The Pathology Of The Very Rich

I was watching this Chris Hedges interview from 2013, when it occurred to me that he was describing Donald Trump.
Is Trump mentally ill? Probably, but that isn't the important point.
The key take-away is that Trump is a product of a sick society, and that society is populated entirely by the wealthy elite. So just replacing Trump with a less boorish member of the same society, such as Pence or Clinton, would still likely leave us with a mentally ill leader.

For years the right-wing, and especially the wealthy elite, have been telling us that the poor are poor because the are lazy, because they are immoral, because they've gotten what they deserve.
Meanwhile the wealthy are living in luxury because they worked harder, because they didn't give into sin, because they are better.

The reality is exactly the opposite.

sociopath:A person with antisocial personality disorder. Probably the most widely recognized personality disorder. A sociopath is often well liked because of their charm and high charisma, but they do not usually care about other people. They think mainly of themselves and often blame others for the things that they do. They have a complete disregard for rules and lie constantly. They seldom feel guilt or learn from punishments.

  It may sound like a bold statement to say that most wealthy people are sociopaths, but in fact there is plenty of scientific evidence behind it.
   A recent NY Times article summed up a study as Rich people just care less. The report was bolstered by a 2008 report from University of Amsterdam and the University of California, Berkeley.

 A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain...The more powerful were less compassionate toward the hardships described by the less powerful.

This conclusion is far from unusual. Consider this list:

On 29 July 2010, Britain's Economist headlined "Wealth, Poverty and Compassion: The Rich Are Different from You and Me; They Are More Selfish,"

On 13 December 2010, Rich O'Hanlon of goodmenproject.com bannered "Study of the Day: Rich People Feel Less Empathy,"

On 26 January 2012, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS published "Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior,"

On 27 May 2013, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published "Social Class Rank, Essentialism, and Punitive Judgment."

A 2009 survey of 316 CEO's was compared to their company's performance.

 In other words, warm, flexible, team-oriented and empathetic people are less likely to thrive as C.E.O.’s.

 And finally there is this article from 2011.

  In multiple trials that involved both questionnaires and physical-response tests, the researchers found that young adults whose upbringing involved some degree of financial struggle were quicker and more likely to register signs of empathy than young adults who came from affluent backgrounds.

 Interestingly, the article refers back to a 2005 study that casts a great deal of light on why people who lack empathy seem to rise to the top of our capitalist system.

 if a stock trader suffers from some kind of emotional impairment -- that is, brain damage that prevents them from fully experiencing their own emotions -- it may allow them to make more profit on the market, since they can make decisions based more firmly in rationalism.

In fact the average stockbroker is more competitive than a diagnosed psychopath.

More recent studies continue to show the same things.
The wealthy simply don't see you.

Like other studies before it, the researchers came to the stark conclusion that those better off financially unconsciously paid very little attention or downright ignored passersby on the street.

If a rich person did see you, they are often physically unable to care.

In something of a dark irony, the respondents of higher socioeconomic status rated themselves as more empathic — a “better-than-average effect” that Varnum followed up on in a separate study — when in reality the opposite was true. The results “show that people who are higher in socioeconomic status have diminished neural responses to others’ pain,” the authors write. “These findings suggest that empathy, at least some early component of it, is reduced among those who are higher in status.” And unlike self-reports, brain imaging sidesteps “social desirability bias,” where people want to give replies that make them look good or more empathic. “If you’re looking at pictures of people in pain or not in pain, it’s pretty unlikely that you know how to enhance those brain responses,” Varnum tells Science of Us. Moreover, in a 2016 study, Varnum and colleagues found evidence suggesting that people from lower social classes have a more sensitive mirror neuron system — which is thought to simulate the things you see others experience — when watching a video of hand movements. “Our cognitive systems, the degree to which they’re attuned to other people in the environment, is affected by our own social class,” he says.

  There is a clear pattern showing in these scientific studies, and it is the opposite of the right-wing meme. To get to the top you need to be ruthless. Empathy, kindness and a firm set of morals to guide your behavior are traits of the lower classes, not the ruling class.

   The super wealthy are less empathetic and more likely to cheat than those in the working class.

  The growing income inequality means the wealthy rarely rub shoulders with the working poor, and its getting more rare.
   Because they rarely meet regular people it is easy for them to stereotype the poor.

  If you think that's simply some statement by a class war loser, think again. It's what the wealthy elite believeas well.

 In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful.

 If anything, those numbers are low.

  If you think that is shocking, consider this: that at least one major bank is rumored to have actively sought out sociopaths.

A senior UK investment banker and I [were] 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.”

 So given that information, consider what it means in Washington, where half of the politicians are successful millionaires.

This sociopathy can be seen in today's politics.

 The insistence by some House Republicans in Congress on cutting financing for food stamps and impeding the implementation of Obamacare, which would allow patients, including those with pre-existing health conditions, to obtain and pay for insurance coverage, may stem in part from the empathy gap.

  It's hard to believe that the politician you supported could have fooled you. That there must have been a reason why he appears to betray his supporters.
   But in fact, the average politician has many of the personality traits seen in the violent criminal underground.

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divineorder's picture

leaving behind a buttload of inheritance for them?

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

The problem is the 1% vs. the 99%. The basic Trump voter has the same economic interests as most of the moderate liberals. If the "left" can ever break free of its MSM cultivated obsession with Id Politics our common cause will become obvious.
When the Trump voters figure out they were conned, it would be nice if they had somewhere other than Pence to turn to. Likewise with Kamala Harris (Obama/HRC lite)on our "side" of your divide.

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chuck utzman

TULSI 2020

@chuckutzman
In fact, I'm not even sure where you got that impression

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Big Al's picture

@chuckutzman Is that the common cause, bring down the aristocracy? Because far as I know, Trump voters voted for a billionaire. That makes it kind of awkward.

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@Big Al

Trump voters voted for a billionaire. That makes it kind of awkward.

but it can be done. I voted for Obama twice.
I was a chump.

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Lily O Lady's picture

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

detroitmechworks's picture

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYqF_BtIwAU]

We really need to stop emulating the worst parts of rome without all the FUN stuff.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Anja Geitz's picture

Is now bared out by science. No need to ask why anymore. Politicians really don't give a fuck if their greed kills us. And what's worse, they're sleeping just fine.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Big Al's picture

where the third class passengers were separated from the upper class passengers. We peasants have come a long way, now we can go anywhere on the cruise ships we want if we can scrap up the bucks for a ticket. Of course the very rich have their own cruise ships, so there's that.
Who needs em anyway.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c91usT4P1u0]

Given they're about to go into their 29th season, The Simpsons has a clip for just about everything.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

1. The big payoffs don't appear in their net worth while they're in office. They come as top-dollar jobs for relatives, cushy overpaid board-of-director seats after leaving office, etc. Oh, and let's not forget paid speeches and book contracts. That's reflected in the graphs. 800K in total net worth, while it's nothing to sneeze at, isn't all that much when one is looking at the bank accounts of the rich.

We should be looking at how much they rake in after they leave office. And/Or how much their relatives are raking in. Then the numbers would absolutely explode.

So: to determine their real wealth levels, those charts are not the right thing to look at.

2. The charts don't look at which Republicans were unseated in 2008. It was a wave election. Some Very Rich Repubs lost their seats. That must have hugely affected the numbers.

3. OTOH the charts do reveal something interesting: the 2008 crash had basically zero effect on the net wealth of house members (and only a short-lived effect on that of Senators). IMO that is a big red flag of corruption and insider trading.

Edit: BTW, I think the fact that they go to such lengths to hide their ill-gotten gains (and that there is such a well-developed system to enable it!) supports the rest of the post. There are severe mental pathologies in play.

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WoodsDweller's picture

I picked up a book called "Political Ponerology" by Andrzej Łobaczewski.

short wikipedia article

"Ponerology" is the study of evil.

I never finished it. He is (was, I think he passed away) a psychiatrist, English was not his first language, and it's quite outside my field. It was written in a formal, 19th century format which I usually can follow pretty well but this was a heavy read.

Anyway, his thesis is that psychopathy (in the clinical sense) is far more common than is professionally accepted, something like 5% of the population, and that it is inherited. That evil is no more or less than psychopathy, and that it is a genetic pattern.

Further, that psychopaths are either disfunctional and wind up in prison, or functional and end up running big business, big government, big military, big religion, big education, all the way down to the jerk who runs your bowling league.

He developed this theory while Poland was still behind the Iron Curtain. I don't remember if it was in the book or an interview, but he had stories to tell of having to burn the manuscript more than once while the police were knocking down his door. Needless to say, it wasn't popular with the government.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

Creosote.'s picture

@WoodsDweller

https://cassiopaea.org/cass/political_ponerology_lobaczewski.htm

and to an interview!

https://www.sott.net/article/159686-In-Memoriam-Andrzej-M-obaczewski

with many thanks, WD

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@Creosote.

Do a Web search on "ponerology" (no, don't use Google) and see what you find.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

@Creosote.

Thanks so very much for these! I've just been wading among the links within your links and hope that enough people see this to absolutely understand what we're dealing with - and why Bernie's walking so carefully in that swamp to give us a chance to see some of it for ourselves and mobilize in self-defense.

This really needs to be read in full at source; at bottom there's this one bit that I feel that everyone needs to see and take to heart, which applies generally and is basic and essential, but might be missed by those unable to follow additional links for whatever reason. Specific politicians will leap to mind immediately, as in America's 'choices' for their rigged elections.

http://www.cassiopaea.com/archive/most.htm

Vincent Bridges* AKA "Dr. Strange"
New Age Grifter or COINTELPRO?

... How Psychopaths View The World

Not only do they covet possessions and power, but they gain special pleasure in usurping and taking from others (a symbolic sibling, for example); what they can plagiarize, swindle, and extort are fruits far sweeter than those they can earn through honest labor. And once having drained what they can from one source, they turn to another to exploit, bleed, and then cast aside; their pleasure in the misfortune of others is unquenchable. People are used as a means to an end; they are to be subordinated and demeaned so that the antisocial can vindicate themselves...

The psychopath is a manipulator, who knows exactly what makes us tick and knows how to manipulate and influence our feelings. They have the talent to spot “kind, caring” women.

Mimicry of emotion by word or cleverly produced effects (including tears, sighs, and highly dramatized emotional appeals) is often used to convince others that the psychopath is a normal human being. He does this to create a false empathy with his victim. The psychopath will try to make you believe he has normal emotions by spinning some sad tale or professing profound, moving experiences; the truth is, most psychopaths go through life as in an incubator, touched by few and having no real compassion for others; but they will lie to convince you that they have normal emotions. The pity factor is one reason why victims often fall for these "poor" people. [...]

Lying is like breathing to the psychopath. From personal experience with psychopaths, I can relate to this. When caught in a lie and challenged, they make up new lies, and don't care if they're found out. As Hare states, "Lying, deceiving, and manipulation are natural talents for psychopaths...When caught in a lie or challenged with the truth, they are seldom perplexed or embarrassed -- they simply change their stories or attempt to rework the facts so that they appear to be consistent with the lie. The results are a series of contradictory statements and a thoroughly confused listener." [Hare, 46]. Often, their behaviour serves to confuse and repress their victims, or to influence anyone who might listen to the psychopath's side of the story. Manipulation is the key to their conquests, and lying is one way they achieve this.

When dealing with a really good psychopath, even the most astute observer can be fooled. And, the ones most easily deceived are those with real emotions which the psychopath engages, blinding them to objective facts. If you are a person with a highly developed empathic nature, you are more likely to be fooled by a psychopath than someone who operates at only a minimal level of human empathy. ...

Computer's having issues so dunno if I can get even this on, but want to try another restart, which helped for a bit... never seen anything like this before, just on C-99, not other sites I have up, the spinning 'loading' circle shaking, 'strobing', and not getting through...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@Creosote.

Thanks so very much for these! I've just been wading among the links within your links and hope that enough people see this to absolutely understand what we're dealing with - and why Bernie's walking so carefully in that swamp to give us a chance to see some of it for ourselves and mobilize in self-defense.

This really needs to be read in full at source; at bottom there's this one bit that I feel that everyone needs to see and take to heart, which applies generally and is basic and essential, but might be missed by those unable to follow additional links for whatever reason. Specific politicians will leap to mind immediately, as in America's 'choices' for their rigged elections.

http://www.cassiopaea.com/archive/most.htm

Vincent Bridges* AKA "Dr. Strange"
New Age Grifter or COINTELPRO?

... How Psychopaths View The World

Not only do they covet possessions and power, but they gain special pleasure in usurping and taking from others (a symbolic sibling, for example); what they can plagiarize, swindle, and extort are fruits far sweeter than those they can earn through honest labor. And once having drained what they can from one source, they turn to another to exploit, bleed, and then cast aside; their pleasure in the misfortune of others is unquenchable. People are used as a means to an end; they are to be subordinated and demeaned so that the antisocial can vindicate themselves...

The psychopath is a manipulator, who knows exactly what makes us tick and knows how to manipulate and influence our feelings. They have the talent to spot “kind, caring” women.

Mimicry of emotion by word or cleverly produced effects (including tears, sighs, and highly dramatized emotional appeals) is often used to convince others that the psychopath is a normal human being. He does this to create a false empathy with his victim. The psychopath will try to make you believe he has normal emotions by spinning some sad tale or professing profound, moving experiences; the truth is, most psychopaths go through life as in an incubator, touched by few and having no real compassion for others; but they will lie to convince you that they have normal emotions. The pity factor is one reason why victims often fall for these "poor" people. [...]

Lying is like breathing to the psychopath. From personal experience with psychopaths, I can relate to this. When caught in a lie and challenged, they make up new lies, and don't care if they're found out. As Hare states, "Lying, deceiving, and manipulation are natural talents for psychopaths...When caught in a lie or challenged with the truth, they are seldom perplexed or embarrassed -- they simply change their stories or attempt to rework the facts so that they appear to be consistent with the lie. The results are a series of contradictory statements and a thoroughly confused listener." [Hare, 46]. Often, their behaviour serves to confuse and repress their victims, or to influence anyone who might listen to the psychopath's side of the story. Manipulation is the key to their conquests, and lying is one way they achieve this.

When dealing with a really good psychopath, even the most astute observer can be fooled. And, the ones most easily deceived are those with real emotions which the psychopath engages, blinding them to objective facts. If you are a person with a highly developed empathic nature, you are more likely to be fooled by a psychopath than someone who operates at only a minimal level of human empathy. ...

Computer's having issues so dunno if I can get even this on, but want to try another restart, which helped for a bit... never seen anything like this before, just on C-99, not other sites I have up, the spinning 'loading' circle shaking, 'strobing', and not getting through...

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

GreatLakeSailor's picture

that operates on analytical geometry and physics, I refer to what you're saying as The Radius of Empathy (R-sub-E, or put another way the degree of separation) and relate it roughly to R-sub-E is inversely proportional to Net Wealth (where k is a constant for each individual and is generally near 1).

Empathy.jpg

Rich people always care about themselves, generally their kids and their parents, some what about their rich friends and neighbors, very little about the citizens on the "other side of the tracks" and after that the value very quickly approaches zero. 500,000 dead Iraqi children?

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.