Strange Days
From the Editor…
We prefer to focus on the positive in our little newspaper. That is, we don’t really see the benefit in spreading bad news. It brings people down, it spreads fear (which is why mainstream media are eternal gushers of news of misery!) and it just isn’t any fun.
On the other hand, sometimes you have to know what to look out for as you surf through life and psychopaths are a case in point.
There is a myth that psychopathy is the exclusive domain of serial killers. But these “social predators” are just as common in the stock market, the office, the halls of industry, in our governments or the corner store.
Indeed, we are more likely to find psychopaths where they can fulfill their self serving ambitions and desires, and where better than the halls of government?
Which is why governments, more and more, seem to be operating directly opposite what is good for the people and the planet…with endless wars, cutbacks in social spending and just generally spreading misery instead of justice and abundance.
Experts now believe that one out of every 100 people qualify as a psychopath, and the percentage may go as high as four out of every hundred people. And when you look at the upper echelons of government, banking, and corporate honchos the higher a concentration of sociopaths you will find…
Psychopathy and narcissism are just two of several related and often overlapping conditions affect this portion of the population. These people are, effectively, human beings that are intra-species predators. They may look human, but they operate on a foundation that is predatory.
They exhibit many of the following personality traits.
- glib and superficial charm
- grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self
- need for stimulation
- pathological lying
- cunning and manipulativeness
- lack of remorse or guilt
- shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness)
- callousness and lack of empathy
- parasitic lifestyle
- poor behavioral controls
Many people with these traits are actually actively and deliberately recruited in corporations. They make effective business managers, if your only goal is to increase profit and to hell with the people or the planet.
In fact, in the terrific Canadian-made documentary “The Corporation” it is made clear that corporations behave as psychopaths to fulfill their mandate of making profit no matter what!
British research suggests that up to 50% of business managers could have psychopathic tendencies. Some people are just hard to get along with, but the defining thing about psychopaths is their utter lack of guilt and lack of remorse…they have absolutely no conscience and therefore they will do whatever it takes to get what they want.
If that means firing thousands of workers, moving operations to a foreign country, or degrading the planet, well, so what?
The study carried out by the British Psychological society says that these business managers are often articulate and confident even as they are unpredictable, self indulgent and lacking in empathy.
These manipulative characteristics are all too often handsomely rewarded in the business world…look at all those hefty bonuses the banksters have been awarding themselves after they wrecked the economy!
Psychopaths are frequently very intelligent and charismatic, and extremely adept at getting people snared in their webs.
Psychopaths act like a slow poison on our mental health. Many people experience a sense of derangement, a kind of mental dysmorphia when caught in the clutches of a psychopath.
I think that is what has happened to us collectively on the planet….the 99% of us who just want to live our lives in peace and harmony are in the grip of the self-serving and toxic control of that 1%.
Some years back I myself had the strange and nightmarish experience of getting wound up with a psychopath. I’ll spare you the sordid details, but the thing that most amazed me about this episode was how my will got subjugated. It was like a form of toxic hypnosis, like my damn brain got sucked out of my head or something.
After it was all over except for the crying, as they say, I became very interested in reading true crime stories of other people’s experiences with these predators. How come I was so stupid? Was I under some kind of spell? Was I the only person on the planet who had had this humiliating experience?
Uh, no. Turns out that psychopaths seem to have this effect on nearly all their victims!
One of the most disturbing and startling things I kept finding was that this happens in every case of people who have been victimized by psychopaths. Even while people in these situations were having their lives wrecked, and knew it, they just couldn’t end the situation.
You yourself have probably seen these relationships in action and you wonder why the person being used and abused doesn’t just get out.
For the same reason we’ve been going along with our current ruling paradigm with a banking and governing elite that has been sucking us dry!
I read something thought provoking a few days ago regarding the cult like popularity of the “Twilight” and “Hunger Games” books and movies.
Once you get past all the forbidden love and teen fantasy aspects of these stories, “Twilight” is really about a race of secret elites who suck the blood of the rest of us.
The “Hunger Games” is about a decadent and ruthless ruling class who victimize and torment the poor people for their own sick and twisted amusement.
Is that any different from what we have seen played out on the world stage?
But the most terrifying aspect of the psychopathic personality is that they get pleasure from the pain and suffering they cause.
They like to be in control, and it’s always all about them, but they actually love to inhale the fear of their victims.
What motivates bullies? They get a sense of power, and they hurt people physically, but it seems that they derive their greatest pleasure from the terror that they instill in others.
There is no consensus on whether psychopaths are born that way or created by abusive childhoods. It seems to be a combination of the two. Some kids seem to be born as a “ bad seed” and others have remorselessness beat into them by crazy adults.
Whatever the cause, psychopaths are like an alien species amongst us humans and if knowledge empowers us, keep an eye peeled for these human predators so you don’t get sucked into their dark world.
Stephanie Kelley
