Beware corporate psychopaths

[treesparrow]

Brian Basham: Beware corporate psychopaths – they are still occupying positions of power

Outlook Over the years I've met my fair share of monsters – rogue individuals, for the most part. But as regulation in the UK and the US has loosened its restraints, the monsters have proliferated.

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics entitled "The Corporate Psychopaths: Theory of the Global Financial Crisis", Clive R Boddy identifies these people as psychopaths.

"They are," he says, "simply the 1 per cent of people who have no conscience or empathy." And he argues: "Psychopaths, rising to key senior positions within modern financial corporations, where they are able to influence the moral climate of the whole organisation and yield considerable power, have largely caused the [banking] crisis'.

And Mr Boddy is not alone. In Jon Ronson's widely acclaimed book The Psychopath Test, Professor Robert Hare told the author: "I should have spent some time inside the Stock Exchange as well. Serial killer psychopaths ruin families. Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies."

Cut to a pleasantly warm evening in Bahrain. My companion, a senior UK investment banker and I, are discussing the most successful banking types we know and what makes them tick. I argue that they often conform to the characteristics displayed by social psychopaths. To my surprise, my friend agrees.

He then makes an astonishing confession: "At one major investment bank for which I worked, we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths because their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles."

Here was one of the biggest investment banks in the world seeking psychopaths as recruits.

Mr Ronson spoke to scores of psychologists about their understanding of the damage that psychopaths could do to society. None of those psychologists could have imagined, I'm sure, the existence of a bank that used the science of spotting them as a recruiting mechanism.

I've never met Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers and the architect of its downfall, but I've seen him on video and it's terrifying. He snarled to Lehman staff that he wanted to "rip out their [his competitors] hearts and eat them before they died". So how did someone like Mr Fuld get to the top of Lehman? You don't need to see the video to conclude he was weird; you could take a little more time and read a 2,200-page report by Anton Valukas, the Chicago-based lawyer hired by a US court to investigate Lehman's failure. Mr Valukas revealed systemic chicanery within the bank; he described management failures and a destructive, internal culture of reckless risk-taking worthy of any psychopath.

So why wasn't Mr Fuld spotted and stopped? I've concluded it's the good old question of nature and nurture but with a new interpretation. As I see it, in its search for never-ending growth, the financial services sector has actively sought out monsters with natures like Mr Fuld and nurtured them with bonuses and praise.

We all understand that sometimes businesses have to be cut back to ensure their survival, and where those cuts should fall is as relevant to a company as it is, today, to the UK economy; should it bear down upon the rich or the poor?

Making those cuts doesn't make psychopaths of the cutters, but the financial sector's lack of remorse for the pain it encourages people to inflict is purely psychopathic. Surely the action of cutting should be a matter for sorrow and regret? People's lives are damaged, even destroyed. However, that's not how the financial sector sees it.

Take Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS, for example. Before he racked up a corporate loss of £24.1bn, the highest in UK history, he was idolised by the City. In recognition of his work in ruthlessly cutting costs at Clydesdale Bank he got the nickname "Fred the Shred", and he played that for all it was worth. He was later described as "a corporate Attila", a title of which any psychopath would be proud.

Mr Ronson reports: "Justice departments and parole boards all over the world have accepted Hare's contention that psychopaths are quite simply incurable and everyone should concentrate their energies instead on learning how to root them out."

But, far from being rooted out, they are still in place and often in positions of even greater power.

As Mr Boddy warns: "The very same corporate psychopaths, who probably caused the crisis by their self-seeking greed and avarice, are now advising governments on how to get out of the crisis. Further, if the corporate psychopaths theory of the global financial crisis is correct, then we are now far from the end of the crisis. Indeed, it is only the end of the beginning."

I became familiar with psychopaths early in life. They were the hard men who terrorised south-east London when I was growing up. People like "Mad" Frankie Fraser and the Richardson brothers. They were what we used to call "red haze" men, and they were frightening because they attacked with neither fear, mercy nor remorse.

Regarding Messrs Hare, Ronson, Boddy and others, I've realised that some psychopaths "forge careers in corporations. The group is called Corporate Psychopaths". They are polished and plausible, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous.

In attempting to understand the complexities of what went wrong in the years leading to 2008, I've developed a rule: "In an unregulated world, the least-principled people rise to the top." And there are none who are less principled than corporate psychopaths.

Brian Basham is a veteran City PR man, entrepreneur and journalist
 

_http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/brian-basham-beware-corporate-psychopaths--they-are-still-occupying-positions-of-power-6282502.html

[bngenoh]

Beware indeed,

This video by LarkenRose on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oHbwdNcHbc&feature=g-all-u

Was very excellently done, and I thought that "The Jones Plantation" was awesome. The one's behind those videos are pretty amazing individuals, osit.

[JayMark]

Beware quite indeed!

Corporations are ruling the political and economical system(s).

Big question is: how are we going to defeat them?

Short anwser is: we can't.

Nature has it's ways to restore things though. STS/Entropy ultimately leads to dissolution into nothingness which is the STS way of becoming One.

[InTheWind]

We can defeat them.  There is usually financial illegalities or irregularities where these people exist in corporate settings - whether it is government, religion, or business.

People should know how to recognize mobbing, gas lighting, and crazy making.  It can be uncovered in employee surveys like government has done since Gore's reinventing government days.  These are the same surveys and tests Boddy has use in his research for his book about corporate psychopaths.

Financial audits should be administered when surveys indicate problems.  When the associated manager does the explain-away it should be recognized as a known pattern.

The financial audit done altruistically will bring the facts and the offender(s) should be held accountable to the fullest extent.

Cleckley writes that this can be controlled through accountability.  I have to agree.

[JayMark]

We can defeat them. 

Have you read the Wave series yet and the psychopathy studies also found on cassiopaea.org?

I suggest you do. Psychopaths run the big show here. They can't be defeated. They control every aspect of society. They are the law.

[Nienna]

Hi InTheWind,

Welcome to the forum.

We suggest that new forum members introduce themselves in the Newbies section of the forum.  Just a little introduction on how you found us, a little about yourself, nothing really personal need be written.  If you are not sure what to write, you can read some of the other posts by other new forum members and see how they did it.

[InTheWind]

JayMark you seem offended at my statements.  We will have to agree to disagree on this one.

Psychopaths are defeated every day.  This is why Hare works on the B-Scan and Boddy works on the PCLR-CV.  Just today I read an article calling out the US administration for not bringing criminal charges against bankers.

If they could never be defeated Nazis would control Germany and Bernie Madoff would still be on the street.

It's not easy.  There are ways.  At the end of Mask of Sanity Cleckley advocates accountability.  It's a good start.

I'm always the glass half full person.

[Eric]

JayMark you seem offended at my statements.  We will have to agree to disagree on this one.

Psychopaths are defeated every day.  This is why Hare works on the B-Scan and Boddy works on the PCLR-CV.  Just today I read an article calling out the US administration for not bringing criminal charges against bankers.

If they could never be defeated Nazis would control Germany and Bernie Madoff would still be on the street.

It's not easy.  There are ways.  At the end of Mask of Sanity Cleckley advocates accountability.  It's a good start.

I'm always the glass half full person.

Those examples above doesn't mean those psychopaths are defeated, means they are not of use anymore for those who are really in power OSIT.

[JayMark]

JayMark you seem offended at my statements. 

I am not. I am simply pointing out that what you may think to be Truth might simply be subjective thinking.

We will have to agree to disagree on this one.

One is always free to agree or not on something.

Psychopaths are defeated every day.

Can you tell me what psychopaths are defeated every day? Do you really know what the true definition/nature of psychopathy is about?

This is why Hare works on the B-Scan and Boddy works on the PCLR-CV.  Just today I read an article calling out the US administration for not bringing criminal charges against bankers.

Mass/mainstream media are controlled by psychopaths as well. They control every aspect of our modern society. Medias are told what to say and what not to say. They are merely propaganda and disinformation tools.

If they could never be defeated Nazis would control Germany and Bernie Madoff would still be on the street.

Psychopaths act as a whole. They all share the same essence and have no 'real' control on themselves. They do not have emotions as we would describe them. They are just what they are; souless bodies that only want one thing which is everything. We can't defeat this 'essence'. Emprisoning or even killing a psychopath has no influence on the program. They are merely biological vehicle that are controlled by hyperdimensional beings. In other words; puppets. And there are lots of them available for their work.

The Nazi war was what we could refer to as an experiment. History just dosen't talk about it's real nature.

It's not easy.  There are ways.

There is no way to defeat an enemy that is unknown to us. Those who rule this world are not people you meet on the street or see on TV. They aren't even human. And they are far more powerfull that us.

They will only be 'defeated' when they will no longer have anybody to enslave/feed off from.

I'm always the glass half full person.

That is to be subjective rather than objective.

Knowledge protects and ignorance endangers. Also it is better to be ignorant rather than beleiving a lie. This is a deadly trap. Merely an illusion that prevents you from seeing real, objective Truth.

No offense taken nor given. I suggest you read the Cassiopaean material with an open mind.

Peace.

[Gonzo]

Hi InTheWind,
 
The only psychopaths that can be defeated are the ones that the ruling psychopaths allow to be defeated, usually to keep the attention off of them.  No institution, whether it is an elected government or its bureaucracy, nor a corporation, will allow the psychopathic ranks at the top to be removed.  The very characteristics of their psychopathy are the very characteristics they need to maximize their objectives (be they profits, laws or enforcement).  Since corporations have no conscience, they may as well be psychopaths and, therefore, cannot be counted upon to "do the right thing".  For every example one can find of benevolent organizations (and there certainly are some), thousands of examples of the opposite can be provided.

We don't deal in opinions here, just evidence, and there is little to no evidence that the psychopaths who are the greatest threat to mankind can actually be beaten systematically. 

Although open revolution might be a way, there's a good chance the leadership of such a movement would be successfully infiltrated by psychopaths with their own agenda and we'd end up with, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.  So, we can't trust the institutions to clean house due to their own desire for self preservation, and we can barely trust each other to organize an effective revolution, considering how easily our fellow compatriots fall under the spell of psychopaths.  We only need to look at the results of most elections to see democratically elected pathocrats.

If you haven't had a chance to read "Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes" by Andrew M. Lobaczewski, you'd probably enjoy it, since you seem interested in the subject.  Many of us read Hare and Cleckley before coming across Lobaczewski and were quite impressed with his more holistic view of the effects of psychopathy on society.

Gonzo

[JayMark]

The only psychopaths that can be defeated are the ones that the ruling psychopaths allow to be defeated, usually to keep the attention off of them.  No institution, whether it is an elected government or its bureaucracy, nor a corporation, will allow the psychopathic ranks at the top to be removed. 

We don't deal in opinions here, just evidence, and there is little to no evidence that the psychopaths who are the greatest threat to mankind can actually be beaten systematically. 

These are very important statements.

Although open revolution might be a way, there's a good chance the leadership of such a movement would be successfully infiltrated by psychopaths with their own agenda and we'd end up with, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.  So, we can't trust the institutions to clean house due to their own desire for self preservation, and we can barely trust each other to organize an effective revolution, considering how easily our fellow compatriots fall under the spell of psychopaths.  We only need to look at the results of most elections to see democratically elected pathocrats.

Yes. It is important to be aware of that. As an example, almost everytime here in Québec we've had significative revolutions, they were always 'infiltrated' and 'dissolved' from the inside. 'Terror' attacks have been done/commended from 'within' as well giving the opportunity for the government to apply law enforcement, reinforce them and bring more fear among people. This is merely history repeating itself over and over.

[JayMark]

You should also note that there is an estimated 4% of the population who is a psychopath.

That makes roughly 300,000,000 people, give or take.

Source: QFS, The Psychopath - The Mask Of Sanity

I strongly suggest you take a look at it with an open mind, InTheWind. You might find it quite intereresting.

http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/psychopath.htm

[SeekinTruth]

Yeah, I think the only low chance way of systematically defeating the global pathocracies/psychopaths would have been a thorough understanding of the phenomenon spreading throughout the masses and they refusing to participate in any pathological systems en mass. But since the successful psychopaths control EVERYTHING, that is extremely difficult to bring about.

However, the psychopaths will eventually end up defeating themselves, as their nature leads to that eventuality. As Lobaczewski said, "germs do not understand that they will be" killed along with the body they are consuming (paraphrased). The open question is will it be global on this planet where they lose their grip on control everywhere (or just in pockets)? It does seem to be closely connected to the hyperdimensional STS control of the planet. FWIW.