I hope you'll forgive my armchair psychology here, because I'm certainly no authority, but I couldn't help but wonder in an amateur way about just how often human societies end up ruled by, essentially, psychopaths.
I was thinking: Many monkey species have a series of distress calls, which they use to warn the group of predators. If a monkey gives the call for "leopard!", they all scarper. I was reading some interesting information recently about a few monkeys who (perhaps) take advantage of this. They wait until everyone's getting ready to eat, then they essentially cry "leopard!" so everyone runs. They then eat everyone else's food, or at least steal a bit. Whether this is deliberate plotting is up for debate, apparently; often it's low-status monkeys and some researchers suggest they're genuinely stressed by watching others eat when they themselves can't, and they react vocally without truling "intending" to. They might not mean to deceive.
But in the case of humans...well, some humans are definitely good at deliberately misleading others and manipulating alarm and fear to serve their selfish needs (as we all know). Some humans do deceive.
I was thinking about an experience I had in school. There was another boy who was supposedly a friend, but was in fact highly manipulative. He was cunning. He was very good at saying things that seemed innocuous or harmless but were actually carefully calculated to cause harm or humiliation. He was very skilled at quietly tossing a grenade into the situation while making it look like he was simply flexing his fingers. Whenever I tried to point this out, though, the other children couldn't see it. Instead, they essentially said "right, sure" and rolled their eyes at me. I was the one made out to be in the wrong, as though I were temporarily a paranoid troublemaker who was pointing fingers at shadows. But I could see right through this other boy.
It strikes me that if the call for "leopard!" were to sound, the monkeys would NOT take kindly to any monkey who said "hold on a minute! There might not be a leopard! Let's check this out first". This monkey would be seen as putting the whole group in danger for seeking to lessen the impact of the alarm, or advocating standing around when a leopard is breathing down your neck and you should all be high-tailing it out of there. Such a threat, I doubt would be tolerated. So the psychopath gets away with it and any monkey who, hypothetically, would keep him in check is derided and attacked. They are seen as the aggressor against the group, betraying the mutual trust with their suspicious ways. Or at least weakening the group.
On the historical front, we all know our Goering:
"Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”
Goering seems basically to suggest that the naughty, deceptive monkey will invariably wind up the leader.
Why did almost all my fellow students not see that boy for what he was? Perhaps as the mountain to that molehill, why, at so many times throughout history, have a few madmen or psychopaths managed to hoodwink entire populations? I wonder; are the majority of humans simply psychologically incapable of recognizing a psychopath? I say that not as a judgement, but as a legitimate curiosity.
Why is the psychopath's little game so successful? Are our people so strongly committed to mutual trust that most people can't conceive - truly conceive - of its being broken? Are humans so prone to being led by the bloody and deceptive precisely because most humans are NOT like that? If so, that's truly a "do I laugh or cry?" idea, isn't it?
I'd be interested in what everyone thinks about this.
I was thinking: Many monkey species have a series of distress calls, which they use to warn the group of predators. If a monkey gives the call for "leopard!", they all scarper. I was reading some interesting information recently about a few monkeys who (perhaps) take advantage of this. They wait until everyone's getting ready to eat, then they essentially cry "leopard!" so everyone runs. They then eat everyone else's food, or at least steal a bit. Whether this is deliberate plotting is up for debate, apparently; often it's low-status monkeys and some researchers suggest they're genuinely stressed by watching others eat when they themselves can't, and they react vocally without truling "intending" to. They might not mean to deceive.
But in the case of humans...well, some humans are definitely good at deliberately misleading others and manipulating alarm and fear to serve their selfish needs (as we all know). Some humans do deceive.
I was thinking about an experience I had in school. There was another boy who was supposedly a friend, but was in fact highly manipulative. He was cunning. He was very good at saying things that seemed innocuous or harmless but were actually carefully calculated to cause harm or humiliation. He was very skilled at quietly tossing a grenade into the situation while making it look like he was simply flexing his fingers. Whenever I tried to point this out, though, the other children couldn't see it. Instead, they essentially said "right, sure" and rolled their eyes at me. I was the one made out to be in the wrong, as though I were temporarily a paranoid troublemaker who was pointing fingers at shadows. But I could see right through this other boy.
It strikes me that if the call for "leopard!" were to sound, the monkeys would NOT take kindly to any monkey who said "hold on a minute! There might not be a leopard! Let's check this out first". This monkey would be seen as putting the whole group in danger for seeking to lessen the impact of the alarm, or advocating standing around when a leopard is breathing down your neck and you should all be high-tailing it out of there. Such a threat, I doubt would be tolerated. So the psychopath gets away with it and any monkey who, hypothetically, would keep him in check is derided and attacked. They are seen as the aggressor against the group, betraying the mutual trust with their suspicious ways. Or at least weakening the group.
On the historical front, we all know our Goering:
"Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”
Goering seems basically to suggest that the naughty, deceptive monkey will invariably wind up the leader.
Why did almost all my fellow students not see that boy for what he was? Perhaps as the mountain to that molehill, why, at so many times throughout history, have a few madmen or psychopaths managed to hoodwink entire populations? I wonder; are the majority of humans simply psychologically incapable of recognizing a psychopath? I say that not as a judgement, but as a legitimate curiosity.
Why is the psychopath's little game so successful? Are our people so strongly committed to mutual trust that most people can't conceive - truly conceive - of its being broken? Are humans so prone to being led by the bloody and deceptive precisely because most humans are NOT like that? If so, that's truly a "do I laugh or cry?" idea, isn't it?
I'd be interested in what everyone thinks about this.
I'm the flinty-eyed monkey who knows your game and glares daggers at you. 
