No. 1) Psychopaths are fully evolved intraspecies predators. 2) There is no relationship whatsoever between narcissists and psychopaths, the first is a psychological/emotionally disturbed condition (or maladaptation, or choice), the second is a biological condition. They only appear similar.
The Path Whisperer
An exploration in sociopathy
This is an awesome conversation. Mental illness, or inborn psychopathy are truly the ghosts in the engine of society. We need to be better at diagnosing and recognizing it. People should be aware that it is the main reason that there will always be a baseline level of crime, corruption, and oppression, no matter how well our society is organized or how much technology provides for our basic needs.
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“Mental illness, or inborn psychopathy are truly the ghosts in the engine of society”. Amen.
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OK I have a half baked theory. There’s a certain life of Empires. Around 200 or 250 years. They all seem to fly apart then. I have this idea that Empires start out with your basic hard working tough people but as they collect more and more money and power psychopaths work their way up the ladder of power and when they get to the top the whole thing plummets to the ground. Tiberius and Caligula being good examples in Rome. Athens was destroyed by an attack on Syracuse. Alcibiades was the person that talked them in to doing then he promptly abandoned Athens for Sparta. Here’s what Plutarch said about him.
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Alcibiades*.html
“…He had, as they say, one power which transcended all others, and proved an implement of his chase for men: that of assimilating and adapting himself to the pursuits and lives of others, thereby assuming more violent changes than the chameleon. That animal, however, as it is said, is utterly unable to assume one colour, namely, white; but Alcibiades could associate with good and bad alike, and found naught that he could not imitate and practice. 5 In Sparta, he was all for bodily training, simplicity of life, and severity of countenance; in Ionia, for p65 luxurious ease and pleasure; in Thrace, for drinking deep; in Thessaly, for riding hard; and when he was thrown with Tissaphernes the satrap, he outdid even Persian magnificence in his pomp and lavishness. It was not that he could so easily pass entirely from one manner of man to another, nor that he actually underwent in every case a change in his real character; but when he saw that his natural manners were likely to be annoying to his associates, he was quick to assume any counterfeit exterior which might in each case be suitable for them…”
I think it not unlikely that the USA is in just such a position.
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Could be.
Alcibiades absolutely was a psychopath. I just added a post from Cleckley’s “Mask of Sanity” (https://pathwhisperer.info/2017/05/04/cleckley-the-psychopath-in-history-alcibiades/).
On your Empires-taken-over-by-psychopaths-and-then-fall theory, that may not be so far-fetched. Except this time there might not be a fall. There seems to be a race between the development of infallible voice/face recognition possibly through quantum mechanic computing possibly through artificial intelligence versus populations learning to recognize psychopaths. Unfortunately the Eloi aren’t aware they are in a race.
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