Some years ago, when loitering in bookstores was still an option, I chanced upon a book whose conspicuous title, 'The Sociopath Next Door’, lured me in for a closer look. I ended up standing at the book table and read half the book on the spot. As the title declares, they are here, living in our communities whether we’re aware of them or not. The author, psychologist Martha Stout, reports that “About one in twenty-five individuals are sociopathic, meaning, essentially, that they do not have a conscience.”
Second, as far as I know, there is a distinction between sociopaths and psychopaths. But, I believe they share the lack of conscience.
I put sociopaths and psychopaths in the category of pure evil. They have been created by God as a kind of virus to test the rest of normal society. Normal society has to "manage" these people in the same way that normal society has to manage evil in general.
It is interesting that a large percentage of CEOs are psychopaths. These are sometimes called "socialized psychopaths", which suggests that there is a "spectrum", maybe similar to autism. The socialized psychopaths play by a set of rules that keeps them out of jail, but they are willing to make "sacrifices" for the good of the company.
The last part of your discussion is very interesting; the idea that these pathologies might be contagious. There have been many examples, thoughout history, of one psychopath leading an entire society astray, by normalizing unthinkable behavior. Hitler did it 100 years ago. Trump is doing it today. These people are a constant test of human society.
Schadenfruede ist die beste Freude! I love that, hadn't heard it before.
Yes, it's hard to come up with a good explanation for the existence of a human entirely devoid of a conscience. They've apparently been with us since primordial times as the following attests:
"Kunlangeta is the Inuit word for "psychopath".
Explained as, “a person whose mind knows what to do but he does not do it.”
This person is also known as never improving, no matter how many times the elders talk to them -- irremediable, their motives remain selfish regardless of who or what is harmed.
It is also reputed therefore, that even in a famously peaceful society, but one even more reliant on one another for survival than our own, that when asked what is done with such an individual, the answer was, "Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking.”
Problem solved."
As you've pointed out, the atmosphere of a company is set at the top. This can go either way as you also know. According to the author I cited, and based on some very dark historical examples, human conscience seems to be disposable when bad guys lead the way.
Many years ago, I read an article about the key thing that bank robbers and entrepreneurs have in common: trying over and over. There is something irremediable about this, at least in the case of the bank robbers. In the case of entrepreneurs, it's an important quality: never give up, keep trying after failures, and try to learn from the failures. As with CEO's, I think that many entrepreneurs are psychopaths in the sense that they have a single-minded determination to succeed without regard to consequences to their employees. I guess guys like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos tell themselves that the employees who manage to hang on will eventually be thankful when they're millionaires.
Fascinating!
First of all, Schadenfruede ist die beste Freude!
Second, as far as I know, there is a distinction between sociopaths and psychopaths. But, I believe they share the lack of conscience.
I put sociopaths and psychopaths in the category of pure evil. They have been created by God as a kind of virus to test the rest of normal society. Normal society has to "manage" these people in the same way that normal society has to manage evil in general.
It is interesting that a large percentage of CEOs are psychopaths. These are sometimes called "socialized psychopaths", which suggests that there is a "spectrum", maybe similar to autism. The socialized psychopaths play by a set of rules that keeps them out of jail, but they are willing to make "sacrifices" for the good of the company.
The last part of your discussion is very interesting; the idea that these pathologies might be contagious. There have been many examples, thoughout history, of one psychopath leading an entire society astray, by normalizing unthinkable behavior. Hitler did it 100 years ago. Trump is doing it today. These people are a constant test of human society.
Schadenfruede ist die beste Freude! I love that, hadn't heard it before.
Yes, it's hard to come up with a good explanation for the existence of a human entirely devoid of a conscience. They've apparently been with us since primordial times as the following attests:
"Kunlangeta is the Inuit word for "psychopath".
Explained as, “a person whose mind knows what to do but he does not do it.”
This person is also known as never improving, no matter how many times the elders talk to them -- irremediable, their motives remain selfish regardless of who or what is harmed.
It is also reputed therefore, that even in a famously peaceful society, but one even more reliant on one another for survival than our own, that when asked what is done with such an individual, the answer was, "Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking.”
Problem solved."
As you've pointed out, the atmosphere of a company is set at the top. This can go either way as you also know. According to the author I cited, and based on some very dark historical examples, human conscience seems to be disposable when bad guys lead the way.
Many years ago, I read an article about the key thing that bank robbers and entrepreneurs have in common: trying over and over. There is something irremediable about this, at least in the case of the bank robbers. In the case of entrepreneurs, it's an important quality: never give up, keep trying after failures, and try to learn from the failures. As with CEO's, I think that many entrepreneurs are psychopaths in the sense that they have a single-minded determination to succeed without regard to consequences to their employees. I guess guys like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos tell themselves that the employees who manage to hang on will eventually be thankful when they're millionaires.
Mercy.