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Quote:Here’s a tiny question. Do you think our societies are turning…sociopathic? The more that I think about it…I do.
The way I think about our societies now — particularly America — is this. They’ve been captured by organized coalitions of something very much like sociopaths. We give those coalitions of sociopaths various polite names — “corporations,” “hedge funds,” “parties,” “lobbyists,” and so on. But what they really are, in simple psychosocial terms, are…organized coalitions of sociopaths. People who are indifferent at best to extreme human suffering, and who — at worst — derive a kind of self-worth and pleasure from it.
What do I mean by “sociopaths”? I mean it in a very precise and simple way. These groups, these coalitions, who have risen to the commanding heights, don’t care about anything — anything — but money and power. They. Don’t Care. About anything. Else. Period. Full Stop. The planet’s burning? So what? Profit! Democracy’s dying! Good work, gang! The middle class imploded into the new poor? Count those megabucks! And so on. Perhaps you see what I mean a little bit — I mean it in a simpler but truer way than the technical psychiatric diagnosis (someone who can’t “understand feelings”).
(Let me give you a few examples. There’s the family who profited to a mind-boggling degree by…hooking a nation on opioids. There’s the family who owns the chain of megastores that ripped the heart out of the economy…laughing all the way to the bank. There’s the CEOs of HMOs, who are quite content to rake in millions earned from…the literal misery, the denial of decent healthcare…to a nation. There are the “hedge fund managers” who revel in all the above, and slaver over seven figure bonuses. And, of course, there’s our old friends Zuck and Jack — and the armies of minions who “work for” them, who seem perfectly happy with turning the public sphere over to propaganda, hate, demagogues, and lies. As the old joke goes now, Zuck and Jack are more likely to ban anything but a fascist. And then there’s McKinsey…that pillar of American business…running…concentration camps. What the?)
My friends, it’s high time we recognized a fact. These are not normal, acceptable, civilized behaviours. Things like running concentration camps and profiting from drug epidemics and denying sick people healthcare and earning a fortune off crippling “interest rates” are the stuff of textbook sociopathy. They might be dressed up in polite terms, but they remain precisely the same: gaining pleasure from suffering, harm, and destruction. Only this kind of sociopathy exists on an epic scale — a social scale, perhaps a global one.
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Sociopathy. Let me put that another way. Nothing matters to the kinds of bizarre elites I’m talking about, it seems. Nothing. So much so that “nothing matters” has become a kind of ironic refrain of now. How? We are living in times of rising climate change, genocide, ecocide, planetary ruin, and democratic self-destruction. And mostly, the people at the top could literally care less. But why should they? Why should anything matter to this class of people — billionaires, lobbyists, hedge fund managers, and so on? Haven’t they become rich and powerful precisely by not caring?
The truth is that this class of people — predatory elites — has gotten rich and powerful by causing most of the problems above. Americans used to live in a fairy tale that said their billionaires would grow rich by making the rest of society better off. It didn’t turn out that way. Mostly, America’s billionaires are people who’ve trafficked in weapons of social mass self-destruction, whether Facebook or surveillance or guns or opioids or lobbies or wars or crackpot ideas or outright authoritarianism. This class of people doesn’t care for a very simple reason. It doesn’t pay to care. And it costs nothing not to. So why bother caring about anything? Caring is just a road to ruin. And so our elites couldn’t care less. They are just doing what the system rewards.
And that kind of moral illogic — me, me, me first, all that matters is my money, sex, power, and fame, more, more, more, to absurd degrees — seems to have trickled down more and more to the average person, too. They take their cues from elites. And if elites are free to act in sociopathic ways…why shouldn’t they? If being a moral, humane, decent person only leads to…debt., bankruptcy, unemployment, and misery…why should anyone even try?
But I also think that’s just a superficial line of reasoning, too. Because the system is also them. It’s not some kind of eternal Platonic ideal, after all: every system is just people. So there’s a deeper problem at work here. Let me put it this way.
Who do our institutions select for? Well, if you go to work for a corporation — most corporations, anyways — the values they say they prize are nice and wonderful things, like kindness and truth and decency and wisdom and whatnot. But the simple fact is that if you display any of those qualities, you’ll be marked as a weakling, and on the path to getting the axe, at light speed. The qualities that corporations — as least American ones — really value are ruthlessness, selfishness, greed, hard-heartedness, a total lack of emotional functioning, narcissism, and brutality. Display those, my friends, and you’re what they call “leadership material.”
Our economic institutions select for predatory values precisely because they have a predatory purpose: to maximize profit, at all human, social, environmental, cultural costs, even at planetary scales. Who do you think can run the kind of economic entities which traffic in opioids and wars and fossil fuels and propaganda dressed up as “ads” and so forth? You have to be a certain kind of person. You can’t be a sane, decent, kind human being. It would literally destroy you, turn you into a shattered, depressed, burnt-out wreck. You have to be a little sociopath to run institutions whose only purpose is predation — much like a Trump, or any of the other myriad dynasties thereof.
So what our economic institutions really peddling, then? Violence, hate, despair, misery, fear. Sure, they might sell us “products” — but that’s mostly superficial. Facebook isn’t really selling you a friend. They’re selling you the kind of self-hate that keeps you coming back, like a wriggling fish on the hook, for the glimmer of a chance someone might really, really appreciate you, love you, celebrate you, for who you really are. The same thing is true, for example, of guns. They’re not really selling people guns. They’re selling people a laughable kind of false safety and strength — precisely because people are beaten down and afraid and hopeless in the first place.
Let me put that more sharply. America’s economic institutions sell Americans — and the world — the promise of perfection. It’s especially seductive in a society where weakness is death. If you can be perfect, then you can be strong, and you’ll not just survive — but maybe even reign supreme, over all those weaklings, those barely-humans, those subhumans. Hence, Americans are obsessed with the perfect pecs, bodies, smiles, jobs, CVs, careers, and so on. There’s a very good reason for it. The price of being less than perfect is genuinely punishing. You might just be abandoned to fend for yourself, no healthcare, no savings, no income, no home, no life.The problem, though, is that no one is perfect. And saying that you can only survive if you are perfect is not really a recipe for a society — it’s a formula for a kind of bizarre, surreal gladiatorial combat, where the smallest mistake yields death. And that, increasingly, is what Americans life has become.
Wait — isn’t all that a pretty good description of sociopathy, too? Make a tiny mistake — and you don’t deserve to live? Only perfection deserves survival? Doesn’t that mean that no one and nothing has the inherent and inalienable right to exist, to self-worth, to self-determination?
The sociopath, you see, is a kind of profound misanthrope. He hates and despises people, deep down — including himself. For who they really are. Their fragility and flaws and imperfections. They terrify him. He can’t bear them. Hence, many sociopaths are also obsessed with hygiene, with cleanliness, with sanitization. Any tiny flaw reminds the sociopath of just how absurd and terrifying life really is. He must eliminate anyone, therefore, who isn’t perfect. Usually, that ends up being…just him. That is also why sociopaths are on the one hand emotionless, and on the other, charming when they need to be. They are seeing your vulnerabilities, and being disgusted and repulsed by them inside — pretending to hold them — just waiting for the moment to strike, and take advantage of them. They hold you close — before they snap your neck.
Wait — isn’t that also a pretty good description of our society, of our institutions? Don’t they bring us close — just to gain our trust — and then use our weaknesses against us? They encourage us to level with them. They’re constantly scrutinizing us, testing us. They know us inside and our, our psychologies, our wants, wishes, needs, desires. They “target” and “profile” us. But not so that they can support us in the difficult project of living. So that they can use them against us. “You’re just not a good fit.” Who hasn’t heard that? And by now who doesn’t also know it means something like: “You displayed a tiny shred of humanity, and we were looking for a killer”?
Deep down, what the sociopath really hates is life itself. He is always trying to destroy it. To destroy what is most beautiful and true in it. Love, grace, gentleness, compassion, defiance, wisdom, truth. All those things must be annihilated. They terrify him, because they overwhelm him. They seem to serve no purpose to him, because they threaten him with something larger than himself. If people love each other — he is not the most powerful one. And if he is not the most powerful one — then he is nothing, and he deserves to die. Therefore, love must die, first.
Wait — isn’t that a perfect description of what our institutions do, too? Don’t they genuinely seem to hate…life itself? Don’t they seem to frown on…cheat us of…deny us…all the things we value most in life? Aren’t they only concerned with being the most powerful things and ones of all? Isn’t that why they overwork us, underpay us, abuse us, demean us, belittle us…and then discard us? Every day we’re at work, don’t most of us feel like the worthiest aspect of the human condition…love, truth, beauty, wisdom, grace…might just…if we express them for even a moment…cost us our jobs, positions, ranks, and titles? What the? Do you see how neatly sociopathy lines up with what our institutions really are? They are profoundly misanthropic, too. Our institutions hate us for who we really are. They want to use us, as commodities, as producers, as “consumers.” The only way they value the true us is to…use it against us. They genuinely despise our humanity, as in our flaws, shortcomings, and failures.
Now consider our political institutions — in particular, American ones. What’s their point? Violence. Nothing else. Just violence. America’s foreign policy is based on violence to secure the goals of American capital, whether oil, cheap labour, or cheap resources, in China, Iran, Iraq, or anywhere else.It’s domestic agenda is much the same. Lose that job? There goes your healthcare! Too bad. Got cancer? So sorry — there go your life savings. In both cases, violence is used as a method of social control — to knock people into line. To keep them obedient employees, and weary citizens who can barely muster the energy to vote, or “productive” cogs in the machine, or voracious consumers hoping to numb the pain and stupidity of it all.Violence is the reason our political institutions exist — especially in the American context.
Our institutions are sociopathy machines. They are made for sociopathic ends. That is why sociopaths have risen to the top of them. Hence, a class of jaw-dropping sociopaths — predatory elites — now increasingly runs our societies. Zucks and Waltons and Sacklers. Trumps and McConnells. The good folks at McKinsey were running the…uh…concentration camps “assignment.” This class of people is made of coalitions of genuine sociopaths. They don’t appear to be normal people because they are not normal people. They. Don’t. Care. They don’t value the things normal people do. The things which make us human. The aspects of us which are the most valuable and beautiful and worthy. Our broken hearts, our tiny arms, our fragile and desperate souls. Those things are only there to be used against us.
The demagogues use our weaknesses against us by creating imaginary enemies whom we’re supposed to fear and annihilate. The economic lunatics use them against us to sell us this perfect bodies, pecs, selves, smiles, lives. The idea is exactly the same: that only perfection, in the form of supremacy, can protect us against a hostile, aggressive, violent world.
But that is a profoundly misanthropic — sociopathic, as in “against the notion of a society” — idea to begin with. We should not live in such a world. It is not one worth having. A violent world will always be ruled by the most violent, in mafias, clans, tribes — what it can’t have is something like modern, peaceful societies. The world we should have — and should have already had — is a peaceful, prosperous, and gentle one, made of just such societies. One in which we don’t need perfection — pecs, bodies, smiles, minds, lives — as cudgels and swords to be predators with. But one in which our imperfections and fragilities — I am small, you are little, let us hold one another, until the stars come down — are the most beautiful and worthy things of all.
You are small. I am little. How we ache, you and I. Who made us? Where will we go? Why do we have just these few short breaths? What does it all mean? Ask these questions for more than an instant — and any human soul will feel the unbridled, dizzying terror of existence lancing through them. You will feel the breath of Time and Death on the nape of the neck of child you once were if you ask these questions too long. What does that tell you? We are all one in a profound way, my friends. In our pain. In the depth and breadth of it. In how it hurts, just to be alive.
That, my friends, is the human condition. And it matters, intensely — because what we have done is forgotten it, about ourselves, and each other. Hence, sociopaths rules — and make little sociopaths of us. We prey on one another’s pain, instead of hold one another close, instead of wiping each other’s bitter tears away. When was the last time you lost a loved one — suddenly, just like that? I see you. I hold you. I know you. Here, take my hand. I will walk beside you. Do you understand what I mean now?
We are orphans, on a mote of dust, spinning through the eternal darkness. We are starlight, specks of fire, one spring day. And then we are gone. Let us hold one another, until the heavens come down. We are all we have. That is what it means to be human, alive, aware, true, here. now. Anything less than the recognition of the terrible, beautiful pain of the universal human condition, I’ve come to believe, has something of the sociopath in it. I am not above you. You are not above me. We are all we have. I hold you in everything I do.
