When psychopaths rule
By Bert Hetebry
“Why is the world so unfair?
Why all the economic injustice, those brutal wars, the everyday corporate cruelty?
The answer: Psychopaths.
That part of the brain that doesn’t function right. You’re standing on an escalator and you watch the people going past in the opposite escalator. If you could climb inside their brains you would see we aren’t all the same. We aren’t all good people just trying to do good. Some of us are psychopaths. And psychopaths are to blame for this brutal, misshapen society. They’re the rocks thrown into the pond.
Some psychopaths are serial killers which ruin families. Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies, they ruin societies.” (Jon Ronson: The psychopath test.)
Listening to various commentators and reading about the war in Gaza, there seems to be from Israel and the USA very little said about the nearing 40,000 fatalities recorded and no doubt many more deaths yet to be discovered, buried under the rubble of the homes people used to live in and the many more who will suffer from the inflicted starvation and health conditions brought about by the brutality of that conflict. It is almost a whispered afterthought in some reports, the focus seems to be to justify the action because of October 7 last year, as though the desperation of the Palestinian people started that day. To her credit, Kamala Harris did state that the suffering of Palestinians needed to stop.
The situation in Gaza and in the West Bank is a direct of the psychopathic leadership of both the current and previous Israeli leaders, and of course having a faithful, uncritical following.
But to restrict the focus on Israel, or even just on leaders committing such horrors in the name of some nationalistic goals is being dismissive of the damage psychopathy has rendered through the history of colonialism and capitalism, self serving politicians and self righteous religious leaders.
To come to even a cursory understanding of the damage inflicted by psychopaths, we need to find a proper definition which covers a bit more ground that the shower scene in the Hitchcock movie Psycho. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary a psychopath is ‘a person having an egocentric and antisocial personality marked by a lack of remorse for one’s actions, an absence of empathy for others and often criminal tendencies.
Jon Ronson in the book cited above quotes a twenty point test; the Hare PCL-R checklist which, when applied to a person, answers (or observations) credit a 0, 1, or 2 score for each point. A score of more than 30 identifies the person as being psychopathic, although some researchers prefer a cutoff of 23 points.
But even considering the brief dictionary definition and then looking at the impact of psychopaths on society across the fields of corporate, political and religion, we can make sense of prevailing economic and social conditions.
Colonialism and Capitalism
The foundations of modern day capitalism and the global economy each of us is so heavily involved in (try imagining live without capitalism for a moment) has its roots in colonialism, the development of new products and the ‘discovery’ of new lands, the enslavement of people to work those lands. Think for a moment about the coffee or tea to start the day, products of colonialism, sugar, tobacco, cotton. All products we consume every day, became popular, exotic, during the colonial era, changing diets and fashions throughout colonising Europe.
Throughout the history of colonialism and capitalism which grew out of it, the interests of those who had the capital were foremost. Take a look around some of the mansions which host the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, many of those estates were the result of wealth generated through colonial expansion. The billions of pounds sterling King Charles gets are the ongoing fruits of colonialism. Mansions in The Netherlands were built on the wealth generated by the returns on investment in the Dutch East Indies Company, VOC, and elsewhere throughout Europe fruits of colonialism are evident. The people who had the capital to invest reaped great rewards, but those who generated the wealth were ‘cannon fodder’, just tools used to generate dividends. returns on investments.
In Britain, the coupling of the enclosures for increased agricultural production saw peasants who used to work on the estates evicted and provided a ready, cheap workforce for the factories of the newly developed mines and factories. The increase in wealth saw the rise of a middle class and a growing divide in the distribution of wealth, with those at the bottom of the social strata left to somehow or other exist, and should they ‘break the laws’ which protected the newfound wealth of those above, they were sent of to the colonies to work off sentences, pretty much as slaves. After the American war of independence in 1766, the colony of New South Wales was used for the dumping ground of the undesirables.
Is today any different?
Today we face a ‘cost of living crisis’. But is it really? Or is it just going back to business as usual?
The post war period, 1945 to 1975 was called, in French, ‘Les Trente Glorieuses’, the thirty glorious years. Those years were an aberration. What we are witnessing now is a return to the amassing of wealth by the owners of capital, it is more than the Marxist term, ‘the owners of the means of production’, it is the share holders, the stock market players, the venture capitalist who set the rules today.
Recently in the Senate enquiry into the Coles/Woolworths duopoly it became very clear that the return on investment was the most important number to the CEO’s and board members of those enterprises. Similarly, in the recently published book, ‘Hard Labour’ by the journalist Ben Schneiders, the author and researchers who worked with him saw blatant evidence of wages theft, mainly in retail, restaurant and fast-food industries and in the supply chains used to provide produce for resale. In cahoots the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, a union affiliated with the Democratic Labor Party in the 1950’s and later when they (re)joined the Labor party, were instrumental in having workers under-paid thousands of dollars. Sweetheart deals saw that the agreed wages were a bit higher than the minimum wages set at the time, but penalty rates and overtime rates did not apply. Workers were encouraged (compelled) to work overtime, and night shift workers did not enjoy any loadings. Membership was compulsory, with union fees deducted from pay.
In the restaurant industry some chefs in the most expensive, upmarket eateries worked up to 60 hour a week without overtime, their contracts were for 40 hour weeks. Maccas in Australia was the only Golden Arches group to encourage union membership, every else where the golden arches are present, the attitude is decidedly anti-union, and the pay and conditions not good for workers. Wages stagnated while profits soared. The union effectively handed Mc Donalds a very substantial kick back. As soon as the ‘deal’ ended, the union was effectively locked out.
Profits went overseas to parent companies or to tax havens, so no profits were paid to the Australian Tax Office.
Politics
Last month all PAYE income earners got a pay rise… or paid less tax. The stage three tax cuts happened and they hit the pay packets. It was part of a grand plan to level out the income tax system. Marginal tax rates have been adjusted so that the highest rate for those earning $135,000 or more pay a marginal rate of 37 cents in the dollar. Those earning between $45,000 and $135,000 pay a marginal rate of 30 cents in the dollar for each dollar over $45,000. The savings at the lower end are marginal over the previous rates, but for those earning the ‘big bucks’ the savings are substantial.
During the post war period, ‘Les Trente Glorieuses’, the top marginal rate in Australia was 75% and dropped to 60% into the 1980s. The period of the Thatcher-Reagan years, from 1979 to 1990 saw a great shift away from workers, restructuring the global economy to benefit the owners of capital, the ‘trickle down economy’, and since that time an erosion of wages and an increase in corporate profits.
Much of the politicking was aimed at reducing the influence of unions. In the latest iteration, unionism is not compulsory, but when pay and conditions contracts are negotiated, even those who are not union members benefit form the improved conditions.
Some of those contracts, including the QANTAS EBA saw the wages of new recruits being substantially less than long term employees. Wages are then increased on a percentage basis, so the discrepancy is permanent.
Religion
In 2013 The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was established and it was found that in many church based facilities, child sexual abuse occurred. The saga of predatory behaviour by trusted members of the clergy and the ways in which perpetrators were allowed to continue, moved from parish to parish, was a shock to the entire community. During the enquiry many accusations were made and legal battles have continued to seek justice for those who were victimised. The cases have drawn on and on, delays called as some church bodies wait for those accused to die so there will be presumably no case to answer. Even an Archbishop was accused, imprisoned and rereleased on appeal. The acceptance that there was wrongdoing is denied repeatedly, obfuscated over or dismissed.
Apart from the horrors that were exposed during and since the Royal Commission, corruption in churches throughout history have seen the deaths of many millions of people who have disagreed with the tenets of one church or another. Religion is a very lucrative game, and those in power protect their cash cows fiercely.
The sense of superiority by claiming ‘salvation’ and then taking that message across the world during colonisation, either accept this new religion or die a gruesome death, bringing a message which included a set of laws, the Ten Commandments, and without any sense of irony stealing the land, raping the women and killing those who dared to object.
As with the colonial and capitalist wielding of power over politicians to gain advantage, the religious leaders too have their influencers with politicians, ensuring tax breaks for churches and financial support for schools to ensure those who can afford the expensive private school education have the best schools, while the public school system struggles with often inadequate facilities and poorer support programmes.
The clock is being wound back to ensure there is a pool of desperate people looking to survive.
It looks like the psychopaths are in control... again.
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Return to home page“It looks like the sociopaths are in control again.”
And always will be Bert, while ever we have a representative democracy system.
Representative democracy encourages the formation of political parties, in order to get greater control.
Political party structures and processes in turn, facilitate the rise of sociopaths and psychopaths.
And the larger the democracy, the larger the bureaucracy that administers it. A feature of bureaucracies is that they encourage corruption and inefficiency, no matter what the political persuasion is of those running it.
In summary, we’re stuffed!
Hello Bert, you have just generated something that mirrors my every thought. I visited the UK a while back and the thing that struck me was the opulence of the stately homes often gifted to the owner by the aristocracy. Lately I have noticed the bejeweled crown of king charlie and the gems it contains all stolen from other parts of the empire. The latest of course is the reconstruction of notre dame and the readiness with which that money was deployed for restoration of an edifice to catholic largesse while there are people in the street who are hungry and unhoused. There is no answerability for these things and our politicians are complicit with their silence.
Excellent work, please send me a link to any other writings you may have produced.
I don’t know, psychos do the most damage per person, but it’s probably the sheer volume of sociopaths chasing $alary via doing the dirty work of corporate psychos who do the bulk of the damage.
Doing the most societal damage are some, or maybe a lot, of the BAR fraternity, followed by the upper levels of the banking industries. Then it’s a jockeying for position between for-sale politicians and bureaucraps, some of the upper levels of the larger corporations and of course the megaphone-wielding drivers of the agenda on behalf of the above, ie MSM, the Misinformation Stream Media aka legacy muppets.
I believe psychos and sociopaths are not borne but are rather created by circumstances. Look no further than Bill Gates, the son of a lawyer who dealt in tech litigation and was also heavily involved in family planning.
Is it any wonder Bill went on to lecture about how to reduce the world population while being a central player in wheeling and dealing in all kinds of businesses, inc the crashable blue screen of death Microsoft?
Long story short, exposing corruption of the BAR, the banksters, the corp shills & their politicians and Misinfo media muppets needs to happen. But expect no help from any of those groups, the crimes are too big.
Ironic that those photos below this article show us the two most recent psychopaths to sully the top job..the mad monk and the liar from the shire.We also have another one waiting in the form of the egregious Dutton,who seems unable to shake his past as a walloper.
I was just reading how Trump addressed a Christian Group in Florida with the comforting message:
“Trump said: “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
He added: “I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote,” Trump said.”
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/trump-tells-christians-they-won-t-have-to-vote-after-this-election-20240728-p5jx4d.html
Before he was assassinated, Marting Luther King observed :
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
As Steve Davis noted above : ‘In summary we’re stuffed !’
John, thank you for your comment. This is where my writings appear. I retired last year at aged 76 and have busied myself with music, if you can call joining a Ukulele choir music when in reality it is a weekly joy fest with 18 others, mainly women, art, again a group activity which causes me to ask ‘where are all the men?’, reading voraciously and committing to a weekly piece which the AIMN publish.
All these activities are aimed at filling the 60 or so hours per week which used to be dedicated to working for the sociopaths, but now are somewhat selfish pleasures.
In summary we’re all stuffed?
I really challenge that. Since retirement I have found reconnecting with people is a way of discovering the really important things, other people, enjoying them without judgement, engaging with others in conversation, in the joy of singing, never mind that the voices are not always pitch perfect and the ukulele chords sometimes a bit too challenging for those who have only recently found the toy… soon to find a friend, a banjo has been offered to add to my instrument collection, to paint a canvas with friends, to sit down to a quiet coffee and wax lyrical with a couple of mates.
What the psychopaths miss is the joy of life, the humility of emotionally engaging with those around us, to hug the mother who’s child is suffering, to pay the checkout bill for the desperate parent trying to feed their family, to actually find that ‘love’ is not found in things, but in humanity.
No we’re only ‘stuffed’ if we buy into the psychopath’s control.
Bert, the reason I say we’re stuffed is because at the moment there is no way out of the mire that is representative democracy.
People are too committed to the idea — they assume that it’s the pinnacle of political achievement. The “Westminster System” is almost an item of worship.
Yet it’s representative democracy that has given us de facto rule by oligarchy, just as the ancient Greeks predicted.
As Terence warns, it’s given us a US presidential candidate who has no regard for tradition or morality.
And it’s oligarchic rule that’s taking us into an era of neo-feudalism in which your much-loved and rightly admired cultural features will be slowly impinged upon as the oligarchs, finding areas of exploitation ever harder to find in the Global South, turn their attention to their domestic populations.
Will you be able to enjoy your social gatherings while your grandchildren labour in conditions that we assumed had been left behind after two world wars and the rise of the welfare state?
Hard-won conditions are being whittled away as we speak.
Until there’s a change in general consciousness, we’re stuffed.
Yes, Steve, I do agree to a point.
What we see happening in the US at the moment is a ray of hope, that people, all people actually matter.
We saw it in the British elections earlier this month.
We saw it when Morrison and his mob got turfed here in Australia.
And more significantly, we see the rise of small parties and independents winning seats in parliaments.
How do we regain a sense of being valued?
By talking with people, by disavowing the march to the right through conversations that shift thinking.
Coffee’d with a right leaning friend last Friday. He is a Big L Liberal and as we talked about the shifts in global economy he prefaced so many points with Hawke was PM, or Whitlam this or that, or Keating did this or that. When challenged to look globally, bringing in Thatcher and Reagan, talking of the tax cuts which have eroded the ability of governments to provide services, and how this happened across the globe as industries and commerce became more and more globalised he did see a trend.
That friend has recently undergone some serious surgery, all paid for by the government health services. I asked what would have happened if he were in the US.
We talk and discuss where we can air our thoughts, question directions we are going.
See if we can dare to hope for a better future.
Your thoughts there Bert, are in line with those of Proudhon, who believed that we are born with an innate sense of justice.
There is hope.
At some point people will realise that the system is rigged. That the system undermines justice.
Then we might see some change.
As we often find out too late in life, we never know what is going on inside somebody else’s mind. People I have know for more than 20 years and thought of as close friends turn out to be the exact opposite and you wonder how did you never see then for what they truly were. The answer I guess is obvious, we really only ever know people by the side of themselves they show us. Who they really are they closely guard and only let out in private or when it suits them. Others, like the bloated orange blimp, want everyone to see how callous and fickle they are to make gullible people envious they are not game enough to behave the same so use him as a way to channel their inherent anger issues at their own lack of success. Typically American attitude: “It’s not my fault I’m a failure, somebody else is to blame. I should be a millionaire by now!”
I have to disagree with Ronson’s statement that ” …some psycopaths are serial killers … ”
All psycopaths are destroyers of lives; those in politics, in corporations or in other large institutions (here’s looking at you religion) are serial kilers and mass murderers who create, promulgate and enforce rulings that end the lives of many, many more people than a Dahmer or Gacy or Sutcliffe or Bryant could even imagine.
I couldn’t agree more, Bert.
The authors article mentions the heritage & pedigree of the SDA.
Here in NSW, Santamaria’s shoppies actually scored a big win a couple weeks back.
Working in conjunction with the Hoteliers, gaming industry & the Minns Labour gov, they managed to score a compulsory shutdown of retail outlets for entirety of Anzac Day.
In the words of our premier, this was to defend against increasing commercialisation of the day and to encourage people to turn out & respect ‘our national day’.
Of course, pubs, clubs, TABs & racecourses will remain open, so we Nova-sud-cymriacs can honour the day of the Diggers by swilling piss and wagering on horseraces (eg “the soldiers sweepstakes”) without disgracefully disrespecting anyone’s noble sacrifice by procuring necessary foodstuffs.
Good work lads, carry on…
Commonwealth Bank joins the wages theft crooks of bug business.
Like so many large corporations, theyn really only care about return on investment. Employees are no better than the computers they opoerate.
Barnaby Joyce and the colourful language ruse:
So he employs the metaphorical use of words referring to gun violence – bullets, magazines, goodbye to government members – and although he’s apologised, as he should, it’s too late of course, the cat’s out of the bag, and if any nutter out there in voter land who’s picked up on Joyce’s implicitly dangerous incentivising and proxy encouragement to resort to the use of gross violence and take a shot at a politician because, you know, Joycey said it was ok… well, fuck me rancid.
We all knew the guy’s an idiot, he’s just demonstrated it again, clearly you can’t ‘de-idiotise’ him, he’s been roundly condemned by government members but the opposition?… Lazee SSSSusssan said, ‘Well, that’s Barnaby, he does use colourful language at times’, Spudly’s apparently said nothing at all, and I expect the rest of that useless and pathetic bunch are all chuckling into their beers or whiskys or whatever it is they get up to when they’re supposed to be at work.
[Scratching head and wondering just how much of a drongo do you have to be to get a job as a politician in this country?].
Have a read of The Psychology of Stupidity: Explained by Some of the World’s Smartest People by Jean-François Marmion (ed.).
I still don’t know why the fat loudmouth swamp gas filled wind bag…I mean Banababy was invited to an anti-wind turbine rally. He should be set in concrete in front of a turbine, fed beans and rice and be cajoled and having his ego stroked into making as many speeches as possible.
I particularly relate to John C’s comment.
Yes Bert, a well said article, and a range of excellent comments,
From the renowned Oz Professor John Keane’s book The New Despotism:
Despotisms, whether in democracies or not, “craft top-to-bottom relations of dependency oiled by wealth, money, law, elections, and much media talk of defending ‘the people’ and ‘the nation’ against ‘domestic subversives’ and ‘foreign enemies’. Despotisms are top-down pyramids of power that defy political gravity by nurturing the willing subservience and docility of their subjects.” “Trial-and-error perfection of the techniques of exercising power over their subjects their specialty, and a key explanation of their tightening grip on world power.”
“New despotisms are big-business states. They are a novel brand of capitalism that in practice blurs the boundaries between market and state, between economy and politics.” “New despotisms are in effect wealth creation and protection rackets for the privileged.”
Under the new despotism, the middle classes are “fickle pragmatists skilled at navigating mazes of connections, good at mental acrobatics and at practical writhing and wriggling, with few scruples. Containing pedants, hair-splitters and hard-boiled skeptics – maybe simple-minded avoiders of complexity, all both a product and a support of despotism.” “They say they are less about actual wealth, and more, believers in education, hard work, personal resolve, and (of course) whom you know.” “They scoff at the privileges of the rich, and kick down at the poor, who fail. they say, because they lack the guts and gumption sufficient to change their lives.” “The humour and cynicism of the middle classes should not be underestimated, nor should their melancholia.” “They may feel that the whole world is rigged, so they may as well just get on with their lives.” And “guided by a mixture of motives, including greed, professional and family honour, respectability, and anxiety about the future, they seem happy to be kidnapped by state rulers and tutelary power.”
On and on it goes below those privileged, the various classes and sub-classes for reasons specific to their stratum, abdicate their global responsibilities to the prestidigitations of the new despots.
The ‘old’ despotism, (original term Roman – looking after family, children and slaves), from the Byzantine era and through Western colonialism in the East, was reinvented by the Europeans against the entire East, the Muslims, Turks, Persians, and Indic Mughals, Hindus, Buddhists, and also the Chinese and Japanese. None were spared the guile, misinformation and out-and-out lies about the cruelty and oppression of the Eastern rulers on their ever-suffering populace, in the promulgations back to Europe. After all Europe needed justification for its impositions upon the East.
Others however, dispelled those ‘myths’ about the East, and from then, there developed numerous intellectualised arguments about ‘despotism’, with differentiations, such as ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ despotism. Where ‘good’ despotism was seen as the practice of the Western royalty and nobility who looked after their populace via “wise and irrevocable laws” which are “the laws of the Natural Order” versus the (unproven) badness of the East, requiring the West to liberate the populace of the East. History, of course, reveals that the West conned the Eastern rulers, crushed the Eastern populace, and stole their technology, land and resources.
Of course, it had already been backed in by the pontiffs (Gregory VI and Alexander VI) via the Doctrine of Reception (11-12thC) and later the Doctrine of Discovery 1493.
Although there were ‘revolutions’ in France and Britain, the Doctrines held fast in France due to the predominance of Roman Catholics, and in England because of the Magna Carta. This ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ despotism paradigm continued on through Italy, France and Germany to become the European ubiquity, and persisted strongly in Britain and America.
The British James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill continued in the vein of ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ despotism through into the late 19thC, justifying Britain’s incursions into the East. The founding fathers of the United States, in particular Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were talking in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ despotism, and the matters were reinforced via the 19thC US Monroe Doctrine and later (in response) Britain’s Pax Britannica – keeping one another in check. And of course, as time went by, the voting populous was conned that all would be well and OK because we were nearly all become democracies of global triumph.
Need I talk about the absolute train smash that is the British state of today – I think not. I’ll revert to the crumbling, but hugely dangerous hegemon, the United States of America.
It is such an irony that the US Constitution failed to the extent the system “depends on a delicate balance- a government strong enough to capably respond to pressing national problems, yet not so unchecked that officeholders are able to shrug off limits on power and rule as authoritarians. A government too weak to carry out its responsibilities (like the government under the failed Articles of Confederation) is a failed government. A government with a president who rejects the notion of limits on his or her power is also a failed government.” (from American Constitution Society – ACS January 8 2021 – ‘Our Constitution Has Failed: It’s Time for a New Constitution’ )
So it has engendered messiness over particularly the last 100 years, and increasing exceptionalism, reaching its now ultimate chaos, and the putative plutocratic new despotism of Trump. Given the history of the West’s guile and hostile misinformation, it’s no small irony that China with relative political stability, has lifted more than 800 million people out of extreme poverty since the late 1970s, and “the fifty richest delegates to China’s National People’s Congress are collectively sixty times wealthier that the fifty richest members of the US Congress.”
Shall we continue to be faced with the influence of brutal, hate and fear filled comedic paranoia of the likes of Trump in America, and the hegemon’s influence across the globe?
As faith in and functionality of such democracies decline, are they ineffably on the slide to a feudalism driven by greed, stupidity, corruption, criminality, money, guns and drugs, or can they be rebuilt by the strengthening of bureaucracies and inherent global economies, and the strict enforcement of equity and the rule of law?
And then there’s US style corporate lobbying,
After rattling on about despotism, last night there was a podcast US lobbyists changed the political process on ABC RN LNL, interviewing Brody Mullins, author of The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government – well worth a listen.
An intriguing story of the 50+ years of the ever-increasing affect of the US lobbying industry and its multiple billions and sophisticated techniques deployed to entrap and make subservient US consumers, politicians and the judiciary. Applying to the Republicans and Democrats et al, ruining the social and political structures. But thankfully now, it has become so insidious, that there are signs of political fight-back from both major parties, and the community as a whole.
Given the massive scale of US corporate wealth and power, one is left to wonder regarding the fight-back, to what affect, and how long ordinary Americans, and the rest of the world, will have to wait?
If ever there were ‘now deemed persons’ responsible for the impending wreckage of America and relationships across the globe, it’s US corporations and their lobbyists – despotism to the power of three.