The Trick of the Psychopaths Trade: Make us Believe Evil Comes from Others

Great find. Thanks for seeding. Many golden nuggets in the interview. Just one...

There are a number of traits that we find in psychopaths: An obvious trait is the complete lack of conscience. They lack any sense of remorse or empathy with others. They can be extremely charming and are experts at using talk to charm and hypnotize their prey. They are also irresponsible. Nothing is ever their fault; someone else or the world at large is always to blame for all of their 'problems' or their mistakes. Martha Stout, in her book The Sociopath Next Door, identifies what she calls the pity ploy. Psychopaths use pity to manipulate. They convince you to give them one more chance, and to not tell anyone about what they have done. So another trait - and a very important one - is their ability to control the flow of information.

The last point - ability to control the flow of information, is something that Al Qaida uses very effectively to recruit their evil army. Of course, there are many other examples.

Thanks for this, cyregray. I'll get to it soon and be back to comment further:-) In some ways, this hypothesis seems too simple, you know, "It's the X (insert whatever) that's responsible for all the evil in the world." is just too conspiracy theory-like to make me totally comfortable. Nonetheless, I feel there is definitely something to this, at least to the extent of standing up and saying what evil is and how it operates. Whether there's a 'gene' for it, well, I don't know if we'll ever know that. It's a very interesting topic.

Essential psychopaths are the type that is closest to the idea of psychopathy discussed by Cleckley, Hare, Babiak, and others. Łobaczewski makes the frightening remark that "They learn to recognize each other in a crowd as early as childhood, and they develop an awareness of the existence of other individuals similar to them. They also become conscious of being different from the world of those other people surrounding them. They view us from a certain distance, like a para-specific variety."

This is truly scary. The Aliens ARE among us; they've been here, all along. OMG, it's a POD movie come to life. Seriously, tho, we had better smarten up and learn to recognize their behaviour patterns and ploys to trap us. It reminds me also of the Morlocks in The Time Machine.

cyregray, thanks for seeding this article...I just spent an entire hour (at least) reading the whole article, but it was an hour well spent. This quote stood out to me as being particularly relevant:

When psychopaths are the policy makers in government and the CEOs of big business, the way they think and reason - their 'morality' - becomes the common culture and 'morality' of the population over which they preside. When this happens, the mind of the population is infected in the way a pathogen infects a physical body. The only way to protect ourselves against this pathological thinking is to inoculate ourselves against it, and that is done by learning as much as possible about the nature of psychopathy and its influence on us. Essentially, this particular 'disease' thrives in an environment where its very existence is denied, and this denial is planned and deliberate.

More wisdom from the article:

"We need to learn how to say no to the manipulations. That means we need to learn the ways we are manipulated and refuse to do the dance.

"This means that if psychopathy threatens the well-being of the group future - which it is doing - then it can be only be dealt with by widespread refusal to allow the self to be dominated by it on an individual, personal basis. Preserving freedom for the self in the practical sense, ultimately preserves freedom for others. Protection of our own rights AS the rights of others, underwrites the free will position and potential for happiness of all. If mutant psychopaths pose a potential danger, then true empathy, true ethics, true conscience, dictates using prophylactic therapy against psychopaths.

"And so it is that identifying the psychopath, ceasing our interaction with them, cutting them off from our society, making ourselves unavailable to them as "food" or objects to be conned and used, is the single most effective strategy that we can play."

Here's something I found in another article

That view [that the Iraq war is ok] was reflected recently in the words of a well-heeled suburbanite, who suggested to me, "You must concede that a few GIs killed every week is a small price to pay for the oil we need. Many more died in Vietnam, and there wasn't even any oil there."

Psychopathological? One thing that worries me about this hypothesis is that there is so damn much evidence supporting it:0

It seems to me that we have to be vigilant for psychopathic 'behaviour' wherever we find it, rather than trying to isolate persons who are psychopathic. The vigilance must be kept over ourselves too, since the society is ponerized and we cannot help being affected by that zeitgeist, so to speak. By the way, this whole conceptual system seems to me, and please tell me if I'm wrong, to be a reworking, or clarifying, or 'sciencizing' the old stories about evil and the devil (and original sin) in all cultures. I tend to see it as a new way of looking at the same old question about evil. It seems to me to be very fruitful; you can see examples everywhere, and everything takes on a new cast when seen through those lenses. All in all, it is a very useful tool. I shall be spending considerable time absorbing it.

social deviants and random but subtle extremists — essentially, unpredictable human elements — are the reason that democracies require natural and rigid checks and balances and transparency.

we've been conditioned to accept giving these things up for the sake of situational logic. the influence that sociopaths and psychopaths have on the rest of us is difficult to recognize. but in a system of government where things work, with oversight and built-in checks, we dont need to be able to recognize each disguised effort of psychotic influence.

but people enjoy and appreciate moderation. they would prefer to believe that most people are good and that they can trust their leaders with the big decisions, so they give up those checks and balances because they cant conceive that the worst case scenario is possible.

but, as we see, the worst-case scenario is not only possible, but common. unfortunately, we havent fought to keep the govt systems in place which were designed to prevent these kinds of things from happening.

we seem to have lost the big point of view. we shouldnt have to justify checks and balances — ever. the very first act of questioning or eliminating them, benign as it may have seemed, should have been treated as the result of psychotic influence. but in our quest to believe that things are mostly ok and that people are generally good and that nothing really bad ever happens (the moderation fallacy), we've refused to believe that the little dents and scrapes our leaders have created in our policies could result in truly bad things.

we were given a set of guidelines designed to handle all kinds of problems. these guidelines included seemingly simple but actually critical pieces. the bill of rights is sort of, in this way, similar to flyers handed out by fire departments about how to create a safe environment for your house and family. it includes rules like precise placement of smoke detectors, having fire extinguishers in precise locations, reviewing escape routes and meeting places, etc. few people actually employ each of these things — they dont believe they'll ever need them. and, in fact, probability says that they arent likely to ever need them. because the only time they would be necessary is in a worst-case scenario — an actual out of control fire. so many people allow themselves to compromise on what fire departments recommend.

similarly, we've allowed our govt and its special interests – exposed here as regularly infiltrated by the worst kinds of human behavior - to neglect following the constitution's rules and laws in certain areas, because we dont think that the worst kinds of people would ever try to compromise the nation.

of course, the worst kinds of people actively seek to take advantage of every situation they encounter.

what we've done to the constitution is sort of like letting our kids run out in the snow in shorts and sandals.

this kind of reality demonstrates that, since evil is disguised and complex, it's not evil that we need to be vigilant about. it's the process - the 'workflow' - the systems of government, designed by intelligent people, which we need to stick to. what will follow is that evil people will not have an inviting culture of govt and society in which to operate.

Good discourse, firsty; could be a separate article in its own right.