### Psychopaths rule the world. I'm sure this comes as no surprise; approximately 1% of the general population is psychopathic, but among CEO's that number is 4% according to the most prudent of indications, and more likely around 20%. The same goes for politicians, but also, and this may surprise you, for many other professions where scoring higher on the "psychopathy-meter" translates to a better chance of being successful.<br>
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<br><sub>Official logo of the movie Psycho - source: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Psycho_Logo.png)</sub>
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*"Your Psychopath Challenge score is low: 10 out of a possible 33. Should you be worried? Find out more..."* Hmmmm. I just did the "Psychopath Challenge" on the homepage of the book "The Wisdom of Psychopaths" by Kevin Dutton, and I'm kind of worried; I do after all score 30% on the psychopathy-counter! And here I am, thinking I'm basically no more or less evil then your average Joe... Clicking the "learn more" link reveals the following:
> *"When most people think of psychopaths, Hannibal Lecter typically springs to mind! But actually, being psychopathic doesn't necessarily mean that you're a serial killer – or even that you'll break the law. Actually, within the framework of clinical psychology, a psychopath is someone with a distinct cluster of personality traits including charm, charisma, fearlessness, ruthlessness, narcissism, persuasiveness, and lack of conscience.<br><br>[...]<br><br>Another misconception about psychopaths concerns diagnosis. A lot of people think that you're either a psychopath or you're not, that it's all very black and white.<br><br>But this is not the case.<br><br>In fact, psychopathy – like height, weight and IQ (to take just a few examples) – lies on a spectrum. Sure, at the sharp end you may well find your serial killers and axe murderers. But at the same time, all of us have our place at some point along the continuum.<br><br>Some of us may score higher on some psychopathic traits than on others. But unless you score high on all of them, you don't really have anything to worry about!"*
That's wonderful; I have nothing to worry about after all... Still, the existence of this book, this website and it's premise -underlining the positive side of personality indicators used to diagnose psychopathy- don't sit well with me. And that's not just because of the realization that my low score means I'll probably never succeed at anything ;-)
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<br><sub>source: [Picpedia](http://www.picpedia.org/highway-signs/p/psychopath.html)</sub>
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It's true that we all have some traits that are also associated with psychopathy, and it's only a matter of one's place on the continuum; there's no black and white here. And yes, some of these traits are conducive to becoming successful in many arena's of human endeavor; the website points to high achievers in medicine, law and the military as examples, and we can add politicians, entrepreneurs, CEO's, managers, investors, hedge-fund managers and a slew of other examples to this list.
Before I go on and explain my problem with this assessment of psychopathy in relation to success in life, let me pause and make some disclaimers. Firstly, I haven't read the book and I do not know the writer; this is just a critique on the premise of the book, as explained on it's official website: [The Wisdom of Psychopaths - Lessons in Life from Saints, Spies and Serial Killers](http://wisdomofpsychopaths.com/). Secondly it's worth pointing out that there are many pitfalls attached to discussing matters of the human psyche and assigning moral judgments to any of the labels produced by psycho-analysis. There's a [study](https://loudwire.com/musicians-mental-illness-report/), for example, indicating or suggesting that 73% of independent musicians suffer from mental illness symptoms. That's so vague, and it has the potential of promoting the attitude that musicians and other highly creative people are "crazy." This is just one example that should make us realize that all we're doing here is measuring and qualifying deviations from what we call "the norm," what our culture and upbringing have thought us to be normal behavior, and that this changes with time and location. Lastly and most importantly: I'm no expert! This opinionated post is born from my limited understanding of the subject matter.
The idea that corporate business and banking are awash with psychopaths was popularized after the financial crash of 2008, when researchers were prompted to study workplace traits that may have allowed a corporate culture in which unethical behavior was able to flourish. Corporations and Banks were bailed out at the expense of now already a decade of austerity measures hitting the general populace, the middle class in particular. One of the oldest capitalist myths was blown out of the water when the world learned that not the corporations, not the hedge-funds nor the banks were the true bearers of the risk that's associated with huge profits; we were. Being "too big to fail" was simply another way of saying that if the risks pay off, they get the gains, but if it doesn't, we bear the losses. The opening of the 2016 article on the subject summarizes it perfectly:
> "An Australian study has found that about one in five corporate executives are psychopaths – roughly the same rate as among prisoners.<br>The study of 261 senior professionals in the United States found that 21 per cent had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. The rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in a hundred."<br><sub>source: [The Telegraph - 13 SEPTEMBER 2016](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-psychopaths-australian-study-finds/)</sub>
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<br><sub>Image by [DonkeyHotey](https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/) - source: [Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/6510797215)</sub>
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Roughly the same rate as among criminals. That sounds about right, seeing how criminally we, the people, have been screwed over by these CEO's and their hand-puppet politicians. And let's not forget that one of these CEO "success-stories" is now president of the United States. I'd say there's at least a 21% chance of Trump scoring quite high on the "Psychopath Challenge," with narcissism, emotional detachment and charisma being prominent among the psychopathy indicators. Let me quickly address why "charisma" is included. A film maker once explained how to establish a psychopathic (or sociopath) character with visual storytelling;
*Follow the character as he walks down a busy street, and have him see a crowd gathered around some horrific car accident in which an innocent child is seriously or mortally injured. Zoom in on his face as he first looks emotionless to the dying child, and then cut several times between bystanders who are clearly emotionally impacted by this horrible sight, and our psychopath's face intensely studying their facial expressions. Then cut to the psychopath arriving home, calmly putting away the groceries and then standing in front of a big mirror, trying to mimic the facial and bodily expressions he memorized from the earlier scene.*
Fake charisma and fake charm honed to perfection; this is why I also have a problem with this trait being included as one of the possible positive side-effects of scoring on the psychopathy ladder. Below this post I'll link an episode of the Australian television program "Q&A" with an interesting panel answering questions from the audience, and I invite you all to watch it. Slavoj Zizek is on the panel so it's the opposite of boring, yet the problems discussed touch upon what I perceive to be the main problem with the stated premise of "The Wisdom of Psychopaths." It has to do with capitalism's undying addiction to growth and how this unconditional allegiance to profit-seeking has created an all encompassing system that actually rewards psychopathic behavior, something I've hinted at on numerous occasions, most recently in [Morality And Markets](https://steemit.com/informationwar/@zyx066/morality-and-markets).
In this 2011 discussion it's asked what to do with the knowledge that so many successful leaders are psychopaths. Should we lock them up? Well, we can't, as they are "too big to fail." The psychologist on the panel suggests we should simply take this knowledge, be aware of the problem, learn how to pick up on psychopathic traits and avoid these people, or at least try to not be fooled by them; all sound suggestions I think. But it's not enough, we should take it a step further and admit that the systemic need for growth and profits leads to their success in life, as they are the ones best able to separate themselves emotionally from the consequences of their actions for others. We, the general population are now suffering for a decade after our political, financial and economical leaders have been unmasked as unscrupulous criminals, willing to make hundreds of millions of us jobless and homeless, just to be able to keep playing their profitable games:
> "For psychopaths, it [corporate success] is a game and they don’t mind if they violate morals. It is about getting where they want in the company and having dominance over others."<br><sub>source: [The Telegraph - 13 SEPTEMBER 2016](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-psychopaths-australian-study-finds/)</sub>
So, there's a lot more to say about this and the video covers some of it, but this is it for me for today; actually I just wanted to share the ["Psychopath Challenge"](http://wisdomofpsychopaths.com/) with a few words of caution to not take it too seriously. I guess I failed hard at that attempt :-)
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<iframe width="1964" height="1114" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QhAMgVFKokk" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><br><sub>A very dangerous Q&A - FULL with English subtitles</sub>
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