Power eventually ends up in the hands of sociopaths, because sociopaths are precisely the people who do whatever it takes to get power. The problem is that, whatever sociopaths are good at, they are not good at building lasting coalitions.
Power eventually ends up in the hands of sociopaths, because sociopaths are precisely the people who do whatever it takes to get power. The problem is that, whatever sociopaths are good at, they are not good at building lasting coalitions.
As a matter of terminology I favor “psychopath” over “sociopath” to emphasize nature over nurture, genetics over jurisprudence. But that’s just me.
Whichever you prefer, it seems inaccurate and unnecessarily reductive to assert that everyone with power is criminal or predatory, as if to say that when it comes to power, every use is abuse. There’s an element of truth to that, but as in so many relational matters … it’s complicated. There are degrees and qualities, distributions rather than binaries. Just look around. Everywhere there are more or less durable coalitions, and how could there not be? Without hierarchy and cooperation—coalition, in a word—organization crumbles and, as a practical matter, power dissipates, and not without consequences. Those unable to hang together hang separately.
I’m not wildly optimistic about our species’ prospects, but I resist the assumption that the distinctive talents and tendencies of s-paths or p-paths, which seem real enough, inevitably win out, and that a demon in a human’s skin perches atop every pyramid. It’s a bit “Wild in the Streets,” trust no one over 30 to my taste. (No disrespect to Shelley Winters.) But that’s about as close to Pollyanna-dom as I get. I quibble but largely agree. Lord Acton was onto something in his quip. Whether the pinnacle acts as factory or finishing school, his cautionary observation about absolute power is too grave to ignore—as grave as oligarchy seems inescapable, a fact of human sociability.
It’s past time to actually read (well, skim) Michels’ “Political Parties.” I can interleave it with kouros’s Weil recommendation, “On the Abolition of All Political Parties.” Preliminary impression: Michels: organized power unavoidably leads to oligarchy; Weil: organized power should be abolished because it’s neither good nor just. I sympathize with Weil while feeling I’m hearing out a precocious child. The effort to dispense with illusions in Michels I find exhilarating in its acuity, albeit depressing.
Organizationally speaking, complexity necessitates specialization, specialization means inequality, inequality sets boundaries, and boundaries mean in and out, up and down. Oligarchy is born. This is inevitable. Until we’re all clones, Aurelien’s PMC, that problematic professional and managerial class, like the poor will always be with us. At best, driven by power dynamics and in response to changing conditions, various kludges to limit advantage may emerge, albeit among the already powerful, whether old guard or upstart. Which brings us back to do (a deer). There’s no repeal of human nature and the motives arising from it. A certain ingenuity and adaptability with social arrangements might come with that genetic endowment. On the whole, though, the jockeying for dominance in a shifting environment seems both like the weather, unstable and too complex to model.
Hold the phone. That’s not to say that eventually means to mitigate the central tendencies might not come into play. We do live in history, and times change. For example, if some motives for seeking advantage derive from scarcity, to the extent those have less bearing, cooperation might become more attractive, with the dark triad withering into a psychic appendix. Plus there’s CRISPR! I won’t hold my breath either. Besides, in certain circumstances a little ferality may be just what Darwin ordered. The point is, theoretically in some future the iron law might not be as unyielding. That possibility, if not exactly a prospect, suggests a path, even if it’s unclear as yet how to construct it out of anything but imaginative thin air and a trillion trillion rolls of the dice.
I suppose it's a kind of compliment that people usually ask me to write longer and more inclusive essays rather than shorter and less inclusive ones. I did think of Michels and Weil (and I don't find her arguments at all convincing, even dangerous) but there wasn't space. But yes, if you think that any system will eventually be taken over by psychopaths, then you might as well give up now. The counter-argument is, of course, that it depends on the incentives you create. A couple of hundred years ago, the incentives and the surrounding ethical context were quite different, and I don't think you'd instantly characterise, say, the political classes of nineteenth century France or Britain as entirely composed of psychopaths.
You got that a thrust of the reply to FF was to take gentle exception to equating leadership with sociopathy, right? There's a grain of truth in the formulation, but it's reductive, with counterfactuals in plain sight.
About the centrality of incentives I heartily agree. Local interests are not necessarily those of the whole. A simple example: war is calamitous—but it's good news for certain sectors of the economy. So of course those sectors fund think tanks and lobby policymakers to advocate for it. Who would refuse to beat swords into ploughshares or, in a contemporary vein, support the elusive peace dividend of the '90s?They would! There you have the essence of elite dynamics.
It's why theories that posit "national interest" struggle to explain seemingly unrealistic, counterproductive, and irrational policies like, say, the current U.S. stance toward Israel. They miss the boat because national interest, in the sense of a more or less dispassionate analysis of the greatest good for the greatest number, isn't the engine or rudder of ships of state. Competition among parochial interests is. For good or ill, that's about incentives. Without addressing them, good luck turning such leviathans around.
Shorter: "What's good for General Motors is good for America." Except when it isn't.
Learn well The Iron Law Of Oligarchy.
Power eventually ends up in the hands of sociopaths, because sociopaths are precisely the people who do whatever it takes to get power. The problem is that, whatever sociopaths are good at, they are not good at building lasting coalitions.
As a matter of terminology I favor “psychopath” over “sociopath” to emphasize nature over nurture, genetics over jurisprudence. But that’s just me.
Whichever you prefer, it seems inaccurate and unnecessarily reductive to assert that everyone with power is criminal or predatory, as if to say that when it comes to power, every use is abuse. There’s an element of truth to that, but as in so many relational matters … it’s complicated. There are degrees and qualities, distributions rather than binaries. Just look around. Everywhere there are more or less durable coalitions, and how could there not be? Without hierarchy and cooperation—coalition, in a word—organization crumbles and, as a practical matter, power dissipates, and not without consequences. Those unable to hang together hang separately.
I’m not wildly optimistic about our species’ prospects, but I resist the assumption that the distinctive talents and tendencies of s-paths or p-paths, which seem real enough, inevitably win out, and that a demon in a human’s skin perches atop every pyramid. It’s a bit “Wild in the Streets,” trust no one over 30 to my taste. (No disrespect to Shelley Winters.) But that’s about as close to Pollyanna-dom as I get. I quibble but largely agree. Lord Acton was onto something in his quip. Whether the pinnacle acts as factory or finishing school, his cautionary observation about absolute power is too grave to ignore—as grave as oligarchy seems inescapable, a fact of human sociability.
It’s past time to actually read (well, skim) Michels’ “Political Parties.” I can interleave it with kouros’s Weil recommendation, “On the Abolition of All Political Parties.” Preliminary impression: Michels: organized power unavoidably leads to oligarchy; Weil: organized power should be abolished because it’s neither good nor just. I sympathize with Weil while feeling I’m hearing out a precocious child. The effort to dispense with illusions in Michels I find exhilarating in its acuity, albeit depressing.
Organizationally speaking, complexity necessitates specialization, specialization means inequality, inequality sets boundaries, and boundaries mean in and out, up and down. Oligarchy is born. This is inevitable. Until we’re all clones, Aurelien’s PMC, that problematic professional and managerial class, like the poor will always be with us. At best, driven by power dynamics and in response to changing conditions, various kludges to limit advantage may emerge, albeit among the already powerful, whether old guard or upstart. Which brings us back to do (a deer). There’s no repeal of human nature and the motives arising from it. A certain ingenuity and adaptability with social arrangements might come with that genetic endowment. On the whole, though, the jockeying for dominance in a shifting environment seems both like the weather, unstable and too complex to model.
Hold the phone. That’s not to say that eventually means to mitigate the central tendencies might not come into play. We do live in history, and times change. For example, if some motives for seeking advantage derive from scarcity, to the extent those have less bearing, cooperation might become more attractive, with the dark triad withering into a psychic appendix. Plus there’s CRISPR! I won’t hold my breath either. Besides, in certain circumstances a little ferality may be just what Darwin ordered. The point is, theoretically in some future the iron law might not be as unyielding. That possibility, if not exactly a prospect, suggests a path, even if it’s unclear as yet how to construct it out of anything but imaginative thin air and a trillion trillion rolls of the dice.
I suppose it's a kind of compliment that people usually ask me to write longer and more inclusive essays rather than shorter and less inclusive ones. I did think of Michels and Weil (and I don't find her arguments at all convincing, even dangerous) but there wasn't space. But yes, if you think that any system will eventually be taken over by psychopaths, then you might as well give up now. The counter-argument is, of course, that it depends on the incentives you create. A couple of hundred years ago, the incentives and the surrounding ethical context were quite different, and I don't think you'd instantly characterise, say, the political classes of nineteenth century France or Britain as entirely composed of psychopaths.
The man himself!
You got that a thrust of the reply to FF was to take gentle exception to equating leadership with sociopathy, right? There's a grain of truth in the formulation, but it's reductive, with counterfactuals in plain sight.
About the centrality of incentives I heartily agree. Local interests are not necessarily those of the whole. A simple example: war is calamitous—but it's good news for certain sectors of the economy. So of course those sectors fund think tanks and lobby policymakers to advocate for it. Who would refuse to beat swords into ploughshares or, in a contemporary vein, support the elusive peace dividend of the '90s?They would! There you have the essence of elite dynamics.
It's why theories that posit "national interest" struggle to explain seemingly unrealistic, counterproductive, and irrational policies like, say, the current U.S. stance toward Israel. They miss the boat because national interest, in the sense of a more or less dispassionate analysis of the greatest good for the greatest number, isn't the engine or rudder of ships of state. Competition among parochial interests is. For good or ill, that's about incentives. Without addressing them, good luck turning such leviathans around.
Shorter: "What's good for General Motors is good for America." Except when it isn't.