An Occupy Wall Street Activist explains why he thinks its very important to spread knowledge about psychopaths and psychopathy. Find out about the important connection between psychopaths and the ruling 1%.
So basically the reason I come down here every so often is that I’m trying to spread information about psychopathy. I think it has an over-arching impact on why people are down here camping out, and why the financial industry and the government really doesn’t care about the people anymore. These people are about 1-5% of the population and they have no concept of empathy, remorse, guilt, conscience – they’re just not biologically capable of it. They’ve shown this in fMRI studies and there’s been a lot of actual hard science that proves the point that their totally different from normal humans.
There’s also been a lot of research done by this one guy, Andrew Lobaczewski in Poland who shows how they are able to infect and co opt large groups of people; governments and religious institutions. That’s why I brought this book ::holds up Political Ponerology:: because he talks about it and shows scientifically how it happens each step of the way. I feel that these people in financial industries, especially are able to rape and pillage resources from the people without having any concept of how it affects others because they can’t conceptualize it, it’s just not within their range of capabilities.
And when we see institutions like the catholic church and how they handle pedophilia for example, its another instance of that type of conscienceless, remorseless being infecting and taking over a large group and effectively distorting what the original purpose of the instutitution was supposed to be. These people have probably been with us since humanity evolved, we’ve never really had any scientific understanding of them.
It’s probably where our ideas of vampires comes from. There’s a word for vampire in every single language on Earth. People have a very strong archetypical identification with it. I think it’s one of the reasons we’ve been aware that these people exist. Most people in their lives have probably met one or two; people that just seem manipulative, cunning, ruthless and able to control the people around them.
And sometimes they put off this image like they’re a really good leader, or that they’re very confident, its because they have no ability to see how their plans can go wrong or how they can impact other people.
My big push is to come down and talk about it, share information – it’s the only way that we’re ever going to be able to beat them. When enough people in our society know that they exist. And can spot the behaviors before they’re able to be controlled by them. They have a very cunning sort of para-logic, or a pseudologic where they take an ideal and twist it and manipulate it using words and imagery so that they can make themselves seem righteous or correct. And when they do that they can take in large groups of normal people because people are very often identified with a Christian ideology or an economic ideology or a political ideology, and any of those ideas can be effectively co-opted by this type of consciousless/remorseless type of person or a group of them and use it to manipulate a large group of people.
I think this is a really good example of what happened to the republican party for example, where see institutions like Fox News pushing this twist of truth, where they distort the meaning of… especially an event like this ::gestures to OWS camp:: where they come in and with broad strokes paint a picture that’s just not accurate, and large groups of people who aren’t able to take the time and come down here and talk to the people and see it for themselves are taken in by it. So that’s the whole reason I come down here is to spread awareness of it.
This book, Political Ponerology by Andrew Lobcazewski is really good. Also the works of Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits is very effective at showing how they can co opt large corporations, how they get in and climb the corporate ladder. His work’s a really good way of understanding that.
Any reading on psychopathy or sociopathy, there’s different ways to describe the condition, but until we, as a society have a very broad understanding where we can identify the behavior and refuse to tolerate it, participate in it any more, we’re still going to be able to be manipulated by them. So until we understand that point, I don’t think there’s any way we can effectively move forward with a system that is controlled by psychopaths.
Characteristics of Psychopaths
They have a very charming personality, they’re very likeable. They come across as excellent conversationalists, they have a mask of sanity which was actually a book written by Hervey Cleckley back in the 50s. It’s basically a personality mask that they wear which makes them appear like any normal person. So they can effectively mimic our normal emotional responses without actually having them. So we think that we’re talking to a normal person when in fact we’re talking to a conscienceless being that has this mask over their face and their personality that effectively blocks us from understanding what they really are. They’re very manipulative and cunning, they’re natural liars, they can fool polygraphs because polygraphs are based on a natural human response to lying. We feel anxiety when we lie, psychopaths do not, because they have this weird thing where they believe whatever it is they’re saying.
They are thrill seekers, which kind of makes sense with this whole financial speculation attitude, especially on wall street. Where they would go in and just repackage bad mortages and sell them to other people, and flip them and make huge hoards of money. It makes a sick sort of sense that this is the type of person that would be able to do such a thing. And then convince somebody to let them get away with it.
So to have it keep going like this, it seems evident to me at least that they have a huge network, with a lot of money involved and what people that are involved in it that aren’t actually psychopaths become like them themselves because they’re getting rich, they don’t really care. Primarily the trait is that they have no conscience. They have no ability to empathize, the only emotions they’re capable of feeling are proto-emotions, frustration, anger, jealously, and a want or a hunger for whatever it is they desire. That could be sexual gratification, some of them are like parasites, they live in their parents basement all their lives playing video games because that’s all they want to do.
There’s also a huge variety of psychopaths, some a serial killers, rapists and they end up in prison. But a lot of them, the best of them are able to become priests, doctors, politicians; I think George W Bush is a really good example of a psychopath that was installed in power. If you google George W Bush and psychopathy you’ll get tons of hits. So there’s a lot of interesting reading that’s available on the net and I highly recommend people familiarize themselves with the condition because it’s only a matter of time until you or someone you love ends up being affected by them, if not individually, personally, then on the macrosocial level where they’re bleeding the economy dry and you’re out of a job and don’t really understand why.
It’s kind of thick reading (referring to PP), but it gives a really good explanation of how they’re able to co-opt ideologies and groups. Andrew Locazewski, the author, was a student researching psychiatry in Poland when the Nazis took over in the 30s, 40s and 50s and he catalogued what was happening from that perspective. He noticed that some people were able to see through it and see that it was just false-logic and lies, but a large group of people imbibed the ideology and kind of made it their own and became little psychopathic tools themselves. He also explains that this was how nazi germany was able to get away with executing millions of people. Because they could co-opt the whole country basically, the political structure, to effectively control large groups of people.
I think that’s what’s happening in America today. I think that Nazi germany seems almost like a trial-run, they tried it and they kinda failed because they were a little too overt. Today it’s much more covert, they have a much broader reach with network television and the mainstream media which is effectively controlled by the military industrial complex and financial interests. There’s lots of interesting studies that show the concentration of power and wealth into the hands of very few people and when that happens and they want to stay there and they’ll go to any lengths to do so. That’s basically what’s happening in America, but we don’t have enough awareness of psychopathy right now. We don’t understand that they can be politicians, they can be CEOs, they can be religious leaders, and so many people just want to follow someone and they don’t have the time or the discernment to see through the lies and how they’re being used to effectively control or combat normal conscience-filled human beings.
So if we keep going down the path that we’re going I don’t think we’re going to be able to have things like this (OWS), we’re going to end up with concentration camps or worse. But what really keeps me up at night is the idea that sooner or later they’re gonna win, and the only way we can stop that is by spreading information about what kind of people they are, how they operate and what their weaknesses are – that’s really our only shot at beating them. It’s like David and Goliath, we don’t have money, we don’t have resources by we have knowledge and truth so that’s what I’m trying to use, that’s why I come down here.
It IS a mistake. Thanks for pointing it out. We shall not do that again. 
