Natural law is what governs the behavioural consequence of societies.
Morality is objective. Moral relativism is a tenet of satanism, practiced by all religions.
The amount of morality in a society determined whether they society experiences freedom or slavery. It is proportionate.
They only legitimate form of governance is that which aligns with natural law (objective morality) such as the American and English Constitutions, because the Constitution is the framework by which our peers tap into natural law in the court of conscience - Trial by Jury.
Interesting how you claim morality is objective while rejecting the need for a transcendent source of that morality.
If morality just "exists" in nature, who or what made it binding? Saying "natural law governs behavior" is just observation—it doesn’t explain why something is right instead of merely common.
Trial by jury and constitutions are human conventions. They can reflect moral truths, but they don’t create them. If morality is truly objective, it must come from something above human consensus—not just from nature, and definitely not from “the court of conscience,” which varies wildly from person to person.
You’re not wrong to oppose moral relativism. But denying the uncaused first cause—God—leaves you in philosophical quicksand. Objective morality without a moral lawgiver is just a clever illusion.
I'm not denying the creator. Every design has an architect. Natural law (objective morality) is woven into the fabric of reality. It is inherent and binding because there are observeable consequences, so, it is in fact, a science, a science of morality.
The Constitution (the law of the land) is man's expression of natural justice through conscience. The framework being Trial by Jury. So, morality has to be known, which is what conscience really is and this ancient customary practice of jurors applying conscience has been practiced since time immemorial, even before MC 1215 and has been safely relied upon throughout the ages.
I appreciate the tone—you’re clearly engaging this thoughtfully.
I think we agree on more than we disagree: design implies a designer, and morality is not a social whim but built into reality.
Where we may diverge is in the source of that binding force. Saying morality is a “science” because it has observable consequences is like saying gravity is ethical because falling off a cliff hurts. Consequence ≠ justification.
Trial by jury is a noble and ancient institution—but conscience is only as clear as the soul it's housed in. One man’s moral clarity is another man’s witch trial.
Natural Law, to truly be objective, needs an origin outside human reasoning. Otherwise we’re still just crowdsourcing morality—better than tyranny, yes, but still not truth in its purest form.
I do enjoy that we’re able to talk about this without invoking Reddit-tier rage. That alone gives me hope for the survival of reason.
But even if there were, why would you call them both "authority"?
Sugar and arsenic are both "white, granular, sweet stuff". Is that what you're going to label both jars?
It's fucking nuts, dude. If you actually examine and get familiar with the things you're calling "legitimate" and "illegitimate" authority, you'd see they're no more similar than sugar and arsenic. So why not make their handles clearly different, too?
Answer: because you haven't actually examined and become familiar with them and the irreconcilable differences between them. Truth be told: because there's a part of you psychology that's still down with some people having the right to tell other people what to think, believe, say, and do.
Legitimate governance is that which aligns with natural law (morality).
Constitutional law, or, the law of the land (legem terrae) is the ancient customary practice of natural justice where peers of a community come together in conscience to make an equitable decision regarding justice and governance.
There is no other legitimate way of a people governing themselves.
Anarchists forget that there is nuance and detail in matters of law. Individuals can get things very wrong which is why we need the help of our peers. Equity is the check on free will!
We've had generations of pey overlaying conscience and reasonable doubt for a collectivist majority vote.
Restoration of the constitution will re establish the people as the final arbiter of law. There is no other way for governance to be legitimate.
I disagree with some aspects of what Calvin said above as well. But there are many more productive and civil ways to express that disagreement. I prefer to maintain a civil environment here at the Freedom Scale.
I wasn't being uncivil. I was being honest and accurate. He completely ignored what I wrote and regurgitated worn-out ideas as cover. I wasn't reacting to the ideas, I called out the dishonesty of that tactic.
Yesterday I commented on the mRNA injections the government forced and manipulated people into taking even though they knew they were going to cause death and severe illness to people.
President Xi of China knowingly flew infected people all over the world. He knew he was spreading a pandemic to other countries on purpose, I believe so that China would not be the only country that had to deal with it. To add insult to injury the other motive was to make a profit with PPE’s. Oh yes he also isolated himself and the rest of his government by not allowing flights into Beijing.
Now we have this up and coming democrat mayoral candidate in New York, Zohran Mamdani. He was a silver spooned child that grew up in an extremely wealthy family. Went to the best brain washing schools, never wanted for anything, and to this day lives off mommy and daddy’s money! We know he’s a communist, calls himself a socialist but spews policies that will not only drive all the money out of New York but in the end, history shows, will create people starving to death. Why can’t these communist learn socialism will never work. I’m talking about Mamdani’s call to seize the means of production, his words, Karl Marx’s words, Vladimir Lenin’s words, Fidel Castro’s words, Hugo Chavez’s words, Mao Zedong’s words, all in my opinion psychopaths. Amazingly this naturalized “American” looks to be the next mayor of, for now, the financial capital of the world. Insanity is when you keep doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Well I foresee New York City bread lines people starving in the streets and uncontrollable crime. Why do communists insist on taking control of food production and distribution. I know why, it’s the final nail in the coffin to fully controlling people and it looks as though New York City is all in. The wealthy will get out, it’s the poor that can’t afford to leave I feel sorry for. Power and psychopaths are like moths to a candles flame.
Communities are psychopathological. It doesn't require a psychopath to enact psychopathic abuse.
No police officer wants to attend a "domestic" where a husband and wife are fighting. Individually, either might be perfectly reasonable, no matter how upset they are - but together, they become unpredictable and ruthless. The larger a community grows, the more pockets of psychopathy it can foster. The force of "community" wants to persist, to control, to grow.
We often blame individuals, because we can see them. It's harder to see a psychopathic community, and harder to deal with it as well.
Interesting thought. However, it's the nature of "community" and neither the size of the community nor it's intensity affects the consequences. We don't understand because we don't study the dynamics of communities - and thus we might blame the ", individual psychopath" without even being aware of the psychopathic community, or the severity of its psychopathy.
A community of three close friends can decide to kill one of the members. Cain, Abel, and God's interactions resulted in Cain killing Abel, leaving a community of two. We say "Cain killed Abel" because we focus on individuals. If we read the story again, we can see that what happened is not so clear. The community disentegrated, self destructed.
Three is a most dangerous comminity. It's too cc lose to the individuals. It must grow to find balance, or it will probably disentegrate. Why? Imagine three individuals, each trying to do the best for three groups of two, and at the same time to ",look out for number one." It's a recipe for fisaster. It's much easier in a community of four, where each individual's preferences - can be seen clearly to be against the interests of "the community, or in a community of four thousand, which can tolerate some wide individual differences.
A community of thousands of ants decides, somehow, which ants to send out to battle, to die, and which to spend their time feeding the queen. Without both, the community might die and each subcommunity dies. At the same time, both of the communities, those that protect and those that feed, consist of many subcommunities themselves, rach of which consists of many individuals. Communities don't feel for individuals - they are by their very nature, psychopaths. This is true because, unlike individuals, communities have no "peers" that they must respect. No anthill cars about other and anthills. No political party cares about other political parties. No religion has to deal with other religions as peers, they only deal with individuals. And look after their own community - even if it means killing their own members.
I get what you are saying. Groups can have emergent properties that result from the interactions of the individuals within. It is important to understand that. But what do we do with that understanding? How do we react vis-a-vis the group and the individual?
I prefer to avoid the word "group." My focus is on communities . Agroup of people with moles on their left shoulder is not a community. A group of people in a clinical study is not a community. They do not exhibit any community behaviors.
Today, we have no science, no scientific studies, no scientific theories of communities. Most communities are invisible - even the communities of cells, tissues, organs, limbs, and organ systems that make up our individual bodies, as well as the thousands of communities that make up a national government or a religion. But every community has some fundamentals we should bring to understand.
What is a community (besides being psychopathic)? A community exist when two or more individuals, unconsciously or consciously cooperate and lasts as long as the cooperation continues - even it it changes dramatically. Cooperation creates community. But total cooperation leads to stagnation. Individual freedom, individual competition enhances the community. Both are necessary for healthy communities. Too much competition kills community. Too much cooperation stagnates it.
Or... In another view, too much freedom kills communities rapidly, and too much censoring causes a slow death.
Free speech vs censorship. Both are healthy.
Communities become psychopaths at either extreme. The disease identifies the presence of a problem. The cure proves the cause...
I better understand the point you are making now. Thank you.
And I get the distinction you are making between groups and communities. However, I am wondering, where does a mob fit in? A mob displays emergent group properties as well…
The mob is the psychopathic tendency of the community in full force, so powerful that it overrides the common sense and the healthy cooperation ofindividuals and lesser communities. The mob doesn't care about individuals or individual rights. It doesn't care about families, layers of government, corporations, religious communities. It is a temporary out of control community frenzy until it fizzles out. Mobs are communities we cannot be conscious of when we are "inside."
The smallest mob? What police call "a domestic." A husband and wife torn between their individuality and their marriage community. Together, to any outsider, any police officer, they are a psychopath. If the police can seperate them, the often become rational individuals.
What can we do with this understanding? Once we understand the forces, we can work to make and maintain healthier communities - at every level, not just individuals vs "government," not just families, but recognizing that communities are individuals. That communities have a right to exist. That communities can act morally, or commit immoral acts. We can never learn to prevent or control the mob if we only focus on the individuals we identify as the criminals.
The way to stop a mob is to seperate the members. In many cases, we don't need a long legal process of blaming individuals. Simply separating the individuals cools the mob. If it continually reforms, other community forces are at work.
If a community is behaving immoraly, how do we punish a community? It's not trivial, and we don't have much practice. Our focus on individuals blinds is. In addition, many communities are intentionslly invisible.
We might also note that communities are way ahead of us... Communities can, and sometimes do conspire and might create artificial mobs to achieve their goals or to distract others from seeing what is really happening. Note, a set of protests across the country, for example, is a conscious action, not a mob, although individual protests might each become a mob.
This is an area of thought that I am only beginning to explore myself. As far as I know, we have no peers. No one else is studying these concepts yet. I am trying to make some sense of it all on my Spirits of Life substack...
I especially agree with the part about those exercising influence and not authority; men like Kissinger and Colonel House. Then there are those like Hillary Clinton, who tried to make the transition from influencer to authority but, thankfully, never succeeded...
I may be splitting hairs but I think more of the people attracted to government are better classified as sociopaths than psychopaths, reserving the latter distinction for the more severe cases: Hitler, Stalin, etc...
I also think you might have been a little rough on foxes, which have long been a favorite of mine...
I would like to do a deeper dive into the data to find out more about the psycho/socio balance. If you learn anything, please lmk.
And I actually agree re: foxes. I made that meme and I needed foxes for the fox-watching-the-henhouse metaphor. And then the other Fox pic is just something I found on Pixabay this morning, and I needed something quick! 😁
I assume you're familiar with Harrison Koehli and his Political Ponerology substack. He is a contemporary knower about Lobacewski and his taxonomy of evil, of which sociopaths and psychopathy were front and centre.
Also, Mathew Crawford of the Rounding the Earth substack has a good post on the Eskimo "kunlangeta" stereotype. Also very interesting.
Perhaps the real problem is the dumbed down citizens who allow themselves to be controlled and made inept. Kind of like that hourglass thing as once you fall into the pile of humanity at the bottom, you have to hope that some force flips the glass upside down so you can try again.
Yeah. But even well-meaning, freedom-loving conservatives are contributing to this, with their belief that it is possible for government to be kept “limited,” and for believing that even a small amount of it is necessary or morally acceptable. A small amount of slavery is still slavery.
What else offers power over Others...? Yup. Money (anything We account for Our energy input into a system, from eggs to electronic bits (trade/barter to crypto)).
Thus I suggest We obsolete that tool along with ceasing to consent to the psychopathic legal/governmental system.
But all Your points are spot on in re controlminds!
Right! If you got rid of all the psychopaths in the world, but kept coercive civil authority (a.k.a. government), then you'd be keeping and endorsing *psychopathic behavior* . . . in "We Are Ruled by Psychopaths" the problem is "We Are Ruled," not "by Psychopaths."
What Dom said is good. But also, speaking generally, one of the biggest things that stops people from rejecting authority is the persistent belief that authority is legitimate.
Probably the most important factor is that most people worship authority and the imposed order & control that authority promises, and they fear what happens if there's no imposed order & control.
This worship can persist even if people don't like a specific authority figure; in the U.S., folks who are anti-Trump are often fanatical government worshipers nonetheless.
Still others might want to rebel, but are too afraid.
And people like me don't rebel because to rebel is to still take your cues from the object of one's rebellion. Revolutionaries tend to be government worshipers who simply want to supplant the current thing with their thing. I don't share this desire.
I think that the consequences of rebellion are deadly. I think that most of us enjoy our lives too much to put them at risk by truly rebelling against all forms of government (so-called) “authority”.
I've been making this point online since the early 2010s--but mostly on Google+, which is, of course, no longer publicly accessible. The trigger was my having learned about political ponerology.
In the absence of government (and thus any help or special status they might receive from government) corporations do have to provide something that people want, and they are subject to competition and market forces. This limits the power of psychopath CEOs. Nothing limits the power of government psychopaths, except for other government psychopaths and the laws of nature. Thus, ultimately, the government variety worries me far more.
We allowed the psychopaths to gain their position and ignored the signs. It's still up to the people affected to take action. Or we can keep kissing them off and allowing them to poison our lives, which they are clearly doing
Right, exactly. By agreeing to be ruled, we do it to ourselves. By insisting that humans need masters, we make ourselves slaves.
I try to stay patient every time someone says, “But who will build the roads?” or “Without government, there would be chaos,” without even doing a moment’s research on market anarchism. But I also die a little each time, because that reflexive reaction is the reason we remain enslaved.
You know, I really hate the "Power Corrupts" saying. Power does NOT corrupt - power is just a concept. I hate the saying because it keeps good people away from power (good people don't want to be corrupted!) and creates an environmental vacuum that literally invites psychopaths to take over.
A more accurate saying would be "Power attracts corruptible people". That moves the culpability from a concept to the real issue - people.
Makes sense. But as I noted above, that is actually what Acton was saying. By stripping the context of his larger quote, and just focusing on that small portion, people lose his true meaning, which is what you said it ought to be: power attracts bad people to begin with.
We are ruled by psychopaths because too many of us accept the legitimacy of rule and authority
There's legitimate authority and illegitimate authority…….
Agreed. God almighty is the only rightful king. Without an uncaused first cause, morality is just personal preference and opinions.
Now you've done it! 😂
The almighty made ‘law’.
Natural law is what governs the behavioural consequence of societies.
Morality is objective. Moral relativism is a tenet of satanism, practiced by all religions.
The amount of morality in a society determined whether they society experiences freedom or slavery. It is proportionate.
They only legitimate form of governance is that which aligns with natural law (objective morality) such as the American and English Constitutions, because the Constitution is the framework by which our peers tap into natural law in the court of conscience - Trial by Jury.
Interesting how you claim morality is objective while rejecting the need for a transcendent source of that morality.
If morality just "exists" in nature, who or what made it binding? Saying "natural law governs behavior" is just observation—it doesn’t explain why something is right instead of merely common.
Trial by jury and constitutions are human conventions. They can reflect moral truths, but they don’t create them. If morality is truly objective, it must come from something above human consensus—not just from nature, and definitely not from “the court of conscience,” which varies wildly from person to person.
You’re not wrong to oppose moral relativism. But denying the uncaused first cause—God—leaves you in philosophical quicksand. Objective morality without a moral lawgiver is just a clever illusion.
I'm not denying the creator. Every design has an architect. Natural law (objective morality) is woven into the fabric of reality. It is inherent and binding because there are observeable consequences, so, it is in fact, a science, a science of morality.
The Constitution (the law of the land) is man's expression of natural justice through conscience. The framework being Trial by Jury. So, morality has to be known, which is what conscience really is and this ancient customary practice of jurors applying conscience has been practiced since time immemorial, even before MC 1215 and has been safely relied upon throughout the ages.
I appreciate the tone—you’re clearly engaging this thoughtfully.
I think we agree on more than we disagree: design implies a designer, and morality is not a social whim but built into reality.
Where we may diverge is in the source of that binding force. Saying morality is a “science” because it has observable consequences is like saying gravity is ethical because falling off a cliff hurts. Consequence ≠ justification.
Trial by jury is a noble and ancient institution—but conscience is only as clear as the soul it's housed in. One man’s moral clarity is another man’s witch trial.
Natural Law, to truly be objective, needs an origin outside human reasoning. Otherwise we’re still just crowdsourcing morality—better than tyranny, yes, but still not truth in its purest form.
I do enjoy that we’re able to talk about this without invoking Reddit-tier rage. That alone gives me hope for the survival of reason.
Calvin, no there isn't.
But even if there were, why would you call them both "authority"?
Sugar and arsenic are both "white, granular, sweet stuff". Is that what you're going to label both jars?
It's fucking nuts, dude. If you actually examine and get familiar with the things you're calling "legitimate" and "illegitimate" authority, you'd see they're no more similar than sugar and arsenic. So why not make their handles clearly different, too?
Answer: because you haven't actually examined and become familiar with them and the irreconcilable differences between them. Truth be told: because there's a part of you psychology that's still down with some people having the right to tell other people what to think, believe, say, and do.
Legitimate governance is that which aligns with natural law (morality).
Constitutional law, or, the law of the land (legem terrae) is the ancient customary practice of natural justice where peers of a community come together in conscience to make an equitable decision regarding justice and governance.
There is no other legitimate way of a people governing themselves.
Anarchists forget that there is nuance and detail in matters of law. Individuals can get things very wrong which is why we need the help of our peers. Equity is the check on free will!
We've had generations of pey overlaying conscience and reasonable doubt for a collectivist majority vote.
Restoration of the constitution will re establish the people as the final arbiter of law. There is no other way for governance to be legitimate.
I'm not surprised that you can regurgitate things you've memorized. Apparently, you think that was responsive, lol
I disagree with some aspects of what Calvin said above as well. But there are many more productive and civil ways to express that disagreement. I prefer to maintain a civil environment here at the Freedom Scale.
I wasn't being uncivil. I was being honest and accurate. He completely ignored what I wrote and regurgitated worn-out ideas as cover. I wasn't reacting to the ideas, I called out the dishonesty of that tactic.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/opinion/20190207/an-american-psychopathocracy
Become ungovernable!
My James Bond villain lair will be ready when it's ready!
😆
💪
Wow! I believe this may be your best chapter yet Christopher! I have lots of links open from this article to read asap.
Thank you!
I am pleased we are on the same page on so much, Albert.
It is very good to find someone who sees through it all - as well as many of your other commenters.
Yesterday I commented on the mRNA injections the government forced and manipulated people into taking even though they knew they were going to cause death and severe illness to people.
President Xi of China knowingly flew infected people all over the world. He knew he was spreading a pandemic to other countries on purpose, I believe so that China would not be the only country that had to deal with it. To add insult to injury the other motive was to make a profit with PPE’s. Oh yes he also isolated himself and the rest of his government by not allowing flights into Beijing.
Now we have this up and coming democrat mayoral candidate in New York, Zohran Mamdani. He was a silver spooned child that grew up in an extremely wealthy family. Went to the best brain washing schools, never wanted for anything, and to this day lives off mommy and daddy’s money! We know he’s a communist, calls himself a socialist but spews policies that will not only drive all the money out of New York but in the end, history shows, will create people starving to death. Why can’t these communist learn socialism will never work. I’m talking about Mamdani’s call to seize the means of production, his words, Karl Marx’s words, Vladimir Lenin’s words, Fidel Castro’s words, Hugo Chavez’s words, Mao Zedong’s words, all in my opinion psychopaths. Amazingly this naturalized “American” looks to be the next mayor of, for now, the financial capital of the world. Insanity is when you keep doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Well I foresee New York City bread lines people starving in the streets and uncontrollable crime. Why do communists insist on taking control of food production and distribution. I know why, it’s the final nail in the coffin to fully controlling people and it looks as though New York City is all in. The wealthy will get out, it’s the poor that can’t afford to leave I feel sorry for. Power and psychopaths are like moths to a candles flame.
Well said.
Communities are psychopathological. It doesn't require a psychopath to enact psychopathic abuse.
No police officer wants to attend a "domestic" where a husband and wife are fighting. Individually, either might be perfectly reasonable, no matter how upset they are - but together, they become unpredictable and ruthless. The larger a community grows, the more pockets of psychopathy it can foster. The force of "community" wants to persist, to control, to grow.
We often blame individuals, because we can see them. It's harder to see a psychopathic community, and harder to deal with it as well.
To your health, Tracy
Author: The Spirits of Life
https://open.substack.com/pub/spiritsoflife
Argument to keep polities smaller than Dunbar’s number?
Interesting thought. However, it's the nature of "community" and neither the size of the community nor it's intensity affects the consequences. We don't understand because we don't study the dynamics of communities - and thus we might blame the ", individual psychopath" without even being aware of the psychopathic community, or the severity of its psychopathy.
A community of three close friends can decide to kill one of the members. Cain, Abel, and God's interactions resulted in Cain killing Abel, leaving a community of two. We say "Cain killed Abel" because we focus on individuals. If we read the story again, we can see that what happened is not so clear. The community disentegrated, self destructed.
Three is a most dangerous comminity. It's too cc lose to the individuals. It must grow to find balance, or it will probably disentegrate. Why? Imagine three individuals, each trying to do the best for three groups of two, and at the same time to ",look out for number one." It's a recipe for fisaster. It's much easier in a community of four, where each individual's preferences - can be seen clearly to be against the interests of "the community, or in a community of four thousand, which can tolerate some wide individual differences.
A community of thousands of ants decides, somehow, which ants to send out to battle, to die, and which to spend their time feeding the queen. Without both, the community might die and each subcommunity dies. At the same time, both of the communities, those that protect and those that feed, consist of many subcommunities themselves, rach of which consists of many individuals. Communities don't feel for individuals - they are by their very nature, psychopaths. This is true because, unlike individuals, communities have no "peers" that they must respect. No anthill cars about other and anthills. No political party cares about other political parties. No religion has to deal with other religions as peers, they only deal with individuals. And look after their own community - even if it means killing their own members.
Individual sovereignty. Individual responsibility. Individual culpability.
I get what you are saying. Groups can have emergent properties that result from the interactions of the individuals within. It is important to understand that. But what do we do with that understanding? How do we react vis-a-vis the group and the individual?
I prefer to avoid the word "group." My focus is on communities . Agroup of people with moles on their left shoulder is not a community. A group of people in a clinical study is not a community. They do not exhibit any community behaviors.
Today, we have no science, no scientific studies, no scientific theories of communities. Most communities are invisible - even the communities of cells, tissues, organs, limbs, and organ systems that make up our individual bodies, as well as the thousands of communities that make up a national government or a religion. But every community has some fundamentals we should bring to understand.
What is a community (besides being psychopathic)? A community exist when two or more individuals, unconsciously or consciously cooperate and lasts as long as the cooperation continues - even it it changes dramatically. Cooperation creates community. But total cooperation leads to stagnation. Individual freedom, individual competition enhances the community. Both are necessary for healthy communities. Too much competition kills community. Too much cooperation stagnates it.
Or... In another view, too much freedom kills communities rapidly, and too much censoring causes a slow death.
Free speech vs censorship. Both are healthy.
Communities become psychopaths at either extreme. The disease identifies the presence of a problem. The cure proves the cause...
I better understand the point you are making now. Thank you.
And I get the distinction you are making between groups and communities. However, I am wondering, where does a mob fit in? A mob displays emergent group properties as well…
The mob is the psychopathic tendency of the community in full force, so powerful that it overrides the common sense and the healthy cooperation ofindividuals and lesser communities. The mob doesn't care about individuals or individual rights. It doesn't care about families, layers of government, corporations, religious communities. It is a temporary out of control community frenzy until it fizzles out. Mobs are communities we cannot be conscious of when we are "inside."
The smallest mob? What police call "a domestic." A husband and wife torn between their individuality and their marriage community. Together, to any outsider, any police officer, they are a psychopath. If the police can seperate them, the often become rational individuals.
What can we do with this understanding? Once we understand the forces, we can work to make and maintain healthier communities - at every level, not just individuals vs "government," not just families, but recognizing that communities are individuals. That communities have a right to exist. That communities can act morally, or commit immoral acts. We can never learn to prevent or control the mob if we only focus on the individuals we identify as the criminals.
The way to stop a mob is to seperate the members. In many cases, we don't need a long legal process of blaming individuals. Simply separating the individuals cools the mob. If it continually reforms, other community forces are at work.
If a community is behaving immoraly, how do we punish a community? It's not trivial, and we don't have much practice. Our focus on individuals blinds is. In addition, many communities are intentionslly invisible.
We might also note that communities are way ahead of us... Communities can, and sometimes do conspire and might create artificial mobs to achieve their goals or to distract others from seeing what is really happening. Note, a set of protests across the country, for example, is a conscious action, not a mob, although individual protests might each become a mob.
This is an area of thought that I am only beginning to explore myself. As far as I know, we have no peers. No one else is studying these concepts yet. I am trying to make some sense of it all on my Spirits of Life substack...
I especially agree with the part about those exercising influence and not authority; men like Kissinger and Colonel House. Then there are those like Hillary Clinton, who tried to make the transition from influencer to authority but, thankfully, never succeeded...
I may be splitting hairs but I think more of the people attracted to government are better classified as sociopaths than psychopaths, reserving the latter distinction for the more severe cases: Hitler, Stalin, etc...
I also think you might have been a little rough on foxes, which have long been a favorite of mine...
I would like to do a deeper dive into the data to find out more about the psycho/socio balance. If you learn anything, please lmk.
And I actually agree re: foxes. I made that meme and I needed foxes for the fox-watching-the-henhouse metaphor. And then the other Fox pic is just something I found on Pixabay this morning, and I needed something quick! 😁
I assume you're familiar with Harrison Koehli and his Political Ponerology substack. He is a contemporary knower about Lobacewski and his taxonomy of evil, of which sociopaths and psychopathy were front and centre.
Also, Mathew Crawford of the Rounding the Earth substack has a good post on the Eskimo "kunlangeta" stereotype. Also very interesting.
Just read Crawford’s post. Good stuff.
The ponerology substack is great
Perhaps the real problem is the dumbed down citizens who allow themselves to be controlled and made inept. Kind of like that hourglass thing as once you fall into the pile of humanity at the bottom, you have to hope that some force flips the glass upside down so you can try again.
Yeah. But even well-meaning, freedom-loving conservatives are contributing to this, with their belief that it is possible for government to be kept “limited,” and for believing that even a small amount of it is necessary or morally acceptable. A small amount of slavery is still slavery.
What else offers power over Others...? Yup. Money (anything We account for Our energy input into a system, from eggs to electronic bits (trade/barter to crypto)).
Thus I suggest We obsolete that tool along with ceasing to consent to the psychopathic legal/governmental system.
But all Your points are spot on in re controlminds!
There is only one thing more frightening than a psychopath: a cunning sociopath
Yah. Scary stuff.
Right! If you got rid of all the psychopaths in the world, but kept coercive civil authority (a.k.a. government), then you'd be keeping and endorsing *psychopathic behavior* . . . in "We Are Ruled by Psychopaths" the problem is "We Are Ruled," not "by Psychopaths."
Right on.
What’s stopping the “ruled” from rebelling against the rulers?
What Dom said is good. But also, speaking generally, one of the biggest things that stops people from rejecting authority is the persistent belief that authority is legitimate.
“Legitimate” equals lawful. Some people claim that “the law” has a divine source. I wonder.
The way we should look at imposed authority is as a morally impermissible criminal act.
Doesn’t the determination of precisely what “a morally impermissible criminal act” require some sort of (so-called) “authority” to ascertain?
Only the authority of natural law, and the clear moral principles that emanate therefrom.
Probably the most important factor is that most people worship authority and the imposed order & control that authority promises, and they fear what happens if there's no imposed order & control.
This worship can persist even if people don't like a specific authority figure; in the U.S., folks who are anti-Trump are often fanatical government worshipers nonetheless.
Still others might want to rebel, but are too afraid.
And people like me don't rebel because to rebel is to still take your cues from the object of one's rebellion. Revolutionaries tend to be government worshipers who simply want to supplant the current thing with their thing. I don't share this desire.
What stops you from rebelling?
I think that the consequences of rebellion are deadly. I think that most of us enjoy our lives too much to put them at risk by truly rebelling against all forms of government (so-called) “authority”.
Another thought provoking, well written post.
🙏
most definitely time for building alternatives and ruling our own life!!
🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡
I've been making this point online since the early 2010s--but mostly on Google+, which is, of course, no longer publicly accessible. The trigger was my having learned about political ponerology.
Excellent read. The narcissism of psychopaths usually makes them easy to spot. See, e.g., almost any public company CEO.
In the absence of government (and thus any help or special status they might receive from government) corporations do have to provide something that people want, and they are subject to competition and market forces. This limits the power of psychopath CEOs. Nothing limits the power of government psychopaths, except for other government psychopaths and the laws of nature. Thus, ultimately, the government variety worries me far more.
I agree with your take on this, Chris. I wrote about the same topic from a slightly different angle myself: https://technoskeptical.substack.com/p/why-power-corrupts
We allowed the psychopaths to gain their position and ignored the signs. It's still up to the people affected to take action. Or we can keep kissing them off and allowing them to poison our lives, which they are clearly doing
Right, exactly. By agreeing to be ruled, we do it to ourselves. By insisting that humans need masters, we make ourselves slaves.
I try to stay patient every time someone says, “But who will build the roads?” or “Without government, there would be chaos,” without even doing a moment’s research on market anarchism. But I also die a little each time, because that reflexive reaction is the reason we remain enslaved.
You know, I really hate the "Power Corrupts" saying. Power does NOT corrupt - power is just a concept. I hate the saying because it keeps good people away from power (good people don't want to be corrupted!) and creates an environmental vacuum that literally invites psychopaths to take over.
A more accurate saying would be "Power attracts corruptible people". That moves the culpability from a concept to the real issue - people.
Makes sense. But as I noted above, that is actually what Acton was saying. By stripping the context of his larger quote, and just focusing on that small portion, people lose his true meaning, which is what you said it ought to be: power attracts bad people to begin with.
Exactly.