We go where we are led. It's just what we do. We are a herd animal
of the absolute highest order. Once in lockstep with our leadership
we just go and go and go. It doesn't seem to matter where we are
being led, even if we can clearly see the folly of our trajectory.
Even as we march beneath the towering fiery arches, sure, we will
whine and bleat about our leaders for marching us through the gates
of Hell, but still we will follow. It's inexplicable and bizarre. But
there it is. It's how we roll.
The fields of
organizational psychology and game theory, have demonstrated that if
you are devoid of morals and are smart enough to stay out of jail,
then any competitive interaction you have is likely to turn out in
your favour simply due to the fact of your vastly diminished rule-set
compared to your morally constrained competition.
The consequence of this dynamic is that high functioning
psychopaths, people who are biologically incapable of moral cognition,
become actively concentrated at the top of our most competitive and
rewarding hierarchies, from where they determine the fate of the rest
of the world at large.
There are many steps along the way
at which these human pustules could have been winnowed from the
process due to their morally problematic approach to life.
But
they weren't.
This is because they are very useful in certain
circumstances.
They will do whatever it takes to get things done, if it suits them. They have no qualms about destroying their competition whilst ingratiating themselves to those who can facilitate their ascent. Once they gain influence over an organization, they seek out and populate its inner workings with their own kind or those too weak or compromised to resist them.
The biggest financial firms use state of the art diagnostic tools to diagnose and recruit psychopaths to drive their most profitable and regulation sensitive machinery.
I know this because I've interviewed organizational psychologists, including individuals employed by the biggest financial institutions on Earth who administer these tests for their Wall St. employer's HR departments.
One such corporate HR shrink, explained it to me thus; "In the time it takes for a "neurotyp" (someone with a healthy mind) to get over the moral implications of a questionable trading decision, an algorithm has just cleaned up all the shares and the boss misses out on millions".
People who push the buy or sell button without hesitation, get to
keep their job. Those who miss a trading opportunity due to
vassilating over moral quandaries simply can't compete.
These
same companies also employ highly paid in-house regulatory overseers,
compliance officers, some of whom describe themselves as "Corporate
Cops", who in their own words; "make sure that no-one is
breaking the law and that ethical standards are maintained".
When I interviewed a compliance officer from the same
company as the aforementioned HR shrink, I mentioned the firm's HR
practices and the active quest for psychopaths. He expressed no
surprise, in fact he beat me to the punchline, saying "Yeah, they
recruit them to the trading floor..."
"You know about that??" I exclaimed" He replied,
"We all know about that, everyone knows that..."
When
asked to comment on the irony of working as a compliance officer for
a company that strategically recruits diagnosed psychopaths into the
most regulation sensitive underbelly of their operation, the self
description of "Corporate Cop" evaporates"
"You
wanna know what I really do?" he said to me, as his Wall St.
Corporate Cop facade slumped visibly with his shoulders...
"I
run around putting out the f#*!ing dumpster fires".
Organizational culture is the product of the characters
that populate the workplace. Under psychopathic leadership an
organization's priorities are skewed in ways that morally guided
individuals find intolerable, and many just quit.
This generates
a strong natural attrition amongst those who's psychological
normality might prove inconvenient when it comes to pursuing
questionable agendas.
The remaining, "off message"
employees can be further winnowed by targeted abuse or career
stagnation strategies.
Once moral objection has been effectively suppressed, the organization openly exhibits psychopathic traits.
It becomes overtly, criminally parasitic.
It becomes toxic.
It becomes a scandal factory and behaves in clearly undisciplined ways.
Organizations in competition with each other are quickly forced
into similar recruitment practices because to not do so is perceived
as a fatal disadvantage in a cut-throat world.
The smartest and
most ruthless, end up climbing into the upper executive of these
institutions from where they jump onto the "Revolving Door"
into government.
From here their malevolence becomes
concentrated into the executive fabric of society itself.
Moving freely between the control centers of wealth creation and public policy, they quickly strip away any remaining impediments to their complete entrainment of the wheels of society.
In this way whole industries and sectors of the economy and ultimately, entire societies become captive to the scourge of psychopathic leadership.
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