can digest.