What happens if psychopaths take over the world?

Earthhorse wrote: »

Psychopaths don't run the world but they have a disproportionate influence on it compared to their number in the general populace. It's my genuine hope that as more research is done on them we can spot and counteract them and that their influence on our lives will lessen.

Maybe EH and I can see your reasoning and it's sound at first glance, but it might also be considered that the reason such individuals exist and indeed as you point out can be found to have a disproportionate amount of influence suggests we need them in some way as a species? Or at least the non "I'm gonna wear your skin as a blanket while I feast on your eyeballs" type.

That would be my take on it anyway. Loads of empathy while it may be healthy for the individual, may not be great when considering wider societal questions. The feels can sometimes get in the way and may actually cause more suffering in a wider context. Consider the current EU crisis, the love topic that dare not speak its name in AH. The empathic response would be to open up the EU and help, the non empathic response would be to look at other examples like Australia and how closing borders actually saved thousands of lives.

Full disclosure here EH, I would and have tested positive* for some psychopathic traits. My psychopathy more operates at a distance though and doesn't involve human organs in the oul fridge. Beyond me and mine my level of care drops right off an emotional precipice. The irony is I can appear more empathic than the average. I appear to "get people" more easily(which can itself be a box tick for a psychopath). It's because it's more a learned and detached thing, rather than an emotional connection thing. I have always enjoyed trying to pull meaning from fluid patterns in reality and people rock very fluid and shifting patterns all the time, so it was more an area of study than a natural thing, if you know what I mean?

Where I go off the psychopathy piste and back to "normal" is I do feel remorse for wrongdoing, I have a real hard on for societal fairness, I do form emotional attachments(though at a lesser rate than most) and generally speaking I'm not that much of a fcukwit. I did say generally speaking… Stop sniggering at the back, otherwise you'll be putting the lotion on your skin. If all that was missing I'd likely have ended up in the Daily Mail as a "Beast!". :pac:

To give an example, the recent photo of the dead child on the beach. I felt nada TBH. For me it was a bit of a media distraction, a collection of pixels that didn't resonate at all beyond the intellectual(Hmm OK so… what's the story, the background, how will this affect opinion, etc). And no this isn't desensitisation courtesy of the interwebs. I was always like this. A little cold, detached. "Psychopathic" as it were. However if it had been a friends child. Huge difference. Though to be perfectly honest I suspect I'd feel it a little less than normal folks even then, or I could compartmentalise it more easily.

I do think it's a sliding scale and as a "pathology" it like others can be advantageous. Autistic spectrum another example. IT is full of such people. Some of the largest clusters of autism are kicking off in "silicon valley" where these folks are marrying and having kids and concentrating the tendency. Your autistic spectrum people are almost like the psychopaths without social skills. A lot less potentially dangerous though, at least on a one to one personal level. Running huge multinationals with bazillions behind them… Hmmm maybe more of a concern.


*a couple of mates and rellies are in the psychology/psychiatry field. Indeed in the latter discipline one of them himself has tested positive in a similar way, but he reckons his detachment makes him better at helping people.