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Stopping the Insanity
Like most people living through this jarring age of economic turbulence and political dysfunction, you can probably recall a moment in the last few months when you thought to yourself that our lawmakers and corporate leaders are all crazy. And not just run-of-the-mill crazy, a la George Costanza's parents, but the kind of crazy that makes films like "Silence of the Lambs" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" so frightening.
The good news for you is that you aren't insane for thinking this. The bad news for all of us, though, is that according to two new scientific analyses, you are more correct in your assessment than you may know.
The first revelation came from Dr. Nassir Ghaemi of Tufts University. In his recent book, "A First-Rate Madness," he went beyond merely restating the old adage that anyone crazy enough to run for public office probably shouldn't occupy that office. Instead, the book sheds light on what Ghaemi calls an "inverse law of sanity," whereby tumultuous times like these actually reward and promote political figures who are "mentally abnormal (or) even ill."
Now comes a new study from Switzerland's University of St. Gallen showing that the most successful of the global financial elite probably pose more of a menace to society than known psychopaths.
As the website Newser reported, the researchers "pitted a group of stockbrokers against a group of actual psychopaths in various computer simulations and intelligence tests and found that the money men were significantly more reckless, competitive, and manipulative." Even more striking, the researchers note that achieving overall success was less important to the stock speculators than the sadistic drive "to damage their opponents."
The findings build on similar research in the recent past. In 1996, investigators at Glasgow Caledonian University discovered connections between psychopathy and successful financial speculation, concluding that "with the right parenting, (psychopaths) can become successful stockbrokers instead of serial killers." Likewise, in 2004, researchers at the University of British Columbia reacted to similar findings and created a test to help firms detect "corporate psychopaths" within their ranks.
That same year, the award winning-documentary "The Corporation" used World Health Organization metrics to show that if companies really are "people," as our Supreme Court insists, then many of them are mentally ill.
Obviously, these results reflect the not-so-surprising fact that the extreme nature of the modern political process and of today's casino economy inherently self-select for certain kinds of traits. And no doubt, wholly changing that dynamic may be impossible or undesirable — or both.
However, the findings are a reminder of why now — more than ever — we must refuse to succumb to political apathy and laissez-faire demagoguery. Indeed, it's time to redouble our commitment to strengthening checks on political and corporate power because that power is often being wielded by the most unstable among us.
So what does that mean in practice? It means that when we see a wild-eyed White House ignore the constitution and claim the despotic right to assassinate American citizens without criminal charge, we demand that Congress stop the madness — rather than quietly acquiesce. It means that when we see a spontaneous grassroots movement physically occupy Lower Manhattan and challenge banks' deranged rapaciousness, we applaud the effort as long overdue — rather than scoff at it as unrealistic. It means, in short, that we refuse to stay silent in the face of insanity.
Frankly, if we have scientific proof that the inmates are running the Wall Street and Washington asylums, this is the least we should do — and we really should do a whole lot more.
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14 Comments so far
Show AllYes, we need to do something about that child that was born to the Supreme Court and given to Wall Street to raise. This parasite will be the only citizen that the Constitution protects. The we of we the people has been replaced with a corporate creation that cares nothing for traditional American values. In fact this new citizen hates all locals and doesn’t want to finance any public services. He says he can make it so the rest should just buckle down and work harder. With corporate America as a father what would you expect?
Hoa binh
Sirota's next article needs to address the cult followings that enables corporations and politicians to attain and expand their power.
What we need to do is call Terminex to rid the SCOTUS of the RATS and a roach called Kennedy.
Of course the ideal would be to recognize that the SCOTUS doesn't have the power to appoint a president and thereby nullify the entire Bu$h presidency along with all of the justices he appointed, *ALL* the legislation he passed (including the Patriot Act, MCA, Warner Defense Act etc.), and prosecute him for the wars he started while posing as president.
This article fails to describe the nature of psychopathy.
Had it done so, all would be clear.
Psychopaths come in two flavors: there are the lower intelligence drooling knuckledragging loners living isolated from normal society and then there are the highly competitive, very intelligent, extraordinarily clever game playing manipulative sorts who people politics, the legal profession, the upper echelons of business, the military leadership-----------anywhere their talent for moving to the top of the hierarchy favors them occupying a controlling perch from which they move the pawns at their feet.
The key characteristic is the total or near total lack of the Freudian superego, a conscience containing an innate moral imperative to NOT cause pain or hurt, and the empathic sense when others are in pain.
They lack this basic behavioral boundary-making guidewire.
So they do whatever they want, all for ego gratification, without any compunction for the effects on others, or for anything in the known universe.
All teenagers should be screened, and if found to be psychopaths forbidden from seeking office, or practicing law, or holding executive business positions.
All current such people should be screened, and if found to be psychopaths, given the choice of resignation or exile.
It's the only way society can protect itself from these killer elite.
"All current such people should be screened, and if found to be psychopaths, given the choice of resignation or exile."
The problem with your proposal is that it is incredibly difficult for mental health professionals to detect and diagnose psychopaths. These individuals are very cunning and masters if deception who can fool the most sophisticated of tests and the most seasoned professionals. Like chameleons, they're masters of adapting to their environments and exploiting them thus getting by undetected. Talk to anyone who has had a relationship with a socio/psychopath and you'll see what I mean.
First off, I don't think they're crazy in the least. I don't even think most of them are psychopaths -- sociopaths, perhaps some of them. (The difference explained to me by a psychiatrist who worked in a prison psych ward: sociopaths have no problem with killing you should it suit their purposes, psychopaths want to kill you). Deluded criminality is not crazy except in a philosophical sense.
Many top managers of today's institutions aren't conscious of being villains and don't think or feel as if they're being criminals. They are nice socially to each other and to their families and economic peers and believe wholeheartedly that they're doing good despite the ripoff scams they're promoting. This is because for most people it is impossible to be in those positions without buying into what the institution is doing; someone who does not become a true believer won't survive. The senior managers at that corporate level are not as smart as they think they are; they're smooth and can spout the corporate party line with sincerity, but they really aren't bright despite their MBA degrees (having once worked among them I used to wonder what what business administration expertise were they supposed to have acquired a mastery of)
Second, there isn't time to screen all the teenagers to head off those with a predisposition to exploiting the public through greedy acquisitive business practices. The situation is more urgent than that. The institutions as they are now must change if western civilization is to remain someplace seven billion and counting people can live.
The 99 percent movement may force them to try to put out the appearance of change (news reports are starting to appear in mainstream media showing that "jobs are returning to the U.S.). It is up to leftists, liberals, and progressives to insist that the appearances really be what they're trying to appear to be.
"Now comes a new study from Switzerland's University of St. Gallen showing that the most successful of the global financial elite probably pose more of a menace to society than known psychopaths."
* The global financial elite ARE the known psychopaths.
Actually, the global financial elites are not 'known' as psychopaths. They are hailed as great leaders, innovators, job creators. They are held up as the most intelligent and creative people on the planet.
As the article points out, the reality is something far more sobering. Our political and economic system empowers psychopaths -- not the most intelligent and conscientious among us.
Which is precisely why they aren't particularly alarmed by something such as global warming. This is too far off to concern them. After all, it is very unlikely to have any real effect on their wealth, power, or personal success. Who cares if it kills off masses of people or destroys the biosphere in a hundred years? Or even forty?
Sirota has succinctly detailed the suicide pill lodged in the throat of our entire global economic system.
Corporations could once be portrayed as persons -- when their capacity
to do harm could not become much more than the capacity of human
beings (non-corporations) to do harm. NOW we are confronted with
monstrous corporate "persons". In any sane judgment, We The People
must not now acquiesce in a struggle for life with any Six-Billion-Dollar
Persons. OF COURSE harms by Billion-Dollar personages will over-
whelm mere people every time, so long as We The People acquiesce
to the struggle. BUT WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHANGE THE RULES.
By our written constitution, and by our essential OWNERSHIP of the
damn country as there written, we can cut off the quasi-legal status of
incorporation in perpetuity. Something like that has been done in the
past, when anti-trust laws forced the petroleum monoply of John D.
Rockefeller to be split into separate corporations. We need more than
that now, but at least we can see that it can be done.
David Sirota mentioned the Supreme Court's insistence that corpor-
ations are "people". The corporate block in the Supreme Court are
just silly old men with lawbooks and active imaginations, which they
are so arrogant as to impose on us whether we like it or not.
Paul Krugman's opinion piece in the New York Times (October 6)
cites Mitt Romney as characterizing the (OWS) protesters as engaging
in "class warfare". If Romney chooses to denigrate the OWS protests
as "class warfare", he doesn't know a hawk from a handbasket. What
truly exists (in protests) is not instigated by the protesters. Rather, it
is the Big Money Hawks who are oppressing US. They are the birds of
prey and we are the prey. By Romney's (reported) retort he shows
himself unfit to be president: he apparently misunderstands, or doesn't
know,Thomas Jefferson's great theme, that governments derive their
JUST power " ... from the consent of the governed."
Krugman also quoted Theodore Roosevelt's expression, "malefactors
of great wealth." If the handlers of the Six-Billion-Dollar Persons are
malefactors toward the "common welfare" they should be sent to jail,
and probably also should be charged big fines. THERE is a demand
for OWS to make: It is pure, simple and actionable. If there is needed
another demand, senators and representatives who condoned the
handlers' white-collar crimes should be put out of office.
Reply to Paraniod Pessimist and Randy G.:
Regarding whether or not the handlers of corporate personages have
recognition of what they're doing, OK, maybe they don't have knowledge;
so their sins [of omission to know what they should have known] is not
the original economic sin. But they have let themselves become the
facilitators of sociopathic corporation-personages. The handlers thus have
become accessories to the corporations' crimes of expropriation of wealth
not rightly (not legally?) theirs. Since corporations [unjustly called persons]
are not capable of feeling hurt, the handlers of the corporation-"persons"
should feel some hurt if any justice is now attainable. For the future, maybe
university business school graduates should stay away from oppressive
corporations.
"corporations [unjustly called persons] are not capable of feeling hurt, the handlers of the corporation-"persons" should feel some hurt if any justice is now attainable."
They absolutely should. Boards of Directors and senior management of corporations ought to be held criminally liable for the actions of the institutions they work for. Still, what "should" be done won't be done until different laws and different law enforcers are in place. How that is to come about remains a mystery to me.
Capitalism is the system that rewards the top 1%--The intelligent sociopath.
We are the 99%.
We have all seen the movie where a man hangs by the fingertips of one hand while holding a bag of loot in the other. He could save himself by simply dropping the bag of goodies, and climbing up. Even in the face of death he cannot let go. His greed and avarice will not allow him to even consider it. U. S. Americans who blindly support this system ( NOT of the people,by the people,for the people) are like the man holding the bag, they cannot let go of their impossible dream. The belief that material wealth will bring them happiness and security. One way or another we have all bought into this American Dream, and we can't let go of our own little piece of it. U.S. Americans have spent thee hundred years or so climbing to the top on the backs of others, and the bill is coming due. We will be left holding a bag alright, but it won't be full of sweet dreams and winning lotto tickets. It will be filled with hard times and IOU's. We can't starve the beast when we all still feed off it's leavings. We are all screaming something must be done, just let go of the bag
"...the book sheds light on what Ghaemi calls an "inverse law of sanity," whereby tumultuous times like these actually reward and promote political figures who are "mentally abnormal (or) even ill."
Here's a question: is it the tumultuous times that reward the crazy behavior or is it the crazy people who cause the tumultuous times?
"Now comes a new study from Switzerland's University of St. Gallen showing that the most successful of the global financial elite probably pose more of a menace to society than known psychopaths."
Correction again, the global financial elite ARE psychopaths.
The US is collectively affected by Mad Cow Disease. And it's not just the elites either...