Good article.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote something like, “The name of the game is
'Winner Take All', and the game is rigged.”

We're talking about people, too, who have basically abused the freedoms of American society to the destruction of that society. Basically, you have to put controls in the system that do not permit this kind of devastating distribution of wealth in the hands of very few, while tens of millions suffer because of it. Heck, the lack of control and regulation in the delusional name of "Freedom" could even result in human species extinction soon simply because our corrupt and incompetent government leaders fail to crack down on climate change, for example, and the scientifically established dangers of trapped methane being released by melting ice. We are truly at a point of economic and political crisis in the world in a way never seen before. This small minority of runaway sociopaths and psychopaths must be brought under control - much in the way a parent says a young child, no, you can't have any more ice cream - or no, you cannot take Tommy's toys while you play in the sandbox. Some of these people - I wonder if their parents even set limits for them. I think not. And our society is growing increasingly like those parents who cannot provide the needed moral and social limitations, as well as the appropriate moral compass and parameters. Our culture, like the parent being ruled by a little baby having a tantrum, rather than the other way around. The difference being, that children are not marred at that point in their lives - egocentrism to that extent is a normal, natural part of infancy and early childhood - while it is something altogether different in adults.

I believe the proper term for someone who
has no conscience or empathy, but is not insane, is sociopath. A serial killer is a sociopath. A psychopath may be someone who seems normal
until he suddenly has a psychotic break and becomes a mass murderer, (which
seems to be getting more and more common in the US.)

According to the Supreme Court, corporations
are people. If so, they are not normal
people but sociopaths. Sociopaths rise to the top (and lie, cheat and steal to
get there.)

Many decades ago a study was done by Dr
William Walsh of the Argonne National labs near Chicago. He studied hair analyses of inmates in the
California penal system, who were either serial killers or mass murderers. All were found to have very high levels of
lead and cadmium, and deficient levels of zinc.
The mass murderers also had high copper levels. Someone should be looking into this.

The last Roman emperors like Nero and
Caligula were murderous psychopaths, poisoned by lead in their water pipes and
drinking vessels.

If we
had a way of identifying sociopaths, we wouldn’t have to “slaughter” or incarcerate
them, just prevent them from holding office or running a corporation. There are jobs they might be better suited
for, where empathy gets in the way, like working in a slaughterhouse.

I once read a science fiction story written
in the 1950’s by Damon Knight, called “The Country of the Kind”. The narrator was obviously a sociopath, who
went around destroying things for the fun of it. The people had found a way of dealing with
the situation by totally ignoring him and just rebuilding their houses. Of course, they only had one sociopath to
deal with.

We've become powerless to our own creation; we serve it, rather than it serving
us. We perpetuate the situation, not because we need to, but because we feel compelled to–our success, our socially mediated meaning in life is at stake. What choice do we have? The pressure of conformity to continue this way is
enormous. If we have more, society will approve of us, but if we have less, or choose not to seek more, then disapproval will, most surely, follow.
We will be thought of as irrational, weird not normal! Yet we are told to think of ourselves as free individuals. We are living a reality that is driving us slightly mad.

As long as we maintain this habitual way of living–as long as we continue to
follow the maxims of egoistic capitalism–we are headed in the direction of dissolution, not evolution: For we cannot possibly progress as a species when we are increasing our ego-strength and, correspondingly, relinquishing our uniquely human powers in service to the invisible authority of the economy. The egoistic economy, by definition, is self-serving; it serves, but only itself. Cooperating with this system, in the end we all lose. (See http://forprogressnotgrowth.co... )

Very thoughtful. Fully agree that societal norms have to change before humans begin to behave ... well, like human beings. I also agree that such changes will enrich the lives all -- the current commanders as well as the commanded. There is much to be said for getting your hands dirty. In short, hierarchies have to go.

I know of no psychiatric or psychological organization that has sanctioned a diagnosis that goes by the title of “psychopathy”. Using illness to label anyone does
a disservice to the person managing the illness, the care teams
involved in maintaining that person's well being and safety and the
public at large. That kind of stigmatizing labeling is especially
egregious when applied to those of us who manage our own mental
illness while helping others manage theirs. You keep quoting
fragments and adding that it's a variant spelling of what you want it
to mean. By your circular logic anyone climbing behind the wheel of a
car or taking a prescription medicine is a “psychopath”. Am I for
questioning your “conclusion”? Do you really teach this stuff?

The NYT will not print a comment that includes a reference to the Wall Street elite (and others like them) as sociopaths, aka psychopaths. Interesting, no?

I find the assumption that people who are wealthy are therefore psychopaths absurd.

Do the self identified elites in the Homeland Inc. act the way they do because of the way they are OR is they way act created by a system of rewards growing out of the basic ethos of the society? Yes.

Our self identified elites understand, in the same way wise guys do, that the real value of money resides in the ability to insulate one from the consequences of one's actions.

Is the basic story today any different from when the first self identified elites assigned guards to the first storehouses? Probably not.

The only real difference between then and now is the level of technology and we may find, to our terminal regret, THAT will be the limiting factor.

Seems like the whole discussion is not so much chicken and egg as Yin and Yang.

There's no harm in stigmatizing the rich as psychopaths--in fact, it's both highly amusing and probably true. But we do have to ask where this leaves us politically.

Routinely in America, arguments from psychology become moral arguments which in turn decay into name-calling. While, again, there's no harm in calling rich people names (they themselves think it's funny), the fact remains that, at the end of the day, there the bastards still are, firmly in control and smirking away with that smirk that only death can erase.

The real question is whether human beings are capable of a large-scale social organization without kleptocracy and its attendant "moral" or psychological diseases.

If this is possible, it will not be brought about by work on individual psychology--or indeed, I'd suggest, by any kind of work on individual enlightenment and the attainment of personal moral, "spiritual," or psychological superiority all by itself.

This is the great danger of a certain current in progressivism--all the petty-bourgeois truth-seekers obsessed with spirituality, and cultivating one's Inner Me, and Courage (whatever that means), and eating the right foods, and rearing the perfect children.. This sort of thing shades right into the delusions of the wealthy without a break in continuity.

Any gentrified white ghetto in any city in the United States offers innumerable examples of police-worshipping Yuppie psychopaths who vote for Obama and like to think of themselves as progressive merely because they have not yet discovered that they are fascists.

If there can be significant social change, it will stem from a dry-eyed view of objective social relations, not from some Vaseline-smeared focus on the inner self.

So watch where you're going with your psychology--it's double-edged.

If I learned anything through this article, it's that the desire among some to demonstrate supposed moral superiority knows no bounds.

I don't think psychopaths like the 1% can be taught anything. When character is that warped, it must be a fairly permanent arrangement of the psyche, and the best that can be done is perhaps manage it - the way one learns to live with a disease. Obviously, that management of a psychopathology cannot be left to the psychopaths themselves. Though we can try to learn as much as we can about how these mentalities are shaped and formed, and so that we do not have more of them - but less and less. And we can kind of keep this kind of human phenomenon "in check." I think we see less of these characters arising in societies that abide by better social safety net codes, economically. Thom Hartmann recently reported that Denmark, for example, was found a U.N. research group to rank the highest, globally, in happiness. In his discussion, he accurately linked, IMO, what it is that makes Denmark so much happier - and that is the much higher level of social safety net, with the attached values to such standards taken for granted by Danish citizens. 10-1 that a nation with this high happiness factor doesn't produce the psychopaths coming out of the U.S. because the system doesn't permit it, and people are thereby conditioned differently. Basically, it's about learning and conditioning. While the Danish have less psychopaths, they also have more compassionate and innocent citizenry, in general. Innocent, meaning, one doesn't steal from their neighbor - or even consider it; one doesn't begrudge another their benefits from some kind of warped thinking like, "Huh - why should they get that benefit? They're not rich, so they haven't earned it!" It seems that the U.S. society with its high rate of producing psychopaths also produces a higher rate of citizenry with just a general heartlessness and meanness of spirit towards those who have less. And, of course, it's a common wisdom that such stinginess of spirit goes hand-in-hand with unhappiness - the classic story of Scrooge, but on a commonplace level with the everyday public. In the end, though, what do we do? Many are increasingly coming to the conclusion, it seems to me, that our society needs some major shifts to take place ITO the distribution of wealth. Citizens needs a uncondiitional basic income so they can live with the security of knowing that they won't be homeless or hungry or impoverished. Citizens need unconditional access to quality health care. Societies with these kinds of protections or similar are more sane, calm and collected cultures. In America, everything is hysteria and stress. We put on the news and someone is shooting someone up with another Ak-47. Without fail, that individual is unemployed and doesn't have appropriate access to quality health care. These people are just symptoms, though, of a deeper problem in our society - the problem also going a lot deeper than the symptom of guns. It has to do with our understanding of wealth and its distribution, and our understanding and/or valuation of "work" and what it means or doesn't mean when someone has truly "earned" something.

Lack of.compassion and.empathy is mankinds psychopathy. There can be no.long term survival.without it. We will create our own emotional desert and this desert will surround us with our own doom. If life is not valued we cannot survive. or floirish

These are the "takers," the 1%. They take from those who can least afford to give. They have no compassion, no empathy, no concern for anyone but those of their "own kind." They cannot feel the pain of the poor, or the former middle class who have been reduced to poverty, due to stagnant wages and rising costs of living. In essence, with those symptoms, they are not only "the takers," but sociopathic "takers."

Glorification of object possession in capitalist society that inflates it beyond reason. If we started to refuse their trinkets and put them in Jail they may start to understand there are consequences for their behavior. Allowing them to proceed because others will just take their place is the problem. What they have done is a crime (and these are criminals) lets start putting them in jail and take away their homes and money, then it will stop! In prison they can get the mental health they all need so badly, Allowing them to continue to feed on people and destroy countries is not acceptable!.

Thanks for the brilliant article. Extremes of wealth and poverty go hand-in-hand and are both very deleterious to social and environmemtal health. They lead to anti-social behaviors - here so well described- extraordinary waste of resources and unparalleled level of hubris in the extremely wealthy and to the ever-advancing frontier of envirnmental destruction as the extremely poor are moved to maginal lands in their need to meek out a living. Moreover, both extremes are degrading of human dignity - leading to extremely selfish, "me-first" belief system and to a grinding struggle to survive from day to day in the xtremely poor. It is unacceptable that, in today's world, as we have the scientific means and resources to completely overcome the extreme poverty of cllose to one billion people, some live with billions of dollars to their bank accounts and can so openly flaunt their careless wealth and hardened hearts. These psychpaths SHOULD go to jail or some forlorn island. AS they continue to increase their unfathomable welath in the worlds casino economy, with no end in sight to their greed, the world totters on to man-made disaster. It is a sad, immoral, unhealthy, even dangerous situation.

A couple of families have more money than the bottom 40% of the population. Thirty, or less, have more cash and assets than 150 million of us, combined. So who cares what they think and feel? Fuck them. They off shored and outsourced far beyond any other nation. No nation's elites betrayed working citizens like those in the United States. They hate democracy and democratic forums in private enterprise. They hate the very foundations of our Republic and what we've created through centuries of work and sacrifice. They stand four-square against us. They heavily fund theocratic corporate fascism which adherents recently voted to destroy what's left of our domestic economy and the economies of other nations. They pay slave wages while living in castles. They live like Pharaohs. With their unnatural rights and wealth, they seized the people's revolutionary institutions and filled them with their sycophants. They, literally, own our Presidents. They corrupted and destroyed our economic order and financial system while looting the Treasury. They perpetrated an illegal attack and occupation that killed and maimed millions while plundering tens - perhaps hundreds - of billions of dollars while paying no taxes. They feed off the lives of the mass of people. They're a succubus upon our lives and liberties. They're worse than than 18th century British who, at least, had some rational planning for their colonies and colonists . None of their children are in the military of serve the public weal. Literally, they don't care whether our families go without food, become ill, poisoned, suffer, or die. They don't give a damn about the American Republic, by and for the people. Over and over again, they've shown themselves to be the mortal enemy of our revolutionary Republic. They aren't Americans, not anymore. . The super rich in the U.S. are corporate fascists. They're alien with no historical place in our society other than as a target of wrath and revolution to destroy their destructive way of life along with the filthy militant corporatist system they've created to devour us. If we don't bring them down they'll take us to resource depletion, starvation, inhuman stress, and world war.

The 1% only care about themselves and not paying their Fair Share of taxes. In 1938 we had 33 tax brackets ranging from 3% for all income up to $64K(Adjusting for Inflation), all the way up to a top marginal rate of 79% for Income over $79Million. That is exactly what we need today. Today we have a mere 6 brackets that don't begin to reach into the incomes of the rich & super-rich. The top marginal rate today tops out at 39% for only $450K. We the people have to Demand that Congress extend the tax code to include the incomes of everyone. The First thing we need to do is Vote All Republicans out of Office, and keep a Close Eye on the Democrats.

Not only are the rich sociopathic by nature, they also have no qualms about working hand in hand with their peers in organized crime if it means another dollar in their pockets. It was widely reported but quickly forgotten that many of the major banks remained solvent during the crash because of the 300 billion plus dollars of liquidity supplied by the world's drug cartels, not to mention the equal amount of billions from human trafficking and the arms trade. Just a few days ago it was revealed that the three largest Japanese banks were laundering money for the Yakusa. None of this should come as a surprise to anyone. Balzac was right: behind every great fortune is a great crime.

"psychopathy include(s)...superficial charm, anti-social behavior, unreliability, lack of remorse or shame, above-average intelligence, absence of nervousness, and untruthfulness and insincerity."

1. I thought this constellation of features characterizes sociopaths. If so, then in clinical terms, what is the distinction between the two disorders?

2. Either way: throw in cognitive dissonance and it sounds like Teabaggers! :-)

Often left out of the "money/happiness" debate is the concept of freedom. What money buys is freedom, and it's this freedom that provides happiness.

This helps explain the connection between individual psychosis and mass psychosis. Threaten anyone's survival and watch how quickly they fit the definition of psychopath. Get homogeneous groups to identify their survival with the survival of the group and you have group or mass psychosis. War between groups occurs when conformity of thought and action for the cause of group survival exists in different homogenous groups seeking control of the same resources that are deemed necessary for survival.

They're simply plastic; which is a Peter - "principled" prerequisite for elevation into the 1%er's depravity (the only reason more of them APPEAR Not to qualify as depraved is that they've BOUGHT the special dispensations of having the social norms And LAWS altered to "legitimize" their crimes and criminality)!

I see a major difference from one hundred years ago and today. Back then the captains of industry were interested in new invention and technology to improve society. They made their profits, but, as with Ford, had the working man (and woman) in mind as they would be the purchasers of those needs and wants that were being invented and improved. In more recent decades, that is not the case so much, especially in regards to the energy industry. Those huge multi-nationals do not want new invention and technology unless it's to frack. They hate solar panels and wind turbines, or the idea of using the tides to produced electricity, or the use of geothermal. Profits from fossil fuels are way more important than polluting the earth. That's is psychopathy. Unfortunately there aren't enough in the 1% to push an agenda of clean energy, which would produce jobs for many of the 99%, and therefore increase happiness. I don't hear Gates or Zuckerberg saying anything, or leading any cause, to do away with fracking and, on the other hand, leading an investment strategy in clean energy and renewables. Their heads seem to be in the sand on this issue. Climate change will be like the "Mask of the Red Death" for the 1%, who are sure to squirrel themselves away in towers above the flood of devastating storms.