Rob: But wait, wait...that's interesting because what you're basically saying is that...I mean these are the kinds of things that OpEdNews has been advocating for ten years now...
DS: Oh sure, I'm just saying, don't give up! Don't give up, keep advocating those things.
Rob: So yeah, I agree. Those are basic things. but it seems to me in the US we're losing ground. You know the Supreme Court just narrowed the definition of corruption and we're in a very tough situation here. And I guess, you know, I believe that the US believes in science and if there was science that was being done and, this is what I'm talking about with the research, if research was being published that made it clear to people just how to understand better the damage and how the damage was done by psychopaths and sociopaths, it might be easier for people to get on board with putting into effect not only the rules that you've described -- sensible laws that the US should have and should be ashamed to not have, but even more laws that go further and encourage positive behavior and protect people from negative behavior and discourage the negative behavior. But, here's the problem. Part of it is those 60 million people, who are victims of sociopaths, those sociopaths either don't break the laws or they do it in a way that shames the people or embarrasses them so they're afraid to report them. And that's a big part of the problem... is that sociopaths are so good at manipulating people and manipulating the system.
DS: Yeah, but if you're a potential whistleblower in the US government and the internal threat program threatens your career and your liberty, should you act morally and expose the evils of which you're aware? Should you follow in the footsteps of Chelsea Manning, or Edward Snowden? The people imposing those problems on you, some may be sociopaths, most clearly cannot be based on the percentages. You may be a sociopath yourself, or you maybe someone who's just inclined to keep your job and get along with what appears to be the normal behavior of all of your colleagues in a society that's collectively gone mad?
And so when we give up...we've given up on the idea of unelecting anybody, right? Incumbents just walk into office as long as they want, so people start shouting lets have term limits -- that's a good solution; and then you just get a revolving door of evil corporate stooges, one face and then the next, and then the next face -- you haven't solved anything. We've given up on the idea of being able to remove people from office or control their behavior while they're in office. And you do that through mass public movements, you don't do it through new science.
Rob: Maybe you do. When I talk about science, you know, I come from a background of psychology, so I think of the science of understanding behavior and understanding social interactions, sociology as well as psychology. To me, a big problem is how do you recognize a sociopath. Well, I've interviewed a couple of sociopaths now and I've gotten a little bit of a better idea for it. For example, one of them said that you look at how they look at you and that a sociopath, because they are so manipulative and so predatory...I tend to think of...I tend to clump them together psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists as predators. They're so predatory it's almost like they look at you like you are their lunch and they stare and the eye contact is longer. Now that was interesting. It's fascinating because in the past other people have written about how maintaining eye contact is a good thing, but to learn that that could possibly be an indicator....I don't know what the other indicators are. Anytime anybody is too glib and too smooth, I'm going to have some wondering...I'm going to be wondering whether or not this is somebody who is such good manipulator that they are like that. And...
DS: But it's such a difficult thing you're talking about and so easily abused. You have armed idiots in our airports now who've been told that they can identify possible terrorists based on all sorts of factors that are complete nonsense and they have been proven utterly useless in identifying who's a terrorist and who isn't. Now we're publicly talking on a radio show and people are listening and hearing, "Oh my God, if somebody maintains too much eye contact with me they might be predator. What do you do to predators? You kill predators""
Rob: Well no...
DS: I mean, you read me these articles Rob, you'd be happy to have been able to a chance to kill Nazis...
Rob: Well, I was talking specifically after watching a movie...
DS: Nobody should be happy about having a chance to kill anybody...
Rob: Again, I would...I...
DS: I mean this is the danger of this kind of talk...
Rob: David, I was talking about a movie I saw where these Nazis just used machine guns to kill all kinds of people and, yes, I would stop them by killing them if I saw something like that. But, you know, the fact is that just because something is hard doesn't mean you don't do it. It doesn't mean that you just say it can't be done. We have a problem here and we haven't gotten our heads around it or our hands around it. We need to do more and you've already agreed that that's the case. The question is what...how do you do more? And that's where I think we are. We're at the point where we need to start just asking the questions. What can we do about this problem? And I'm not saying to do anything yet necessarily, but we need to get a better, clearer picture of what the problem is, how it affects people. Why is it that one psychopath can influence a whole company or a whole bunch of people? How do we decrease that influence? Are there ways to do that? I think if we can figure that out then it could make a huge difference. Even the simple discovery or an insight could really change things and maybe make for less wars and more kindness and less cruelty. Because we're talking about predators and that's something that just about everybody who studies this agrees. They are predators.
It's really...you know the other things that I'm very interested in is bottom up and top down. And what I've gotten into recently is understanding control and domination. And when you have domination, which is like what we had with slavery, you had slave owners and the slave ownership system and then you had slaves. And somebody who has written some great stuff about it is James C. Scott. He wrote one book called, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. He talks about how dominators are...maintain their power by maintaining a narrative and a story and a public discussion. And that is something to me that seems to tie in, in some ways, with the way predators operate where they control and they manipulate. You know, that got me thinking. Well, are humans predators? Are all humans predators? Are we naturally hunters? And....I don't know. I mean what do you think about this idea of humans being hunters and predators?
DS: Well, I think it's partial truth and it can be oversimplified and I agree that there is great value to learning about these things. It would be great to know what genetic contributions there are to evil behavior and to be able to define such a group of people if there is a sensible, useful way to define them. I think it's just very dangerous to be talking about it and how to detect it when we don't have a clue.
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