- Clinical Psychopathy
- Hubris syndrome
- Their own worst enemy
- Dehumanization and Demonization of the Enemy
- What Motivates Voters More Than Loyalty? Loathing
One of the trends that results from growing corruption of an aging system’s purpose is what I call Functional Psychopathy. This is an unavoidable consequence of relentlessly increasing complexity, though it doesn’t affect everyone in the same way.
Forget the clinical syndrome of psychopathy. This process isn’t about someone’s personality. Instead, examine a basic measure of psychopathic behavior. Such behavior is anytime we treat a person, an animal, a plant, or a thing solely as a vehicle for the gratification of our needs, with no thought to the impact of our actions on the person, animal, plant, or thing.
Think of stepping on ants while walking in the woods on a nice summer day. Or eating anything. Or laying off 1,000 people. Or using drones that kill civilians while targeting a terrorist. Or protecting yourself with a civilian shield while operating as a terrorist. Or auctioning human beings as slaves. Or purposefully addicting people for personal income. Or cutting personal supports to people with significant disabilities to make the money available for a market purpose. Or any one of 10,000 other acts we do in order to get through the daily circumstances of our lives.
Functional Psychopathy increases relentlessly as complex systems age.
