Whether you like it or not the psychopaths are in charge. Do I know who is and who isn't on a case by case basis? That's not an easy decision to make based on a media projections of people but I can say that actions speak louder than words. I met Tony Blair once in Beijing and I found him unusually needy of public attention, he whizzed by me with a solid entourage in the lobby of the Regent and I remarked to the group I was with 'That's Tony Blair'. He stopped in his tracks and paused to speak to me. I introduced myself, we shook hands and I realised I needed to ask him a serious question. I studied his response very closely and I factor that into this post.
I've studied the parapolitical and the science behind the latest thinking in psychopathy and like my first sentence I'm back to the ugly bit. The least among us are given the highest levels of authority in public and corporate life. The system is wired to promote the least empathetic in our species. They are rewarded with the highest levels of responsibility in our institutions, our corporations and our Governments. Once there they set the rules on compensation and protection of their status.
You might want to research the science on that for yourself and so I link to Political Ponerology by Andrew M. Lobaczewski: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes (banned when it came out but thanks to the internet etc) and I back that up with the interviews of experts posted on this blog under the tag "psychopathy" below.
So here's the deal. Science can tell us who the psychopaths are. With MRI scans we can determine who are the people with empathy bypasses. It's not personal and it's not their fault but we need to do some fast growing up on this because the good guys are massively outnumbered by the bad guys. They might look like clean cut societal models of efficiency and decisiveness but that applied to most of the Nazi elite and this lot know that a forced smile is an important part of the PR offensive to win power. The don't feel the same about lying as we do. That's very important for people to grasp.
People ask why our food is shit, our politicans and police bent, our intelligence services torturing people abroad, our arms manufactures selling to countries we then wage war on, our health service underfunded, our education plummeting in literacy and numeracy and the media out of control and broadcasting a normality that ordinary humans want nothing to do with. The answer is simple. We are run by psychos and we can prove it too.
It's just science; and even though I'm not a person in charge of anything at all, I'd be quite happy to go through the same MRI scan and subjected to whatever that means because I know what it means to feel and these people running the joint don't.