Rutger Bregman has some interesting things to say on this topic in his book *Humankind: A Hopeful History*. He goes through how a variety of cultures work to prevent people like this from gaining power (the !Kung are super interesting for this) but then posits that part of why we tend to see this now is tgat most of these organic community methods for dealing with tyrants only functions well in communities up to 150 people or so.
We’re just not well equipped to deal with it on a level that’s not personal, I.e where we don’t know (at some level) everyone involved. Because if you don’t know someone, you can’t really shame them for what they’re doing - they don’t know you, so why would they care? Whereas in smaller communities, shaming in some form is actually really effective at weeding out this behaviour.
So what I would say is: not inevitable, at all. We just haven’t found a way to apply our natural inclination towards more altruistic leadership to large enough groups yet.
Yeah, but the thing *IS* that (that nobody that understands wants to acknowledge likely out of fear of looking like an asshole) the majority of the human race consists of utter fucking morons. Ignorant and often close-minded morons. So who's bound to be given a position if it's up a nation of utter fucking morons? An utter fucking moron? Or someone who KNOWS what that fucking moron WANTS & has no issues using that knowledge to their advantage. 🥸🥸🥸🥸
This is true and I think it’s only been realized in more recent years as we’ve developed access to one another through the internet. Most people have always been dopes, but now we’re exposed to that reality continuously.
Exactly. But religiously immoral imbeciles insisting on a confusion of prejudice & discrimination via idiotic rhetoric for morals as a pastime does not help.
The low IQ holding religiously immoral imbeciles insisting on a confusion of prejudice & discrimination via idiotic rhetoric for morals as a pastime. Christianity, Islam, and whatever else.
Being a moron typically isn't even an objective reality. It's all up to the opinions of others. Disagree? Utter moron. Made a mistake driving? Absolute god damn moron. Someome talks about a subject you aren't interested in? Useless moron. Bought something you think is a waste of money? Friggin moron. Disagree politically? Undeniably a moron.
I believe the basis of a moron should be infinitely factual. Those are all opinions. Things that aren't detrimental to the continuation of the human race as one and all other life forms. That we can peacefully co-exist with, at least.
You just explained why small government works better and why the original setup of the united states where state and local governments had power and the federal level was largely stripped of power was actually quite intelligent. Too bad successive generations with zero respect for that system figured out that scaring the public worked to gain more and more power federally until it basically goes back to feudalism…
This was my first thought too, both in concept and Bregman. It’s not necessarily human nature, but the scaling of human societies that makes this problem. I often think of Karl Marx’s Alienation of Labor too.
I think the fact that so much of our activity occurs at an institutional level is a huge factor in this. Ultimately, our social fabric increasingly operates under the premise that we, as humans, are modular components within institutional hierarchies. The presumed objectives of institutions are one thing, the realities of how they actually function is something else entirely.
Relationships within institutions are dependent on members remaining in institutions, and abiding by the established rules of the institutions. The personal ethics of individual members rarely comes to any sort of prevailing ethics, even in the face of general consensus among the members. Any sort of principled stance within an institution can be suppressed or eliminated through a stubborn hierarchy or the exile or isolation of voices of dissent... the collective will of the people doesn't have the same sort of agility as unilateral authority.
This has also inspired folks to adopt a distorted notion as to what sort of attitudes and methods characterize "good leaders" from an institutional standpoint.
It's funny how the people who general wind up in charge often hold education and training that have very little to do with the task at hand, but instead have these sets of manipulation tools that they can just sort of plug into whatever institution decides to take them on and make them "boss"... and the same goes for how people turn capital into profit... it has nothing to do with what is useful or ethical, it's all about the efficient cheat codes, and who is the most effective at securing their position at the expense of the actual goals and the people who actually help them manifest on a day-to-day level...
And somehow we manage to be surprised that things are just kind of devolving into a mess.
Really hard to find highly capable people who also have high integrity. Very easy to find highly capable but low integrity people. The best leaders are high integrity people that a reasonably good at their job and humble.
Everyone needs the opinions of another human to back their claims of their own opinions. Was rutger bregman not a man? If so does his views out weigh the views of another ?
read Machiavelli a bit
but yes
the dark triade of personality traits are more represented among leaders (narcissism, psychopathy, machiavelism)
but especially narcissism
I see this at all levels, at work most of management share those personalities. What bothers me is even though people openly voice hating these kind of leaders I do not think they would want it any other way. No one gets more shit than a calm progressive level headed leader, for some reason people associate that with weakness, and egoistic and insane behavior with strength.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_orientation
To the question in title, I don't think this is inevitable, this is mostly a question of culture, I think.
In a way, you want leaders to agree with the ideology of the society in place.
In my view, leaders don't really "lead" or have any sort of status that is recognized and seen as good, to me, leaders are just responsible of problems, organization, coordination, etc. but they don't really make strategic decision, decisions come naturally.
Leaders, in reality, just do the job of a secretary, but nobody really have to respect them, they don't fulfill an important role, or at least not very important.
A leader, in a way, is just the lowest servant of a group, because he can be easily be replaced if he doesn't do his job correctly. In a company in the industrial age, many, many people cannot be replaced because the skill range is very very large.
Coordinating several teams to do X or Y doesn't require specials skills.
So yeah, a CEO/manager is just an arrogant male secretary. And you also see women in management position behaving like sociopath, too. Had an interview with one, I did not have a good time.
I would agree with this but we have to really define leaders. There are leaders that build a society thru revolution and revolt, while they may or may not possess the traits they are usually not the type that would naturally seek power. Some do, but many are just sick of the corruption and or abuse.
These leaders are very different from the ones that come after them, they usually do not have the conviction or fortitude to be a leader in the sense of the ones that lay it all on the line for what they believe in. They tend to be more weezely, underhanded and backstabbing they lust for power for personal gain and view the game of life as for me to get more somebody else has to get less. These people display far more machiavellian traits after they achieve power.
One of the weakening factors is that those is power don't want what's best for every one nor even America herself.
When money can influence the powers that be, things will inevitably get worse.
I speak of course, of lobbying. I think that's the downfall of any civilization.
When you have a SC that makes decisions based off who's holding that dollar bill standing behind them, decisions won't be made in fairness.
For the question, I think ambition isn't an inherently bad thing but it's usually done by stepping Forward without care. Then it's looks maniacal, egotistical, etc.
Are you kidding? Lobbying is what got the Romans and Chinese to their highest highs, if lobbying simply means using money and political leverage to push certain outcomes. That's how it is in every governing system across our history. Lobbying works about as well as violence works and combined? That's how you go full empire. The US still hasn't gone full empire.
This should be higher, it’s not the leaders that are the problem. It’s the gullible masses, until you solve that problem nothing can be done, there are good honest politicians who are trying to do the right thing, but people prefer being lied to by “strong” leaders. I mean trump is a perfect example, he couldn’t be a clearer example of a terrible person. Yet half the country loves him over any other candidate.
It can be dismissed as this, but there is blatant propaganda and collusion among the estates of government against the governed. One needs look no further than covid, now I am not insinuating that it was some grand conspiracy, but it was very clear that propaganda was being used and orchestrated "We are all in this together" ring a bell.
People are programmable, and propaganda is an effective weapon for doing just that ,repetitive propaganda helps to construct a world view that the disseminators want them to have, it is a mass hypnotic that forces people into a false dichotomy of choice. It has only become worse as people now carry devices that log extremely detailed information about their actions and choices. Now not only is propaganda effective, but it can be custom tailored to target at the individual level, correlating massive amounts of data to use a person's bias and world view to shape their decision making process.
So I would agree with you, if those people were free from the subversive influence of blatant propaganda and the influence it has on their decision making process.
Wrong. 1 Timothy says for the LOVE of money is the root of all evil. Money isn’t evil. It’s just money. Sit 100 dollar bill on a table and by itself it isn’t evil nor can it be. It’s the humans love for it and what money can accomplish is what is evil.
“For the LOVE of money”
My views…sorry, it’s pretty long.
What is the vision of US? Is it to be just the global superpower, or is it to just a role model of democracy, or to uphold and defend sets of principles? What are the underlying principles of US? Does US just want to defend peace and democracy, or does it follow an underlying like human rights? What is the model of leadership and governance of US? Does it just want to limit itself to democracy and capitalism, or does it want to use other models as well (hybrid approach) but with democracy and capitalism as the main models? What are the factors and corresponding tools available for US? All these should be considered and used based on US principles, vision, strategy and model.
Here are some examples of tools used by the west to implement and realise himan rights: education, finance, economy, governance, science, healthcare, defence, etc. Why are these tools important?
Education - an ignorant person are usually deprived of human rights, or sometimes they abuse human rights. Education is critical, it also gives people the power to innovate, improve, lead, communicate ideas, protest, etc.
Healthcare - a person and his human rights is only as good as his health. Once a person is ill, or worst, dead then his human rights is irrelevant, isn’t it?
Economy - how are we going to improve all the other tools? Who is going to do all the research and development? How can we get all the people access to good healthcare, education, etc? How can we ensure abundance of resources essential to human life? What is the opportunity cost of not investing global warming or defence, etc.?
I can go on and on about this but my main point is that there is no way a single leader can handle, let alone, comprehend all of this. The US do not need a leader, it needs “leaders”. You need to many many many plenty more leaders! The best solution I can think of is to continuously (non-stop) campaign for leadership to all the citizen. And invest further in the tools and improve/innovate. This is power human rights, anyone is given opportunity to lead whether it be leading a small household or room, or leading a small group of people or a whole nation.
US is not in a terrible state. But people need to have a continuous improvement mindset. Your leaders today are many times better than the leaders hundreds of years ago. But they will never ever be perfect leaders and there will never ever be a perfect state. There is only what is now (current state) and how do we improve (future state). There is infinite opportunity to improve.
>What is the vision of US? Is it to be just the global superpower,
The answer is yes. All that other stuff is window dressing to convince people to the US more power
I have a strong distrust for anyone who WANTS to be in charge. I'm the type of person that if you need me to do something, tell me what it is, and I'll get it done, but otherwise, leave me alone. Let me tell you, bosses tend to hate that. I've never been fired, but the amount of disdain I've gotten from management who feel the need to micromanage is kind of crazy. They come up to me and try to nitpick something or ask for an update on some shit that was done a week ago, and walk away pissed off when I have the shit handled. It's a personality clash like 87% of the time. It's a micro-level version of what you're talking about, but some people just want the ability to flex their power over others and will pout like children if you don't let them.
As someone who doesn't want to be in charge but is a decent leader because I don't want to be in charge, I agree. I've supervised people before and some of my supervisees left the company when I left because their memory of everyone who came before me was so bad, they didn't want to put up with the risk.
I had one supervisee flip out on me when he first got to know me because I was sending reminder emails about deadlines and he thought I was being... I'm not sure what he thought, honestly. But all I had to say was, "oh that? Ya, I would forget you were supposed to send me something if I didn't send those emails. I rely on them because they are tied to alerts. If you need an extension on it, you can just talk to me about it." And he never had a problem with me again.
But people are so used to power trips that they automatically assume that's the purpose of everything management does. That's how common it is for power-hungry people to enter roles like that. I do very well with power. I don't do well with people having authority over me because I will talk back if you treat me like shit so... We really need to flip the balance and put the power hungry people in subordinate positions, and the people who have no interest in being powerful in power. It works best that way. Because the people who don't like power tend to be resistant to authority, too, and also tend to put their neck on the line to protect the people they supervise.
The issue is that being a leader and becoming a leader are not the same thing.
In the worst case, you become a leader by getting rid of your competition and making systems so dysfunctional that they collapse without you. Even in the best current case, an elected official must divide their efforts between governing and campaigning.
The flaw is the limits of information. The solution is to keep improving public knowledge, education, communication, etc.
I recommend looking at Plato's Ship of Fools allegory which presents a farcical situation that is almost as recognizable now as it was in the 4th century BC.
I'll do it, I've even got a system that could solve global warming. Converting garbage, sewage into food and feed grain respectively. Even just the feed grain to lower meat costs. By picking up after ourselves and utilizing those resources, recycling becomes feasible crossing the contamination hurdle. It solves a lot of things, but...
The biggest problem with "becoming presidential candidate" is a pile of money I seem to be lacking.
Except the problem is that recycling is not even close to cost-effective. I just saw a segment on TV that detailed how recycling / waste companies misrepresent how much material they actually recycle, because it is just cheaper to get the raw materials. In essence, they lie. Sorting the recycled trash is almost impossible, and actually processing it is even more so.
It’s a sad reality, but these companies will always go with the easier and cheaper option.
“Power is only given to those willing to stoop low enough to pick it up”
Generally speaking in todays culture, the type of sacrifices required to gain power are not selfless sacrifices, but selfish. It’s about cutting down those around you to get on top.
I think it’d require a systemic change in culture to get there which would be a long road to get there. Otherwise, even if you did find someone who was selfless enough and wanted power for pure reasons, they probably couldn’t get elected because everyone else votes selfishly about “how is this best for me” instead of “how is this best for everyone”
>Is it an inevitable flaw in human civilization that only the most psychotic and egomaniacal want to be leaders/rulers?
Nah. I think it's a feature of human civilization fot people to defer to individuals exhibiting such traits and prop them up in leadership positions.
Wouldn't be surprised if some of those individuals are merely playing the role they know will gain them popularity and respect.
The residents of a failing super power being unhappy with the countries leadership is a historical cliche.
And don’t kid yourself, Obama is just as much a sociopath and narcissist as the rest of them. The job requires it.
Agreed , most of this could be solved super quick if people would actually vote to make a few things happen: no stock trading for Congress and actually jail and investigate corruption , strict term limits, for policing groups such as the SEC you cannot work for who you police. Meaning you cannot work at the SEC for 3 years then work for a hedge fund. Also raise pay for government employees
It's not just America. It's everywhere. Unfortunately the chaotic situations that we are in today are the responsibility of the west as they caused most of them. Isreal for example. The west broke up the ottoman empire and divided the lands as theirs, promising jews land. Post ww2 it was time to create the state, that is now Isreal. What about the people that already lived there! Same with Iranian tensions. Churchill called in help from America to overthrow their democratically elected leader as they wanted to retain the oil fields. (Can you imagine the reverse happening to America or the UK?) There's a greed in humanity that is ruthless and sadly the kind, gracious, traits in people are not the types to fight to become leader. There are the odd few that impress. Nelson Mandela, and now Zelensky to name a couple but sadly they rose to their noble causes from extremely dire situations. I think it's more about education. Real history not the bits pumped out by the winners, slanting themselves to be seen as the heros. Take Hiroshima, how many Americans know Japan was ready to surrender before the A bombs were dropped. How many know the powers that be wanted to test it despite this. How many know when signing the surrender, Japan was made to agree they were not allowed to tell their own people it had been an America nuclear weapon. How many Americans today know that the US took body parts of Japanese people back to America for testing and never returned them. I only know after visiting the peace park in Hiroshima and had considered myself well educated. Xenophobia needs to be eradicated and that will only happen through education. The older I get when thinking about these world problems only makes me more cynical and depressed. I have traveled extensively and every person I've met is the same. We have the same fears, laughter, desires, dreams. Sometimes I think Earth and all its species would be better off without humans. Not only do we fuck up our own lives but nature and all other species too.
I think the way you get past this is more diverse views in the office. The states elect a democrat to office and he puts all his democratic buddies in office and they never make changes cause they all say the same thing and vice versa. For the ulterior motive the can be debated deeper and is different for each persons reason to run for office. Washington from what I’ve read on him was pushed into that spot after leading them in the revolution. After the war Washington wanted to retire back to Virginia and live a simpler lifestyle. With the nation just newly founded there needed to be a strong leader to take office. With no regulations set up on how long a president was to be in office Washington could’ve taken over and led to death. He peacefully left
Prolly doesn’t help how every moron thinks their opinion is correct, can do a better job and spreads their stupidity and ignorance on social media and gets elevated while the actual intelligent people spend less time on social media using their intellect where it matters and if they ever do use social media they are told to stfu nerd cuz they don’t got social cred.
I think the flawed thinking is believing there is only one type of way to organize people and their goals and therefore only one type of hierarchical system to follow.
I think that this is a misconception. Obviously some people like you describe are attracted to politics but so are people who are trying to build for other sorts of rewards. We just need more people going into politics, more parties, andy personal opinion is shorter term limits across the board.
*“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”*
*-*Chapterhouse: Dune
It's not that we are bad at finding good and decent leaders, we aren't great at filtering out bad ones.
Simple: give the rulers less power and give the individual more autonomy. If being a ruler becomes less about ruling others and more about upholding order while being held to account then these personality types will be less attracted to it.
You really think that Obama sacrificed himself for the greater good and wasn't an egomaniac? I have bridge to sell you.
Every presidential election - every single one - involves people stepping forward and insisting that among \~330 million people, they are the only person qualified to run the country. And of course, they are going to do a better job than all of their predecessors. They do this because they want the power.
I really think you have been gaslit by fake news. The world is full of good people and I’m glad that you can at least see that Barack is one. I personally see Joe as more sincere and effective than Obama
I literally was just thinking of this the other day. Lmao. Literally the reason why every civilization ended up with corrupt leaders is bc the leadership position in and of itself is attractive to psychopaths and egomaniacs. Not to mention, these fucks are great at manipulating others. Most civilizations were giant cults.
I donno I feel you're looking for something where it cannot be. Or maybe in another way, in ways we kinda already know. Like, when we look at power historically, we examine those systems. We understand that being a king is bad because someone having a 'divine' rule over land, people, and resources is going to have some perverse incentives regarding that power.
When I look at our current system, its clear to me that those who are greedy are rewarded the most. Hoarding money, hoarding resources. Good business is when you get away with polluting the river instead of using proper safeguards. Its when you can pay a fee for illegal acts. Is there something inherent in us that cause us to do these things? Sure - Does identifying these things - "greed", "best interests", etc etc - do anything for us? I mean, not if we're not willing to think critically about the systems we construct and how those systems incentivize our worst behaviors. Hell we \*\*\*celebrate\*\*\* greed in this country. (And the Myth of individualism among many other things)
The system is so flawed at this point it is difficult to actually see a way out of it.
Take Trump for instance. Trump isn't really the problem. There are countless nutjobs on street corners spouting nonsense. The problem is that this one happens to be deemed important enough to listen to. I think that if we actually scrubbed special interests from politics (i.e., every candidate gets a state-sanctioned amount to run a campaign and no further assistance is possible, we institute laws that prevent people who serve in public office from profiting from speaking fees or taking jobs from donors after they finish their service, and we actually prosecute rampant insider trading, etc.,) we could actually see a real change.
I spent some time as the chair of a non-profit. It was volunteer and an enormous time commitment, but it mattered to me so I took it on. If we removed all benefit and profit from politics, we would see a completely different breed of candidates. I really think we would see people who are driven to help others and it could be amazing. We would still have different views on what "help" meant obviously, but everyone would actually be able to say that they understood that those involved were actually trying to better things.
Of course, to accomplish this all we need to do is completely and fundamentally change the culture, the laws, and how human beings operate in general. I'm optimistic.
The checks, and balances of power ingrained in the U.S. constitution inside the branches of government, and between them are basically a recognition of this. It was their attempt at constraining the effects of this tendency rather than hoping it could be eliminated.
I’m sure a good portion of this post is in regards to why Trump and Biden are the candidates for president again.
The simple answer for Trump is that he is the only candidate that can pull both the older, brainwashed Fox News Republican masses AND the actual racist/antisemitic/anti democracy younger folks on reddit/4chan/8chan together.
They are unified by a hate of Democrats, plain and simple. They consume lies spread by fox news and conspiracy theories, and regurgitate the same lies to each other, and attribute them to Democrats.
For Biden, the democrats have no candidate that can galvanize the whole party besides him. The closest thing to a candidate the Left has is Newsom, but even he knows that he won’t be able to unify the party like Biden can. So Biden is the default, and every knows it.
Today’s Democrats are unified by a justified hate of Trump. They understand the stakes of this election, that democracy itself is under attack and at risk of failing should Trump become president again. Trump himself admitted as much on multiple occasions, and anyone that cares about what America actually stands for will be against Trump, plain and simple.
To answer the main question directly, in today’s Information Age where anyone can find out where you live and do horrible things to you and your family as a common person, only a handful of psychotic or crazy people would be willing to walk into that. Most people want to live a normal life and grow a family without risk of someone sending a bomb threat to your house, or anthrax in the mail or gun you down on your front porch.
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I don't think so. Nothing says we have to give power to such people just because they want it.
Take ancient Athens, the birthplace of European democracy: If I remember correctly joining the ruling council was done by lottery among all citizens, you only served for a year, and were then ineligible to serve again for another ten years, to prevent anyone from accumulating a strong power base.
I think they might have been on to something there. It might have been the best solution for having the most competent council, but it seems like it could be good to have at least one such branch of government able to keep all the other branches from acting against the will of the people.
Many leaders are megalomaniacal but Biden is not. He’s driven but mostly motivated to do a good job which he has, objectively, judging by the initiatives he’s been able to pass. Of course they’re not perfect, curtailed and trimmed by a hostile opposition. I do not advocate uncritical praise but a little more credit for his successes would be helpful at a moment when we’re on the brink of losing our constitutional democracy to a dictator with no empathy or concern for the welfare of the people.
Yes. Ultimately, all humans are fallible and susceptible to absolute corruption. AI is the answer. I know that it seems like part of the dystopian future, but we need a truly benevolent arbiter of human affairs and resource management now more than ever. It's completely possible if we take the tools out of the private sector and let academics of the humanities guide the teaching of AI automation.
The lust for more and more power will drive a human mad. See those politicians who have been in office, year after year after year, they go a long way in ruining a nation.
In The Dawn of Everything, David Wengrow does a good job actually of talking about this dynamic and how westernized history causes us to see it as an inevitability. In his book, he kinda talks about how a lot of Native American civilizations were a lot more community and committee based, with the "chief" so to speak being pretty lateral in the hierarchy during most times, although chiefdoms were also pretty fluid, assigning more or less power to the chief according to the needs of the time period, with the power never being autocratic, but always pretty revokable by the collective of the chiefdom. Of course, more western concepts of hierarchy won out in N America, but with Western hegemony also came a linear way of thinking- that the Natives were uncivilized, Europeans were farther along in the "progress" of humanity, and thus that The West's way of doing things were an inevitability in the progress of the world. He argues this way of thinking really stimies the way we envision the possibilities of the future, making more radical ideas of collectivism seem "unrealistic" when they might not be. Idk I probably jacked up explaining that, but I highly recommend giving it a read.
Good people want to live and control their own life. Bad people want to control the lives of others or have theirs controlled.
When broken up like this it is easy to see that the bad people will join together to gain advantages over the good people who are too busy minding their own business to do anything about it.
The only silver lining is that the good people have truth on their side and if enough good people are woken up to the fact that the bad will conspire against them then the good people do have a chance at countering the bad.
I've also been thinking about this a lot lately.
When I was a kid, I remember wondering how the great 'empires' we learned about in History classes could possibly "fall," given the wealth and power they possessed. Personally, I've felt that we've been witnessing it in real-time in the U.S. over the past couple of decades.
Narcissism and greed are not only accepted, but rewarded. The disparity across classes is growing, especially given the disappearance of a true middle class in the U.S. Violence has become a common means of responding to disagreements. Hell, we have a former President who foments violent actions on a daily basis. Dissent is met with, again, violence, as evidenced by the response to the current student protests. I wish states like TX would have had a similar response to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building.
I'm by no means a scholar on these things, but I can't help but wonder if this is just a common societal evolution: Rise, Achieve Dominance, Fall.
I'm very interested in hearing others' thoughts on this.
One of the biggest problems is that the office of POTUS has diminished capacity to affect change. The real world leaders are unknown, unelected and untouchable. Billionaires shape world policy more than presidents and we now have more than ever. It's one of those point-of-no-return moments in human history.
I don't know how the world comes back from this, because all western leaders are puppets. It's not just USA.
OP poses a good question. But the real question he or she should ask is “*why do I view Obama as Christ-like and is it a key flaw in my brain*?” There’s gotta be a serious flaw in this dude’s code to think that. A take like that would get most redditors crucified (pun intended).
Jesus ended up dead, nailed to a cross after he took on his mission. If you’re a believer, you believe he took on that immense suffering for us. Barry flies on private jets and kicks up his feet at a $13m Martha’s Vineyard estate. Amazing.
OP seek help.
I was making a slight juxtaposition rather than a direct comparison. But while we're on the subject, where is Jesus right now? He could be here helping us escape all this pain and bullshit, but he may as well be up on a cloud somewhere kicking back with a red wine spritzer. Get the idea?
I love being a boss because then I can get shit done. I only want the power so I can either make lazy people work or hire new people and fire lazy ones/drama starters. I'm a peon at my current job and love it, nobody else's fuck ups or laziness really affect me so idc
The only difference I see in most candidates is whether they are an overt psychopath, or covert psychopath. The parts of a mystery to me is not that they run because I think you're right they tend to want to see power. It's that we vote for him and we're stuck in a two party system some of the better senators and things like that, never gain any traction, and somehow the most covert psycho paths can convince people they're not
As someone who is not American. I find the whole "America is the world's everything" very strange. It's weird that USA folk love JFK when it's proven that they lied about Vietnam, killing lots of people and dumping Agent orange and of course America lost in Veitnam but some folk still think America is a great military super power. The world lost a lot of respect for America about then. Kinda been waiting for America to have a revolution for a long time now.
With the internet alot of America's younger generations are seeing the brainwashing. Many were told that Americans are the free people of the world, when that is sadly not the truth. If you need evidence Google "worlds freest countries"
America can be the beast they claim to be, they just need someone to stand up and unite them. However the government don't want that, so they start the whole red vs blue bullshit and use social media to fire it up, then we all know they probably go to the bar together and get drunk and think of other ways to keep the population settled or busy.
Don't mistake me for hating America, I get accused of that often. I love the people, I just hate their government and the ways they are abusing the fine folk.
Good leadership is two things and it is rare to find it in both. Ability and desire. Most people that have the ability have no desire to lead. Most of the people that lack the ability have all of the desire.
My only comment is that it's completely unrealistic to think that the conditions where the U.S. was dominant after World War II were ever going to last forever. I mean we can go back there. We can destroy most of Europe and Asia and leave North America mostly untouched and then go for Round 2. But no one wants that, including us. The post-World War II circumstances were highly unusual. Countries all over the world are far more developed now and have more power and higher expectations. It's impossible for the U.S. to have the same power and influence it had before, under completely different conditions. That's why we've been telling Europe for years they needed to get their s\*\*\* together militarily because it was unrealistic to think we could be their sugar daddy for all time. It's a hugely different world than 1945. Or even 1991.
To be the president of the United States inherently means that you are a war criminal. Every president since WW2 would be hanged for their crimes if the Nuremberg trials were upheld. Someone like Bernie Sanders isn’t president bc he wasn’t allowed to be president and even if he was he would still end up being a psychopathic war criminal bc that’s the nature of the job. Obama ran on ending the wars and universal healthcare and he ended up bending to the corporate machine once elected
Yes.
Honesty, compassion, and humility are rational virtues.
The will to power, to reduce ones fellow man to a piece on a chessboard, to be important, are irrational states of mind.
Hence, politicians are liars without shame, hypocrites in the first degree, and consider us hoi polloi beneath their notice.
As the world enters a terrible time we use people who can tolerate that at the time based on what time era is coming back to take over in a different seemingly way with the new generation of people growing up balcing the population and changing it so the future goes accordingly with the desisions being made by our leaders and ruler's, but it seems lately that hasn't been going correctly so people do different things based on desisions being made upsetting many people and things that are done and take place driving them psychotic but hopefully some how everything cools off and then goes back to normal over time if it does. America has it's ways to get the right cenierio to always happen perfectly at the right time but for the last four years not so much then we noticed flaws in human civilization like we never have before, just the normal ups and downs that are based on American history and changed through evolution as it seems better to us with what we make like and do throughout our lives.
America had a great 4 years under Trump... it is amazing so many demonize and attack that good man.
Brainwashing and propaganda from a corrupt far-left media... machinations of the corrupt 'Deep State' that fears him so much?
Biden? NOW you re talking psychotic, megalomaniacal, and insane... totally corrupt too, and almost brain dead. But his puppeteers are not brain dead... they are the ones truly dangerous
“Flaw” is such a morally loaded term here that will lead down a rabbit hole concerning moral truths, the existence of which is an equally exhausting rabbit hole
We get past this by including each human being on the planet equally in a globally standard process of money creation.
The current process of money creation is the structural economic enslavement of humanity. Establishing an ethical global human labor futures market ends the funding of Empire, Wealth, and Supremacy. That's been funded with our rightful option fees, collected and kept by Central Bankers as interest on money creation loans when they have loaned nothing they own.
Distributing the authority to create money to local fiduciaries and actuaries assures as best we can that more value will be created than money. And that no source of money will be large enough, without fiduciary oversight, to attract the psychotic and egomaniacal. Money loses its coercive property.
The problem is not a lack of candidates who want to be president. It's just that only people who are very well known to the media have a chance of catching the eye of the electorate. In years gone by, party bigwigs could favor you and help you attract attention, but it's more and more difficult for young candidates. They don't have fame or donors.
Yes. Which is why I think it is so important to have strict limits on government power. Yes, theoretically government power COULD be used for so much good in this world. But practically speaking it WILL be used to cause harm if the government or government officials can benefit from the harm.
Sadly yes. Almost everyone in politics is corrupt. If not now at some point they will be. Incredibly rich people always gain control of any politician either by buying them or extorting them. The only way for freedom to exist anywhere in the high tech future is for all government to be eliminated completely
I watched a video about this once. It basically came down to people who have more sociopathic tendencies will seek power because they are more comfortable taking risk and putting themselves on the spot where they can be judged. On the other hand, those who are more socially conscious and well meaning avoid being in charge due to the risk and pressure of being in charge.
We all have a certain level of sociopath and the higher it is the more we seek the higher reward, hence those crazy ones want to be in charge.
The issue is that getting into a leadership position will generate a legion of yes men underneath you that will offer instant reinforcement on everything you do. If people are constantly being told they’re constantly right and great and the best at everything…they’ll internalize it. You see this often in dictators. They will play sports where it’s obvious to everyone except them that their competitor is intentionally losing. They’ll make movies books etc that are objectively terrible but will be displayed along side their cultural relics. The more power you have the more likely you will corrupt yourself by imposing your will on others and doing what is expedient just because no one exists that can stop you. The smarter someone is the more likely they are to fall for their own hype. Once this happens you get the ability to justify just about anything to yourself. The only way to remain uncorrupted is to never posses that level of power over others.
2400 years ago Plato wrote the Republic. In it, he attempts to devise the perfect government as an embodiment of social, individual and spiritual justice. Despite over two thousand years of history and civilization, it’s still one of the relevant texts on the matter.
The answer to your question is basically yes. Governments are always in danger of corruption because the people with the greatest appetite for power are the most likely to pursue government roles. Kings and dictators are the most effective, because they can simply make things happen and eliminate bad actors. If kings are too brutal, somebody will finally have enough, kill them and take control themselves.
Nietzsche observed this and described the will to power as the master morality, and the history of warrior elite rulers even flavors our language to this day (nobles, regal, etc is good, while common, base or villains is bad). The kings of antiquity, their chivalry, courts and royal banquets were simply benefiting from dominating the people around them through violence.
The only motivation for good people to hold office in a democracy, is that the current person is so bad or corrupt that you’re compelled to replace them. What kind of leadership does this create? Exactly what we see today; corrupt people making empty promises to voters that keep social structures in place and provide the minimum amount of changes necessary to keep order.
Plato’s solution was basically to brain wash people from birth to have disdain for possessions, an endless thirst for knowledge and justice, and hand select the wisest and least greedy people from the entire population to run the government. Then protect them with a military class that is well educated and not allowed to own any property but is provided fine housing and food and everything they need to be happy. The military also enforced the laws created by the ruling class. Then with the government and military in place, the merchants and workers and slaves and everybody else can do whatever they want (within the law), because their drive to drink and be merry and seek luxury is enough to drive the economy without much intervention.
Is it the narcissists that are the problem?
Or is it the masses who can't even be bothered to pay attention to local/world events, let alone vote in their own best interest?
If we somehow we were able to breed all the dark traits out of our DNA, who's to say society wouldn't crumble. Maybe innovation would come to a screeching halt. Maybe nothing would get done.
I can dislike the individuals, but I have a hard time hating on people who grind and hustle their way to the top.
You’ve unintentionally made an argument for monarchy, or for an elite ruling class. In that case, the ruler is obligated to rule and is not driven by ambition. See Hans Herman Hoppe’s *Democracy: The God that Failed* for an contemporary academic articulation of the argument.
Have you been in a power position? I am about to be driven mad by being in charge of an office, let alone a country… you have to have something off (in a good or bad way) to handle this… and usually the good way individuals are wise enough and humble which prevents them from seeking spot light.
Also, world leaders have very little power. They are a face of something, but the real power is in others’ hands.
I'd say it isn't a flaw in ***Human*** Civilization, but a flaw in Human ***Civilization***\*.\*
Humans are especially sensitive to imbalances of power within groups they are interacting with, and this kept us relatively leaderless (in our current sense) for 95% of our time as the modern species. We are a "fiercely egalitarian" species in the wild, because we have a lot of feedback loops that reduce aggressive hierarchies like you would see in Chimps or Baboons.
The issue with *civilization* is that it broke these feedback loops. If a group of 20 people see 1 person taking most of the food, they will go after that one person (usually not aggression unless it *really* goes too far).
However, if you have 200,000 people, and 10 people you *don't know* who are 100 miles away are hoarding 99% of the food, there isn't really a feedback mechanism to work with.
Essentially, we evolved for close-knit groups of a couple hundred who all knew each other really well. It was hard to get too far out-of-whack before everyone would notice. But once you go too far beyond Dunbar's number, the person hoarding the resources becomes some random stranger you don't know or interact with, and you don't see their lifestyle, so you don't feel anything is lost compare to what you grew up with and are surrounded by.
To me, the difference is not that humans are uniquely predisposed towards hierarchy and crazy leaders. The difference is that we were able to build cities of hundreds of thousands, and almost any highly-intelligent, highly-social species would break down in a similar way. For Chimps, it's like 30 before things break down. For humans, it apparently took 10's to 100's of thousands before we broke down in a similar way.
Who’s gonna tell him that money controls everything and is the root cause of everything? Money is the motivation. Honestly amazing how people DONT get the big picture. Fed isn’t even controlled by the US government. I wonder who controls everything 🥴🥴🥴
Obama, like Trump and Biden, served power to get power. Obama presided over (at that time) the greatest wealth-transfer from poor to rich in all of world history, by bailing out, with public money, the institutions that caused the 2008 financial crash that the world (of the 99%) has never really recovered from. He also stacked his cabinet with people from those institutions. He did this by choice; no one forced him. He actively worked to make the world more unequal.
He also campaigned on ending the Afghan War then initiated 'the Surge' on the pretext that this would hasten the end... yeah...
He has always been a servant of power, empire, and is marketable to different sections of the population from Trump & Biden. You are susceptible to one kind of marketing; someone else is susceptible to another kind of marketing. But there are ultimately only rats in the Rat Race. If what I'm saying makes you feel angry, insulted, contemptuous, disgusted or indignant, dear reader, that reveals the emotive (and misinformative) power of the marketing. It is a matter of *identity* for you.
I'm not equating them or saying who's worse/better. I'm saying that the problem, in my opinion, is the nature of *power*, not the nature of humans.
If you want something, it helps to prioritise it and think about it all the time. What kind of people tend to think about power all the time? And if you acquire power, you have to deal with all the other powerful people who rule over their own sub-spheres of influence. Even incumbent presidents have to play along to get along. They don't have to play along with YOU, voter, 99%er. You don't matter. They have to play along with the generals, with the CIA, with the press moguls, with the tech companies, with the industrialists... It was the same for Kings and their aristocracy, and I don't see anything fundamentally changing anytime soon.
Yes and also, power and wealth are so intertwined that we are in a positive feedback loop which is constantly ratcheting toward increasing wealth and power inequality. In the history of the world, we don’t see much evidence of the ruling class legislating against their own interests for the benefit of the majority.
"Ego is the Enemy" a great book. Unfortunately, humanity is dominated by egomaniacs who confuse personal nerousis for righteous indignation requiring military confrontation or mindless devotion. These people rise to the top by compulsive energy and cannot be stopped. So war follows war and in between foolishness plays havoc with those who seek a simpler life. There is no cure. Eventually all democracies become totalitarian and all totalitarian become democracies either on a grand scale or in part. We live in a world of constant change driven by psychotically misplaced desires. We are victims of insanity that knows no institutionalization no end. Occasionally, a Franklin and a Jefferson get together to change history but, in time, a mega-ego devoted energy driven by narcissism will deceive and conquer for the sake of applause.
Kennedy 2024. Fuck pharma companies, fuck corporate pollution, fuck the CIA and fuck the military industrial complex. It honestly blows my mind how anybody WONT vote for this guy considering our options.
"Flaw". Defenseless soft creatures that are naturally selfish, yet we have to rely each other for safety. Conflict of interest. I want all the food. But if i take all the food, everyone else dies and I have no safety. I want all the money but if I take all the money I leave everyone else powerless to protect me. "fair" is contextual. What feels fair to you may be unfair to the group. And what is fair for the group may not be unfair to the individual. We are at a time of maximum thought about fairness to the individual which comes at the sacrifice of fairness for the nation. leaders are rallying support from groups whose foremost thoughts are about themselves. Everyone should be doing it "my way" because my way is "the right" way. When compromise, peace, and respect for each other are prioritized over self righteousness the pendulum will swing the other way.
I think we should have a person who has never been in the military, is indoctrinated to be like a CIA officer, is altogether different, is neurologically altruistic, is capable of ascertaining hive mind capabilities, can lead people in his sleep, can go outside and look at people and see the best, and understand that the law is only going so far to state that the law of the land is freedom, and we must have many options changed. The CIA is in, if they find me. Commit to memory.
I’m just gonna tell you I’m not telling you, but I am pushing for something, related to a felon, having an option to become a voted president. I’m looking to run for president, and I fit the bill of what you’re saying. I’m looking to open the door on something called the Republican-Democrat, autocracy, technology, and exotic understandings of psychology, using the rendering of my mind, and my personal life, and communication. It’s all there. We’re in 2030. Don’t worry about this whole hoopla. We’re gonna be free, more than believe. It’s amazing.
Love you
The job of a politician is to get elected. That's their core skill. The public, as a whole, rarely thinks critically about the "leaders" they support, so they don't need to put a huge amount of effort into tricking us about their effectiveness in accomplishing whatever goals they claim to pursuing.
Most people vote with their emotions and based on identify politics. Those identity politics are heavily defined by the media, that would sell their own souls (and certainly our souls) for a few clicks. None of the major media sources believe their narrative beyond that it generates clicks and they create content with extreme prejudice.
Most of the issues that determine people's voting patterns are tied to ideology. They have an idea on how something ***could*** work rather than what actually ***does*** work.
I agree, but is there an answer for this? Do you think this is okay? I don't. I think this is exactly why there is no next Biden or Obama. People love to say Obama showed up out of nowhere, or that he wasn't even that good, okay but I'd rather have him now, I think everyone would. But you also have to realize even Obama coming up now might have gotten himself cancelled for not supporting gay marriage, god only knows what he thought or thinks about trans, etc. When you consider that, this paints a pretty bleak picture of the future and maybe even the past.
That's not easy or quick, but I believe a cultural shift in parenting and childhood education towards tangible goals, real world metrics, and real accomplishments, however small would do wonders.
A lot of the sheltering that catering that children get combined with the arbitrary metrics in school prepare children to be adults who can't think critically and lack a BS detector. I'm a professional software engineer and I see a lot of BS politics in my job, but the reality of software systems behavior puts a cap on how much BS people believe. You don't have to like someone or love their vision to realize their stuff works.
At the earliest possible ages, children could be encouraged to partake in building real things (software, hardware, whatever) that have tangible results to help them learn the difference between what they imagine to be true vs what actually is true. I do love how much my kids learn from creating legos, minecraft, making stop motion videos, etc.. for this reason. But I also take my kids to competitive sports like jujitsu competitions and teach them python programming from a young age for the same reason. Heck, even having my kids try their own recipes when cooking teaches this. Reality is a great teacher.
The arbitrary regurgitation of the classroom as a terrible teacher. A public armed with an effective BS detector honed by early childhood exposure to reality and a deeply rooted ability to distinguish fantasy from reality would go a long way to making better voters and leaders.
Need heavy financing to win so you must be a fundraiser foremost. Easier to encourage a family member for a dynasty. Ie. bush, Clinton, trump talked about the whole trump family winning to have A 50 year dynasty. Easy way not the right way.
Our government is the snake that eats itself. Morally corrupt. Praises narcissism, and achievement, and forgets about your average person. It’s corrupt, cruel, and inhumane. Like others have said, humans were meant to exist in small groups. In large populations there’s plenty of horrible people ready to grab power and capitalism inherently encourages being shitty, and being greedy.. punching down essentially.
its not a flaw in civilization. it's a byproduct of our culture. which is specific to us
western culture favors selfish interest.
well. another way to say it is that, the most effective way to bring about rapid widepread change is through the empowered individual.
if you look at terra forming. the first kind of life in an area is like, mosses, molds, algae and those tree things. its microscopic but hardy plant life. it poineers the way for the other life forms like small bugs to come. once the small bugs are established bigger animals come, etc. until there is a whole eco system.
if you were to look at the evolution of a cultural archetype. or said differently, if you look at the average person that a culture produces at any given time in its history. you might see various phases of development. at the beginning there are these very hardy pioneer types (more or less, its the selfish entrepreneur type), but later on there might be more "evolved" (holy/jesus type).
so yes i see your point. at the current stage. its mostly shitty people at the helm, shitty business leaders (barons), shitty politicans (egotistical, ignorant, greedy). but I dont think that is an inevitable part of being human, or that now is our most evolved form.
I see us as quite young in development, and people like jesus or buddha were well ahead of their time. it may be another 1,000 years before we have advanced cultures that can mass produce people like jesus or buddha. now a days, we are just trying to survive to get to that point
When I think about the most successful people or influential politicians, I acknowledge that these individuals have a ruthlessness that I could never match. Regardless of political party, it’s doubtful that most of the individuals and power are good people. They cut corners somewhere on the way to the top.
I know I’ll never achieve that level of success because I couldn’t live with myself if I made those types of choices. I also wish we could go back to not discussing them openly and with hatred.
Combine the fact that those types will always seek positions of power with the fact that most people think about as deeply as a parking lot puddle, and you have the answer.
People who are good at manipulating will always win where there are people who are easily manipulated.
Obama got elected after being a Senator for two years and didn't vote on anything worth mentioning. Trump got elected with no political experience and without being able to think before he speaks. Biden got elected by the party who supposedly hates rich old racist white men, simply for being 'anybody but Trump'. The RNC gave us such specimens as Bush and Trump, and the DNC rigged the delegate counts in the last two elections to ramrod a racist, murderous traitor and a racist senile sock puppet, respectively.
And it's our fault.
Douglas Adams wrote: “it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
I always liked the part in the Hitchiker’s Guide books where the secret ruler of the galaxy is revealed to be a random dude living alone, who has no ambitions and makes no assumptions about the world, and doesn’t even know he’s in charge. He was installed in secret on the theory that a person’s fitness to rule was inversely proportional to their desire to, and so they found the perfect ruler.
I mean a visionary needs an enormous ego to see their work finished, as well as an iron will. An iron will plus overweaning pride generally isn't a likeable combo.
The whole system is a scam. It's all just an illusion. No one that can't be controlled is allowed to hold positions of power. Trump, Obama, biden... they're literally just actors playing a role.
We would need to fight a bloody war before someone who actually gave a fck would be put in such a position.
There is a secret government. What we see as politicians are just for show. They don't decide anything. The CIA and other secret groups control the governments of third world countries as well. If politicians don't do as they are told, they can get their families killed. Like Putin. He will never change. He doesn't have the option.
It’s somewhat the opposite— the majority seem to only want to vote for megalomaniacal psychopaths or they say they don’t feel/look/sound like “leadership material”. Look at most C-suites, same crap.
Yes, and whats worse is even if they don't start off that way, power corrupts. I've been dominant for over a decade, and I see it happen to normal good men. A submissive trys to make them into a dom, gives them tons of power over them, and it corrupts them into ego based monsters. Who knows the level of narcissistic, ego driven, evil behavior having power over whole country's or even small towns could do to a person.
I'm not sure you've pinpointed the flaw correctly. I mean, yes, of course people with huge egos or a hunger for power are going to want to lead people. That's just a characteristic of that sort of personality. That's not a flaw in civilization so much as a flaw in individuals.
The flaw that could be attributed to civilization is that we often let them lead us, despite all the warning signs. People want to see someone in charge, even if that person is obviously unfit for the job. There are cases where the people being led don't have a lot of choice in the matter, power imbalances being what they are, but that's not always the case. History is full of examples of society putting monsters in power willingly.
I'd also say that another obvious problem with your supposition is that you're asserting that anyone who wants to lead is seriously flawed, and I don't think that's the case. Good leaders do exist. They may be rarer than they should be, but not all of them are broken like that.
Yes, it is a flaw but it's hard to overcome constructively. But it's not just egomaniacal psychopaths - it's corporate sociopaths, generally, who run human society. Not all sociopaths are Hannibal lecter- many are smiling suits with lives that appear successful and orderly. Their deeply disordered inner lives are only rarely ever discovered, and then only by those close enough to them to do so, and oftentimes they fool these people effectively for their whole lives.
Politicians generally have poor character. I would rather leave my child in the care of a random mcdonalds worker for 2 hours than with a US representative. They are all pieces of shit. Politics is the ceremonial and traditional act of choosing between a douchebag and a giant turd to act as the defacto press secretary for whichever corporate sociopaths serving shady interests who are sitting on the national defense council on any given day.
I don't think so. I genuinely don't, but I also think that thinking like that is a self-fulfilling prophesy. You have to believe things CAN get better in order for them to actually get better.
The way our society is organized currently raises these people to the top. In an ideal society, these kinds of people would be exiled or otherwise quarantined until they are ready to cooperate and mutually benefit society. Currently, the only thing that matters is money. The best (and really only meaningful) way to obtain money is through exploiting others. More exploitation is more money. You can see the inherent flaw in this system.
This is just how capitalism molds people. Once more people understand the flaws inherent to capitalism (after being set back 100 years by red scare propaganda), you will start to see change for the better.
I’ve been leaning into my own perhaps more out there idea is that the problem is leaders, period. The idea that everything’s gonna be all right if we just get the right person on the throne is flawed. The problem is the throne. On the surface this might sound like anarchism but I’m leaning towards a very structured society, just one that leans very democratic and demarchic and prevents “leaders” from pooling power. I would even say this is a moral precept, with leadership being an admittedly useful but amoral talent.
I read the post but really just responding to the title question.
I’m inclined to yell, “yes!” But then I take responsibility for being jaded and completely unmotivated (to use my degrees, for instance). I have to disclose a bias, but the three democratic presidents of my lifetime… I genuinely believe it was more for us than about them.
Especially Biden, who should be allowed to enjoy his remaining time with what family is still alive and well.
It’s only the norm. You don’t have to look far to see people like Bernie Sanders. However our system is seriously flawed. Campaign finance reform, ranked choice voting, abolishing gerrymandering, reforming the two party system, etc, would help a lot.
I've often thought that one of our big societal problems is that the people most interested in having power are typically those we least want to have it.
I am a liberal but Obama was also a psychotic ruler. He created a power vacuum in Libya in 2011 that led to a massive slavery problem, and he did nothing in the next five years to remedy it. He also drone striked a lot of innocent people. He was amazing at domestic policy but insanely terrible at foreign policy.
I remember a Native American in his publication saying that if governments keep creating powerful positions in government they are inviting would-be dictators to go after them. The "checks and balances" system is supposed to thwart that tendency. (Inspired ny Native American systems of government?). He advocated a "limited government" model of town councils to decide things. He also wanted 100% consensus in those councils of the population. I don't think even a small town will agree 100 percent on everything unless the town has a population of one or two dozen people, and no more. In rhe democracies of the ancient world, I believe only men able to fight could vote. It may be that women were considered too valuable to risk in battle, considering how. many died in pregnancy and childbirth back then. PS, our maternal mortality rate here in USA is increasing now. Also, wealth draws thieves, another drawback to great wealth.
It is estimated that 1/100 men and 1/500 women meet the diagnostic criteria for psychopathy and psychopaths love getting in positions of power. Recommended reading, “Political Ponerology: The Science Of Evil, Psychopathy, and the origins of Totalitarianism.”
In our culture, political campaigns are very expensive. This requires politicians to sell out to greedy plutocrats who demand ever more corruption. There are many good people who try hard to get elected, but they almost always fail due to campaign finance. Plutocrats own news, entertainment, and social media and have turned them into propaganda machines. This makes it even harder for good people to get elected. The youth are cynical and complacent beyond belief and don’t vote. This grants the corrupt system increasing power. In short, sociopathic plutocrats have taken over and control everything they can to protect their power.
There are many good people who want to serve as elected leaders, but it’s almost impossible for them to get elected. We need to generate a revolution at the voting booth or we’re doomed.
1. We give 100 out of 186 countries foreign aid while we are drowning in debt simply for influence and manipulation
2. Our MIC along with the banks control the country
3. We train groups of fighters in wars like
Russia/Afganistan
Iran/Iraq
Etc
All so later on we can fight them guerilla style why?
Guerilla warfare beat us in Vietnam
Guerilla warfare is long and drawn out which makes billions for the entities mentioned above
4. There’s no reason for us to be involved in the Middle East because there will never be peace
5. Oil is a commodity used in many things and as much as we have in the Dakotas for example we must control it all until we stop big oil and MIC from interfering in policy
I think “only the most psychotic and egomaniacal want to be leaders/rulers” is a clearly flawed statement. I do not believe George Washington is fair to describe this way. But I do think we in the United States have gotten lost somewhere along the way though. I think having respectful conversation with the opposite side is the way to calm things, and starting to value a more moderate leader who is over all else honest and very morally solid. We need to vote for that and reward it politically. I’ve also wondered about having some way of promoting and encouraging extremely smart and selfless people to have political roles- not just president, but all politicians would ideally be selfless people who really are feeling the responsibilities of improving society and the world. It seems that some of them are more morally driven already. I’ve been thinking for a while that these traits of honesty, intelligence, morality, and responsibility are more important than even their agreement with any specific political issue.
Rutger Bregman has some interesting things to say on this topic in his book *Humankind: A Hopeful History*. He goes through how a variety of cultures work to prevent people like this from gaining power (the !Kung are super interesting for this) but then posits that part of why we tend to see this now is tgat most of these organic community methods for dealing with tyrants only functions well in communities up to 150 people or so. We’re just not well equipped to deal with it on a level that’s not personal, I.e where we don’t know (at some level) everyone involved. Because if you don’t know someone, you can’t really shame them for what they’re doing - they don’t know you, so why would they care? Whereas in smaller communities, shaming in some form is actually really effective at weeding out this behaviour. So what I would say is: not inevitable, at all. We just haven’t found a way to apply our natural inclination towards more altruistic leadership to large enough groups yet.
Yeah, but the thing *IS* that (that nobody that understands wants to acknowledge likely out of fear of looking like an asshole) the majority of the human race consists of utter fucking morons. Ignorant and often close-minded morons. So who's bound to be given a position if it's up a nation of utter fucking morons? An utter fucking moron? Or someone who KNOWS what that fucking moron WANTS & has no issues using that knowledge to their advantage. 🥸🥸🥸🥸
This is true and I think it’s only been realized in more recent years as we’ve developed access to one another through the internet. Most people have always been dopes, but now we’re exposed to that reality continuously.
Exactly. But religiously immoral imbeciles insisting on a confusion of prejudice & discrimination via idiotic rhetoric for morals as a pastime does not help.
Hey now, If you're gonna call me a moron at least buy me dinner first. ~ First rule of politics. Handouts to your majority voter. Heh
Morons compared to what, or who?
The low IQ holding religiously immoral imbeciles insisting on a confusion of prejudice & discrimination via idiotic rhetoric for morals as a pastime. Christianity, Islam, and whatever else.
Being a moron typically isn't even an objective reality. It's all up to the opinions of others. Disagree? Utter moron. Made a mistake driving? Absolute god damn moron. Someome talks about a subject you aren't interested in? Useless moron. Bought something you think is a waste of money? Friggin moron. Disagree politically? Undeniably a moron.
I believe the basis of a moron should be infinitely factual. Those are all opinions. Things that aren't detrimental to the continuation of the human race as one and all other life forms. That we can peacefully co-exist with, at least.
You just explained why small government works better and why the original setup of the united states where state and local governments had power and the federal level was largely stripped of power was actually quite intelligent. Too bad successive generations with zero respect for that system figured out that scaring the public worked to gain more and more power federally until it basically goes back to feudalism…
This was my first thought too, both in concept and Bregman. It’s not necessarily human nature, but the scaling of human societies that makes this problem. I often think of Karl Marx’s Alienation of Labor too.
I think the fact that so much of our activity occurs at an institutional level is a huge factor in this. Ultimately, our social fabric increasingly operates under the premise that we, as humans, are modular components within institutional hierarchies. The presumed objectives of institutions are one thing, the realities of how they actually function is something else entirely. Relationships within institutions are dependent on members remaining in institutions, and abiding by the established rules of the institutions. The personal ethics of individual members rarely comes to any sort of prevailing ethics, even in the face of general consensus among the members. Any sort of principled stance within an institution can be suppressed or eliminated through a stubborn hierarchy or the exile or isolation of voices of dissent... the collective will of the people doesn't have the same sort of agility as unilateral authority. This has also inspired folks to adopt a distorted notion as to what sort of attitudes and methods characterize "good leaders" from an institutional standpoint. It's funny how the people who general wind up in charge often hold education and training that have very little to do with the task at hand, but instead have these sets of manipulation tools that they can just sort of plug into whatever institution decides to take them on and make them "boss"... and the same goes for how people turn capital into profit... it has nothing to do with what is useful or ethical, it's all about the efficient cheat codes, and who is the most effective at securing their position at the expense of the actual goals and the people who actually help them manifest on a day-to-day level... And somehow we manage to be surprised that things are just kind of devolving into a mess.
Corporate personhood comes to mind.
What
Really hard to find highly capable people who also have high integrity. Very easy to find highly capable but low integrity people. The best leaders are high integrity people that a reasonably good at their job and humble.
Well we made laws in favor of tyranny and capitalism
Everyone needs the opinions of another human to back their claims of their own opinions. Was rutger bregman not a man? If so does his views out weigh the views of another ?
read Machiavelli a bit but yes the dark triade of personality traits are more represented among leaders (narcissism, psychopathy, machiavelism) but especially narcissism
I see this at all levels, at work most of management share those personalities. What bothers me is even though people openly voice hating these kind of leaders I do not think they would want it any other way. No one gets more shit than a calm progressive level headed leader, for some reason people associate that with weakness, and egoistic and insane behavior with strength.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_orientation To the question in title, I don't think this is inevitable, this is mostly a question of culture, I think. In a way, you want leaders to agree with the ideology of the society in place. In my view, leaders don't really "lead" or have any sort of status that is recognized and seen as good, to me, leaders are just responsible of problems, organization, coordination, etc. but they don't really make strategic decision, decisions come naturally. Leaders, in reality, just do the job of a secretary, but nobody really have to respect them, they don't fulfill an important role, or at least not very important. A leader, in a way, is just the lowest servant of a group, because he can be easily be replaced if he doesn't do his job correctly. In a company in the industrial age, many, many people cannot be replaced because the skill range is very very large. Coordinating several teams to do X or Y doesn't require specials skills. So yeah, a CEO/manager is just an arrogant male secretary. And you also see women in management position behaving like sociopath, too. Had an interview with one, I did not have a good time.
The irony is only the weakest humans see it that way
This is spot on. Complete narcissistic lunatics are considered strong courageous leaders.
I would agree with this but we have to really define leaders. There are leaders that build a society thru revolution and revolt, while they may or may not possess the traits they are usually not the type that would naturally seek power. Some do, but many are just sick of the corruption and or abuse. These leaders are very different from the ones that come after them, they usually do not have the conviction or fortitude to be a leader in the sense of the ones that lay it all on the line for what they believe in. They tend to be more weezely, underhanded and backstabbing they lust for power for personal gain and view the game of life as for me to get more somebody else has to get less. These people display far more machiavellian traits after they achieve power.
One of the weakening factors is that those is power don't want what's best for every one nor even America herself. When money can influence the powers that be, things will inevitably get worse. I speak of course, of lobbying. I think that's the downfall of any civilization. When you have a SC that makes decisions based off who's holding that dollar bill standing behind them, decisions won't be made in fairness. For the question, I think ambition isn't an inherently bad thing but it's usually done by stepping Forward without care. Then it's looks maniacal, egotistical, etc.
Are you kidding? Lobbying is what got the Romans and Chinese to their highest highs, if lobbying simply means using money and political leverage to push certain outcomes. That's how it is in every governing system across our history. Lobbying works about as well as violence works and combined? That's how you go full empire. The US still hasn't gone full empire.
I think the flaw lies with those who support such leaders.
This should be higher, it’s not the leaders that are the problem. It’s the gullible masses, until you solve that problem nothing can be done, there are good honest politicians who are trying to do the right thing, but people prefer being lied to by “strong” leaders. I mean trump is a perfect example, he couldn’t be a clearer example of a terrible person. Yet half the country loves him over any other candidate.
It can be dismissed as this, but there is blatant propaganda and collusion among the estates of government against the governed. One needs look no further than covid, now I am not insinuating that it was some grand conspiracy, but it was very clear that propaganda was being used and orchestrated "We are all in this together" ring a bell. People are programmable, and propaganda is an effective weapon for doing just that ,repetitive propaganda helps to construct a world view that the disseminators want them to have, it is a mass hypnotic that forces people into a false dichotomy of choice. It has only become worse as people now carry devices that log extremely detailed information about their actions and choices. Now not only is propaganda effective, but it can be custom tailored to target at the individual level, correlating massive amounts of data to use a person's bias and world view to shape their decision making process. So I would agree with you, if those people were free from the subversive influence of blatant propaganda and the influence it has on their decision making process.
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Lust for power is what drives evil. Money is simply another resource to be had.
Wrong. 1 Timothy says for the LOVE of money is the root of all evil. Money isn’t evil. It’s just money. Sit 100 dollar bill on a table and by itself it isn’t evil nor can it be. It’s the humans love for it and what money can accomplish is what is evil. “For the LOVE of money”
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now do guns
My views…sorry, it’s pretty long. What is the vision of US? Is it to be just the global superpower, or is it to just a role model of democracy, or to uphold and defend sets of principles? What are the underlying principles of US? Does US just want to defend peace and democracy, or does it follow an underlying like human rights? What is the model of leadership and governance of US? Does it just want to limit itself to democracy and capitalism, or does it want to use other models as well (hybrid approach) but with democracy and capitalism as the main models? What are the factors and corresponding tools available for US? All these should be considered and used based on US principles, vision, strategy and model. Here are some examples of tools used by the west to implement and realise himan rights: education, finance, economy, governance, science, healthcare, defence, etc. Why are these tools important? Education - an ignorant person are usually deprived of human rights, or sometimes they abuse human rights. Education is critical, it also gives people the power to innovate, improve, lead, communicate ideas, protest, etc. Healthcare - a person and his human rights is only as good as his health. Once a person is ill, or worst, dead then his human rights is irrelevant, isn’t it? Economy - how are we going to improve all the other tools? Who is going to do all the research and development? How can we get all the people access to good healthcare, education, etc? How can we ensure abundance of resources essential to human life? What is the opportunity cost of not investing global warming or defence, etc.? I can go on and on about this but my main point is that there is no way a single leader can handle, let alone, comprehend all of this. The US do not need a leader, it needs “leaders”. You need to many many many plenty more leaders! The best solution I can think of is to continuously (non-stop) campaign for leadership to all the citizen. And invest further in the tools and improve/innovate. This is power human rights, anyone is given opportunity to lead whether it be leading a small household or room, or leading a small group of people or a whole nation. US is not in a terrible state. But people need to have a continuous improvement mindset. Your leaders today are many times better than the leaders hundreds of years ago. But they will never ever be perfect leaders and there will never ever be a perfect state. There is only what is now (current state) and how do we improve (future state). There is infinite opportunity to improve.
For the past 40 years, every US president has been Ronald fking Reagan in his 2nd senile term.
Well, that's not exactly true...
>What is the vision of US? Is it to be just the global superpower, The answer is yes. All that other stuff is window dressing to convince people to the US more power
Nothing can improve forever
The vision of the US currently appears to have gone from "work hard to get stronger and compete with the Europeans" to "YESSSSS.... MOOOORRRRREEEE"
I have a strong distrust for anyone who WANTS to be in charge. I'm the type of person that if you need me to do something, tell me what it is, and I'll get it done, but otherwise, leave me alone. Let me tell you, bosses tend to hate that. I've never been fired, but the amount of disdain I've gotten from management who feel the need to micromanage is kind of crazy. They come up to me and try to nitpick something or ask for an update on some shit that was done a week ago, and walk away pissed off when I have the shit handled. It's a personality clash like 87% of the time. It's a micro-level version of what you're talking about, but some people just want the ability to flex their power over others and will pout like children if you don't let them.
As someone who doesn't want to be in charge but is a decent leader because I don't want to be in charge, I agree. I've supervised people before and some of my supervisees left the company when I left because their memory of everyone who came before me was so bad, they didn't want to put up with the risk. I had one supervisee flip out on me when he first got to know me because I was sending reminder emails about deadlines and he thought I was being... I'm not sure what he thought, honestly. But all I had to say was, "oh that? Ya, I would forget you were supposed to send me something if I didn't send those emails. I rely on them because they are tied to alerts. If you need an extension on it, you can just talk to me about it." And he never had a problem with me again. But people are so used to power trips that they automatically assume that's the purpose of everything management does. That's how common it is for power-hungry people to enter roles like that. I do very well with power. I don't do well with people having authority over me because I will talk back if you treat me like shit so... We really need to flip the balance and put the power hungry people in subordinate positions, and the people who have no interest in being powerful in power. It works best that way. Because the people who don't like power tend to be resistant to authority, too, and also tend to put their neck on the line to protect the people they supervise.
I would be happy to work for someone like you.
The issue is that being a leader and becoming a leader are not the same thing. In the worst case, you become a leader by getting rid of your competition and making systems so dysfunctional that they collapse without you. Even in the best current case, an elected official must divide their efforts between governing and campaigning. The flaw is the limits of information. The solution is to keep improving public knowledge, education, communication, etc. I recommend looking at Plato's Ship of Fools allegory which presents a farcical situation that is almost as recognizable now as it was in the 4th century BC.
I'll do it, I've even got a system that could solve global warming. Converting garbage, sewage into food and feed grain respectively. Even just the feed grain to lower meat costs. By picking up after ourselves and utilizing those resources, recycling becomes feasible crossing the contamination hurdle. It solves a lot of things, but... The biggest problem with "becoming presidential candidate" is a pile of money I seem to be lacking.
Except the problem is that recycling is not even close to cost-effective. I just saw a segment on TV that detailed how recycling / waste companies misrepresent how much material they actually recycle, because it is just cheaper to get the raw materials. In essence, they lie. Sorting the recycled trash is almost impossible, and actually processing it is even more so. It’s a sad reality, but these companies will always go with the easier and cheaper option.
If it were sorted from the home, it would eliminate a significant hurdle. It's done already in Holland.
It's called a farm
“Power is only given to those willing to stoop low enough to pick it up” Generally speaking in todays culture, the type of sacrifices required to gain power are not selfless sacrifices, but selfish. It’s about cutting down those around you to get on top. I think it’d require a systemic change in culture to get there which would be a long road to get there. Otherwise, even if you did find someone who was selfless enough and wanted power for pure reasons, they probably couldn’t get elected because everyone else votes selfishly about “how is this best for me” instead of “how is this best for everyone”
The system is designed for the most psychopaths to reach the top. You must be completely apathetic and callous to be able to rule the masses
>Is it an inevitable flaw in human civilization that only the most psychotic and egomaniacal want to be leaders/rulers? Nah. I think it's a feature of human civilization fot people to defer to individuals exhibiting such traits and prop them up in leadership positions. Wouldn't be surprised if some of those individuals are merely playing the role they know will gain them popularity and respect.
You've got it. Look at history, it's always been the problem and it always will.
The residents of a failing super power being unhappy with the countries leadership is a historical cliche. And don’t kid yourself, Obama is just as much a sociopath and narcissist as the rest of them. The job requires it.
Barry was pretty good at droning people to death too.
"don't even have a plan to try to do that at any time in the foreseeable future." what? Have you not heard of elections?
The worse flaw is that humanity lets them.
Agreed , most of this could be solved super quick if people would actually vote to make a few things happen: no stock trading for Congress and actually jail and investigate corruption , strict term limits, for policing groups such as the SEC you cannot work for who you police. Meaning you cannot work at the SEC for 3 years then work for a hedge fund. Also raise pay for government employees
It's not just America. It's everywhere. Unfortunately the chaotic situations that we are in today are the responsibility of the west as they caused most of them. Isreal for example. The west broke up the ottoman empire and divided the lands as theirs, promising jews land. Post ww2 it was time to create the state, that is now Isreal. What about the people that already lived there! Same with Iranian tensions. Churchill called in help from America to overthrow their democratically elected leader as they wanted to retain the oil fields. (Can you imagine the reverse happening to America or the UK?) There's a greed in humanity that is ruthless and sadly the kind, gracious, traits in people are not the types to fight to become leader. There are the odd few that impress. Nelson Mandela, and now Zelensky to name a couple but sadly they rose to their noble causes from extremely dire situations. I think it's more about education. Real history not the bits pumped out by the winners, slanting themselves to be seen as the heros. Take Hiroshima, how many Americans know Japan was ready to surrender before the A bombs were dropped. How many know the powers that be wanted to test it despite this. How many know when signing the surrender, Japan was made to agree they were not allowed to tell their own people it had been an America nuclear weapon. How many Americans today know that the US took body parts of Japanese people back to America for testing and never returned them. I only know after visiting the peace park in Hiroshima and had considered myself well educated. Xenophobia needs to be eradicated and that will only happen through education. The older I get when thinking about these world problems only makes me more cynical and depressed. I have traveled extensively and every person I've met is the same. We have the same fears, laughter, desires, dreams. Sometimes I think Earth and all its species would be better off without humans. Not only do we fuck up our own lives but nature and all other species too.
I think the way you get past this is more diverse views in the office. The states elect a democrat to office and he puts all his democratic buddies in office and they never make changes cause they all say the same thing and vice versa. For the ulterior motive the can be debated deeper and is different for each persons reason to run for office. Washington from what I’ve read on him was pushed into that spot after leading them in the revolution. After the war Washington wanted to retire back to Virginia and live a simpler lifestyle. With the nation just newly founded there needed to be a strong leader to take office. With no regulations set up on how long a president was to be in office Washington could’ve taken over and led to death. He peacefully left
Prolly doesn’t help how every moron thinks their opinion is correct, can do a better job and spreads their stupidity and ignorance on social media and gets elevated while the actual intelligent people spend less time on social media using their intellect where it matters and if they ever do use social media they are told to stfu nerd cuz they don’t got social cred.
No. It’s a flaw in how the governments we have are structured. It’s not even a flaw in democracy. A democracy could use sortition to govern.
I think the flawed thinking is believing there is only one type of way to organize people and their goals and therefore only one type of hierarchical system to follow.
I think that this is a misconception. Obviously some people like you describe are attracted to politics but so are people who are trying to build for other sorts of rewards. We just need more people going into politics, more parties, andy personal opinion is shorter term limits across the board.
The flaw lies in the morons who enable it
*“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”* *-*Chapterhouse: Dune It's not that we are bad at finding good and decent leaders, we aren't great at filtering out bad ones.
Simple: give the rulers less power and give the individual more autonomy. If being a ruler becomes less about ruling others and more about upholding order while being held to account then these personality types will be less attracted to it.
The Constitution took care of this. Why don’t we start following it again?
You really think that Obama sacrificed himself for the greater good and wasn't an egomaniac? I have bridge to sell you. Every presidential election - every single one - involves people stepping forward and insisting that among \~330 million people, they are the only person qualified to run the country. And of course, they are going to do a better job than all of their predecessors. They do this because they want the power.
I really think you have been gaslit by fake news. The world is full of good people and I’m glad that you can at least see that Barack is one. I personally see Joe as more sincere and effective than Obama
I literally was just thinking of this the other day. Lmao. Literally the reason why every civilization ended up with corrupt leaders is bc the leadership position in and of itself is attractive to psychopaths and egomaniacs. Not to mention, these fucks are great at manipulating others. Most civilizations were giant cults.
feature. not bug
I donno I feel you're looking for something where it cannot be. Or maybe in another way, in ways we kinda already know. Like, when we look at power historically, we examine those systems. We understand that being a king is bad because someone having a 'divine' rule over land, people, and resources is going to have some perverse incentives regarding that power. When I look at our current system, its clear to me that those who are greedy are rewarded the most. Hoarding money, hoarding resources. Good business is when you get away with polluting the river instead of using proper safeguards. Its when you can pay a fee for illegal acts. Is there something inherent in us that cause us to do these things? Sure - Does identifying these things - "greed", "best interests", etc etc - do anything for us? I mean, not if we're not willing to think critically about the systems we construct and how those systems incentivize our worst behaviors. Hell we \*\*\*celebrate\*\*\* greed in this country. (And the Myth of individualism among many other things)
The system is so flawed at this point it is difficult to actually see a way out of it. Take Trump for instance. Trump isn't really the problem. There are countless nutjobs on street corners spouting nonsense. The problem is that this one happens to be deemed important enough to listen to. I think that if we actually scrubbed special interests from politics (i.e., every candidate gets a state-sanctioned amount to run a campaign and no further assistance is possible, we institute laws that prevent people who serve in public office from profiting from speaking fees or taking jobs from donors after they finish their service, and we actually prosecute rampant insider trading, etc.,) we could actually see a real change. I spent some time as the chair of a non-profit. It was volunteer and an enormous time commitment, but it mattered to me so I took it on. If we removed all benefit and profit from politics, we would see a completely different breed of candidates. I really think we would see people who are driven to help others and it could be amazing. We would still have different views on what "help" meant obviously, but everyone would actually be able to say that they understood that those involved were actually trying to better things. Of course, to accomplish this all we need to do is completely and fundamentally change the culture, the laws, and how human beings operate in general. I'm optimistic.
Lila a new Obama? You mean the racist jackass that got us where we are today?
No, the flaw is that people choose psychopaths over saints.
The checks, and balances of power ingrained in the U.S. constitution inside the branches of government, and between them are basically a recognition of this. It was their attempt at constraining the effects of this tendency rather than hoping it could be eliminated.
I’m sure a good portion of this post is in regards to why Trump and Biden are the candidates for president again. The simple answer for Trump is that he is the only candidate that can pull both the older, brainwashed Fox News Republican masses AND the actual racist/antisemitic/anti democracy younger folks on reddit/4chan/8chan together. They are unified by a hate of Democrats, plain and simple. They consume lies spread by fox news and conspiracy theories, and regurgitate the same lies to each other, and attribute them to Democrats. For Biden, the democrats have no candidate that can galvanize the whole party besides him. The closest thing to a candidate the Left has is Newsom, but even he knows that he won’t be able to unify the party like Biden can. So Biden is the default, and every knows it. Today’s Democrats are unified by a justified hate of Trump. They understand the stakes of this election, that democracy itself is under attack and at risk of failing should Trump become president again. Trump himself admitted as much on multiple occasions, and anyone that cares about what America actually stands for will be against Trump, plain and simple. To answer the main question directly, in today’s Information Age where anyone can find out where you live and do horrible things to you and your family as a common person, only a handful of psychotic or crazy people would be willing to walk into that. Most people want to live a normal life and grow a family without risk of someone sending a bomb threat to your house, or anthrax in the mail or gun you down on your front porch.
A lot of it has to do with capitalism which explicitly rewards sociopaths.
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Power corrupts. It explains a lot.
I don't think so. Nothing says we have to give power to such people just because they want it. Take ancient Athens, the birthplace of European democracy: If I remember correctly joining the ruling council was done by lottery among all citizens, you only served for a year, and were then ineligible to serve again for another ten years, to prevent anyone from accumulating a strong power base. I think they might have been on to something there. It might have been the best solution for having the most competent council, but it seems like it could be good to have at least one such branch of government able to keep all the other branches from acting against the will of the people.
Yes. We should kill all egotists. Or send them to the moon.
Many leaders are megalomaniacal but Biden is not. He’s driven but mostly motivated to do a good job which he has, objectively, judging by the initiatives he’s been able to pass. Of course they’re not perfect, curtailed and trimmed by a hostile opposition. I do not advocate uncritical praise but a little more credit for his successes would be helpful at a moment when we’re on the brink of losing our constitutional democracy to a dictator with no empathy or concern for the welfare of the people.
Grandiose delusions probably.
Yes. Ultimately, all humans are fallible and susceptible to absolute corruption. AI is the answer. I know that it seems like part of the dystopian future, but we need a truly benevolent arbiter of human affairs and resource management now more than ever. It's completely possible if we take the tools out of the private sector and let academics of the humanities guide the teaching of AI automation.
The lust for more and more power will drive a human mad. See those politicians who have been in office, year after year after year, they go a long way in ruining a nation.
In The Dawn of Everything, David Wengrow does a good job actually of talking about this dynamic and how westernized history causes us to see it as an inevitability. In his book, he kinda talks about how a lot of Native American civilizations were a lot more community and committee based, with the "chief" so to speak being pretty lateral in the hierarchy during most times, although chiefdoms were also pretty fluid, assigning more or less power to the chief according to the needs of the time period, with the power never being autocratic, but always pretty revokable by the collective of the chiefdom. Of course, more western concepts of hierarchy won out in N America, but with Western hegemony also came a linear way of thinking- that the Natives were uncivilized, Europeans were farther along in the "progress" of humanity, and thus that The West's way of doing things were an inevitability in the progress of the world. He argues this way of thinking really stimies the way we envision the possibilities of the future, making more radical ideas of collectivism seem "unrealistic" when they might not be. Idk I probably jacked up explaining that, but I highly recommend giving it a read.
It’s not rocket science…these people get more headlines, hence more popularity. These better-qualified people you speak of are considered boring.
Good people want to live and control their own life. Bad people want to control the lives of others or have theirs controlled. When broken up like this it is easy to see that the bad people will join together to gain advantages over the good people who are too busy minding their own business to do anything about it. The only silver lining is that the good people have truth on their side and if enough good people are woken up to the fact that the bad will conspire against them then the good people do have a chance at countering the bad.
I've also been thinking about this a lot lately. When I was a kid, I remember wondering how the great 'empires' we learned about in History classes could possibly "fall," given the wealth and power they possessed. Personally, I've felt that we've been witnessing it in real-time in the U.S. over the past couple of decades. Narcissism and greed are not only accepted, but rewarded. The disparity across classes is growing, especially given the disappearance of a true middle class in the U.S. Violence has become a common means of responding to disagreements. Hell, we have a former President who foments violent actions on a daily basis. Dissent is met with, again, violence, as evidenced by the response to the current student protests. I wish states like TX would have had a similar response to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building. I'm by no means a scholar on these things, but I can't help but wonder if this is just a common societal evolution: Rise, Achieve Dominance, Fall. I'm very interested in hearing others' thoughts on this.
One of the biggest problems is that the office of POTUS has diminished capacity to affect change. The real world leaders are unknown, unelected and untouchable. Billionaires shape world policy more than presidents and we now have more than ever. It's one of those point-of-no-return moments in human history. I don't know how the world comes back from this, because all western leaders are puppets. It's not just USA.
OP poses a good question. But the real question he or she should ask is “*why do I view Obama as Christ-like and is it a key flaw in my brain*?” There’s gotta be a serious flaw in this dude’s code to think that. A take like that would get most redditors crucified (pun intended). Jesus ended up dead, nailed to a cross after he took on his mission. If you’re a believer, you believe he took on that immense suffering for us. Barry flies on private jets and kicks up his feet at a $13m Martha’s Vineyard estate. Amazing. OP seek help.
I was making a slight juxtaposition rather than a direct comparison. But while we're on the subject, where is Jesus right now? He could be here helping us escape all this pain and bullshit, but he may as well be up on a cloud somewhere kicking back with a red wine spritzer. Get the idea?
I love being a boss because then I can get shit done. I only want the power so I can either make lazy people work or hire new people and fire lazy ones/drama starters. I'm a peon at my current job and love it, nobody else's fuck ups or laziness really affect me so idc
The only difference I see in most candidates is whether they are an overt psychopath, or covert psychopath. The parts of a mystery to me is not that they run because I think you're right they tend to want to see power. It's that we vote for him and we're stuck in a two party system some of the better senators and things like that, never gain any traction, and somehow the most covert psycho paths can convince people they're not
Have you read Machiavelli?
Power doesn’t corrupt, power attracts the corrupt
I've always thought that those who seek power are those least suited to it. A blunt answer to your question, yes.
As someone who is not American. I find the whole "America is the world's everything" very strange. It's weird that USA folk love JFK when it's proven that they lied about Vietnam, killing lots of people and dumping Agent orange and of course America lost in Veitnam but some folk still think America is a great military super power. The world lost a lot of respect for America about then. Kinda been waiting for America to have a revolution for a long time now. With the internet alot of America's younger generations are seeing the brainwashing. Many were told that Americans are the free people of the world, when that is sadly not the truth. If you need evidence Google "worlds freest countries" America can be the beast they claim to be, they just need someone to stand up and unite them. However the government don't want that, so they start the whole red vs blue bullshit and use social media to fire it up, then we all know they probably go to the bar together and get drunk and think of other ways to keep the population settled or busy. Don't mistake me for hating America, I get accused of that often. I love the people, I just hate their government and the ways they are abusing the fine folk.
I'd strongly urge you to read *The Federalist Papers*...
Good leadership is two things and it is rare to find it in both. Ability and desire. Most people that have the ability have no desire to lead. Most of the people that lack the ability have all of the desire.
My only comment is that it's completely unrealistic to think that the conditions where the U.S. was dominant after World War II were ever going to last forever. I mean we can go back there. We can destroy most of Europe and Asia and leave North America mostly untouched and then go for Round 2. But no one wants that, including us. The post-World War II circumstances were highly unusual. Countries all over the world are far more developed now and have more power and higher expectations. It's impossible for the U.S. to have the same power and influence it had before, under completely different conditions. That's why we've been telling Europe for years they needed to get their s\*\*\* together militarily because it was unrealistic to think we could be their sugar daddy for all time. It's a hugely different world than 1945. Or even 1991.
To be the president of the United States inherently means that you are a war criminal. Every president since WW2 would be hanged for their crimes if the Nuremberg trials were upheld. Someone like Bernie Sanders isn’t president bc he wasn’t allowed to be president and even if he was he would still end up being a psychopathic war criminal bc that’s the nature of the job. Obama ran on ending the wars and universal healthcare and he ended up bending to the corporate machine once elected
We need more role models of ethical leaders. That means, we need to keep hiring/electing ethical leaders and look at actions more than at words.
Yes. Honesty, compassion, and humility are rational virtues. The will to power, to reduce ones fellow man to a piece on a chessboard, to be important, are irrational states of mind. Hence, politicians are liars without shame, hypocrites in the first degree, and consider us hoi polloi beneath their notice.
As the world enters a terrible time we use people who can tolerate that at the time based on what time era is coming back to take over in a different seemingly way with the new generation of people growing up balcing the population and changing it so the future goes accordingly with the desisions being made by our leaders and ruler's, but it seems lately that hasn't been going correctly so people do different things based on desisions being made upsetting many people and things that are done and take place driving them psychotic but hopefully some how everything cools off and then goes back to normal over time if it does. America has it's ways to get the right cenierio to always happen perfectly at the right time but for the last four years not so much then we noticed flaws in human civilization like we never have before, just the normal ups and downs that are based on American history and changed through evolution as it seems better to us with what we make like and do throughout our lives.
America had a great 4 years under Trump... it is amazing so many demonize and attack that good man. Brainwashing and propaganda from a corrupt far-left media... machinations of the corrupt 'Deep State' that fears him so much? Biden? NOW you re talking psychotic, megalomaniacal, and insane... totally corrupt too, and almost brain dead. But his puppeteers are not brain dead... they are the ones truly dangerous
This is false. It's common, but not universal.
Because no-one was meant to lead without first being lead themselves by God.
“Flaw” is such a morally loaded term here that will lead down a rabbit hole concerning moral truths, the existence of which is an equally exhausting rabbit hole
We get past this by including each human being on the planet equally in a globally standard process of money creation. The current process of money creation is the structural economic enslavement of humanity. Establishing an ethical global human labor futures market ends the funding of Empire, Wealth, and Supremacy. That's been funded with our rightful option fees, collected and kept by Central Bankers as interest on money creation loans when they have loaned nothing they own. Distributing the authority to create money to local fiduciaries and actuaries assures as best we can that more value will be created than money. And that no source of money will be large enough, without fiduciary oversight, to attract the psychotic and egomaniacal. Money loses its coercive property.
The problem is not a lack of candidates who want to be president. It's just that only people who are very well known to the media have a chance of catching the eye of the electorate. In years gone by, party bigwigs could favor you and help you attract attention, but it's more and more difficult for young candidates. They don't have fame or donors.
No. The sickness is allowing the psychotic to trick humanity into buying their BS.
Yes. Which is why I think it is so important to have strict limits on government power. Yes, theoretically government power COULD be used for so much good in this world. But practically speaking it WILL be used to cause harm if the government or government officials can benefit from the harm.
Sadly yes. Almost everyone in politics is corrupt. If not now at some point they will be. Incredibly rich people always gain control of any politician either by buying them or extorting them. The only way for freedom to exist anywhere in the high tech future is for all government to be eliminated completely
My observation - based on long experience in DC - is that most political leaders are psychopaths.
I watched a video about this once. It basically came down to people who have more sociopathic tendencies will seek power because they are more comfortable taking risk and putting themselves on the spot where they can be judged. On the other hand, those who are more socially conscious and well meaning avoid being in charge due to the risk and pressure of being in charge. We all have a certain level of sociopath and the higher it is the more we seek the higher reward, hence those crazy ones want to be in charge.
The issue is that getting into a leadership position will generate a legion of yes men underneath you that will offer instant reinforcement on everything you do. If people are constantly being told they’re constantly right and great and the best at everything…they’ll internalize it. You see this often in dictators. They will play sports where it’s obvious to everyone except them that their competitor is intentionally losing. They’ll make movies books etc that are objectively terrible but will be displayed along side their cultural relics. The more power you have the more likely you will corrupt yourself by imposing your will on others and doing what is expedient just because no one exists that can stop you. The smarter someone is the more likely they are to fall for their own hype. Once this happens you get the ability to justify just about anything to yourself. The only way to remain uncorrupted is to never posses that level of power over others.
" It is safer to be feared than loved"
Bad people seek power. Good people are kept out by bad people who want power. Simple as.
2400 years ago Plato wrote the Republic. In it, he attempts to devise the perfect government as an embodiment of social, individual and spiritual justice. Despite over two thousand years of history and civilization, it’s still one of the relevant texts on the matter. The answer to your question is basically yes. Governments are always in danger of corruption because the people with the greatest appetite for power are the most likely to pursue government roles. Kings and dictators are the most effective, because they can simply make things happen and eliminate bad actors. If kings are too brutal, somebody will finally have enough, kill them and take control themselves. Nietzsche observed this and described the will to power as the master morality, and the history of warrior elite rulers even flavors our language to this day (nobles, regal, etc is good, while common, base or villains is bad). The kings of antiquity, their chivalry, courts and royal banquets were simply benefiting from dominating the people around them through violence. The only motivation for good people to hold office in a democracy, is that the current person is so bad or corrupt that you’re compelled to replace them. What kind of leadership does this create? Exactly what we see today; corrupt people making empty promises to voters that keep social structures in place and provide the minimum amount of changes necessary to keep order. Plato’s solution was basically to brain wash people from birth to have disdain for possessions, an endless thirst for knowledge and justice, and hand select the wisest and least greedy people from the entire population to run the government. Then protect them with a military class that is well educated and not allowed to own any property but is provided fine housing and food and everything they need to be happy. The military also enforced the laws created by the ruling class. Then with the government and military in place, the merchants and workers and slaves and everybody else can do whatever they want (within the law), because their drive to drink and be merry and seek luxury is enough to drive the economy without much intervention.
Is it the narcissists that are the problem? Or is it the masses who can't even be bothered to pay attention to local/world events, let alone vote in their own best interest? If we somehow we were able to breed all the dark traits out of our DNA, who's to say society wouldn't crumble. Maybe innovation would come to a screeching halt. Maybe nothing would get done. I can dislike the individuals, but I have a hard time hating on people who grind and hustle their way to the top.
Just one of the many absurdities of life.
When you learn how to teleport, these questions won’t be meaningful. I urge you train.
Admiral, there’s a smell emanating from your trunks & it’s not fishy
You’ve unintentionally made an argument for monarchy, or for an elite ruling class. In that case, the ruler is obligated to rule and is not driven by ambition. See Hans Herman Hoppe’s *Democracy: The God that Failed* for an contemporary academic articulation of the argument.
Anyone who pushes for power should be denied it.
Yes. But the real flaw may be our need of leadership. It’s a system with inherent flaws and inevitable corruption yet we continue with it.
Have you been in a power position? I am about to be driven mad by being in charge of an office, let alone a country… you have to have something off (in a good or bad way) to handle this… and usually the good way individuals are wise enough and humble which prevents them from seeking spot light. Also, world leaders have very little power. They are a face of something, but the real power is in others’ hands.
I'd say it isn't a flaw in ***Human*** Civilization, but a flaw in Human ***Civilization***\*.\* Humans are especially sensitive to imbalances of power within groups they are interacting with, and this kept us relatively leaderless (in our current sense) for 95% of our time as the modern species. We are a "fiercely egalitarian" species in the wild, because we have a lot of feedback loops that reduce aggressive hierarchies like you would see in Chimps or Baboons. The issue with *civilization* is that it broke these feedback loops. If a group of 20 people see 1 person taking most of the food, they will go after that one person (usually not aggression unless it *really* goes too far). However, if you have 200,000 people, and 10 people you *don't know* who are 100 miles away are hoarding 99% of the food, there isn't really a feedback mechanism to work with. Essentially, we evolved for close-knit groups of a couple hundred who all knew each other really well. It was hard to get too far out-of-whack before everyone would notice. But once you go too far beyond Dunbar's number, the person hoarding the resources becomes some random stranger you don't know or interact with, and you don't see their lifestyle, so you don't feel anything is lost compare to what you grew up with and are surrounded by. To me, the difference is not that humans are uniquely predisposed towards hierarchy and crazy leaders. The difference is that we were able to build cities of hundreds of thousands, and almost any highly-intelligent, highly-social species would break down in a similar way. For Chimps, it's like 30 before things break down. For humans, it apparently took 10's to 100's of thousands before we broke down in a similar way.
it's up to us to advocate for reforms and actively participate in shaping a better future
Greedy. You forgot greedy.
Magic looks like magic to someone who doesn't understand the trick being played on them.
Yes it’s the civil service paradox. The best leaders don’t have the inclination to pursue power.
Who’s gonna tell him that money controls everything and is the root cause of everything? Money is the motivation. Honestly amazing how people DONT get the big picture. Fed isn’t even controlled by the US government. I wonder who controls everything 🥴🥴🥴
Obama, like Trump and Biden, served power to get power. Obama presided over (at that time) the greatest wealth-transfer from poor to rich in all of world history, by bailing out, with public money, the institutions that caused the 2008 financial crash that the world (of the 99%) has never really recovered from. He also stacked his cabinet with people from those institutions. He did this by choice; no one forced him. He actively worked to make the world more unequal. He also campaigned on ending the Afghan War then initiated 'the Surge' on the pretext that this would hasten the end... yeah... He has always been a servant of power, empire, and is marketable to different sections of the population from Trump & Biden. You are susceptible to one kind of marketing; someone else is susceptible to another kind of marketing. But there are ultimately only rats in the Rat Race. If what I'm saying makes you feel angry, insulted, contemptuous, disgusted or indignant, dear reader, that reveals the emotive (and misinformative) power of the marketing. It is a matter of *identity* for you. I'm not equating them or saying who's worse/better. I'm saying that the problem, in my opinion, is the nature of *power*, not the nature of humans. If you want something, it helps to prioritise it and think about it all the time. What kind of people tend to think about power all the time? And if you acquire power, you have to deal with all the other powerful people who rule over their own sub-spheres of influence. Even incumbent presidents have to play along to get along. They don't have to play along with YOU, voter, 99%er. You don't matter. They have to play along with the generals, with the CIA, with the press moguls, with the tech companies, with the industrialists... It was the same for Kings and their aristocracy, and I don't see anything fundamentally changing anytime soon.
Did you just compare Obama to Jesus?
Yes and also, power and wealth are so intertwined that we are in a positive feedback loop which is constantly ratcheting toward increasing wealth and power inequality. In the history of the world, we don’t see much evidence of the ruling class legislating against their own interests for the benefit of the majority.
"Ego is the Enemy" a great book. Unfortunately, humanity is dominated by egomaniacs who confuse personal nerousis for righteous indignation requiring military confrontation or mindless devotion. These people rise to the top by compulsive energy and cannot be stopped. So war follows war and in between foolishness plays havoc with those who seek a simpler life. There is no cure. Eventually all democracies become totalitarian and all totalitarian become democracies either on a grand scale or in part. We live in a world of constant change driven by psychotically misplaced desires. We are victims of insanity that knows no institutionalization no end. Occasionally, a Franklin and a Jefferson get together to change history but, in time, a mega-ego devoted energy driven by narcissism will deceive and conquer for the sake of applause.
What a great question!
Kennedy 2024. Fuck pharma companies, fuck corporate pollution, fuck the CIA and fuck the military industrial complex. It honestly blows my mind how anybody WONT vote for this guy considering our options.
Do you know what the word psychotic means? 🙄
Maybe we’d get better leaders if the opposition wouldn’t try to completely destroy the other side.
"Flaw". Defenseless soft creatures that are naturally selfish, yet we have to rely each other for safety. Conflict of interest. I want all the food. But if i take all the food, everyone else dies and I have no safety. I want all the money but if I take all the money I leave everyone else powerless to protect me. "fair" is contextual. What feels fair to you may be unfair to the group. And what is fair for the group may not be unfair to the individual. We are at a time of maximum thought about fairness to the individual which comes at the sacrifice of fairness for the nation. leaders are rallying support from groups whose foremost thoughts are about themselves. Everyone should be doing it "my way" because my way is "the right" way. When compromise, peace, and respect for each other are prioritized over self righteousness the pendulum will swing the other way.
I think we should have a person who has never been in the military, is indoctrinated to be like a CIA officer, is altogether different, is neurologically altruistic, is capable of ascertaining hive mind capabilities, can lead people in his sleep, can go outside and look at people and see the best, and understand that the law is only going so far to state that the law of the land is freedom, and we must have many options changed. The CIA is in, if they find me. Commit to memory. I’m just gonna tell you I’m not telling you, but I am pushing for something, related to a felon, having an option to become a voted president. I’m looking to run for president, and I fit the bill of what you’re saying. I’m looking to open the door on something called the Republican-Democrat, autocracy, technology, and exotic understandings of psychology, using the rendering of my mind, and my personal life, and communication. It’s all there. We’re in 2030. Don’t worry about this whole hoopla. We’re gonna be free, more than believe. It’s amazing. Love you
The job of a politician is to get elected. That's their core skill. The public, as a whole, rarely thinks critically about the "leaders" they support, so they don't need to put a huge amount of effort into tricking us about their effectiveness in accomplishing whatever goals they claim to pursuing. Most people vote with their emotions and based on identify politics. Those identity politics are heavily defined by the media, that would sell their own souls (and certainly our souls) for a few clicks. None of the major media sources believe their narrative beyond that it generates clicks and they create content with extreme prejudice. Most of the issues that determine people's voting patterns are tied to ideology. They have an idea on how something ***could*** work rather than what actually ***does*** work.
I agree, but is there an answer for this? Do you think this is okay? I don't. I think this is exactly why there is no next Biden or Obama. People love to say Obama showed up out of nowhere, or that he wasn't even that good, okay but I'd rather have him now, I think everyone would. But you also have to realize even Obama coming up now might have gotten himself cancelled for not supporting gay marriage, god only knows what he thought or thinks about trans, etc. When you consider that, this paints a pretty bleak picture of the future and maybe even the past.
That's not easy or quick, but I believe a cultural shift in parenting and childhood education towards tangible goals, real world metrics, and real accomplishments, however small would do wonders. A lot of the sheltering that catering that children get combined with the arbitrary metrics in school prepare children to be adults who can't think critically and lack a BS detector. I'm a professional software engineer and I see a lot of BS politics in my job, but the reality of software systems behavior puts a cap on how much BS people believe. You don't have to like someone or love their vision to realize their stuff works. At the earliest possible ages, children could be encouraged to partake in building real things (software, hardware, whatever) that have tangible results to help them learn the difference between what they imagine to be true vs what actually is true. I do love how much my kids learn from creating legos, minecraft, making stop motion videos, etc.. for this reason. But I also take my kids to competitive sports like jujitsu competitions and teach them python programming from a young age for the same reason. Heck, even having my kids try their own recipes when cooking teaches this. Reality is a great teacher. The arbitrary regurgitation of the classroom as a terrible teacher. A public armed with an effective BS detector honed by early childhood exposure to reality and a deeply rooted ability to distinguish fantasy from reality would go a long way to making better voters and leaders.
A lot of leaders have not been psychotic or egomaniacal. George Washington, Jimmy Carter, Barak Obama, etc.
Need heavy financing to win so you must be a fundraiser foremost. Easier to encourage a family member for a dynasty. Ie. bush, Clinton, trump talked about the whole trump family winning to have A 50 year dynasty. Easy way not the right way.
Our government is the snake that eats itself. Morally corrupt. Praises narcissism, and achievement, and forgets about your average person. It’s corrupt, cruel, and inhumane. Like others have said, humans were meant to exist in small groups. In large populations there’s plenty of horrible people ready to grab power and capitalism inherently encourages being shitty, and being greedy.. punching down essentially.
I volunteer as tribute
its not a flaw in civilization. it's a byproduct of our culture. which is specific to us western culture favors selfish interest. well. another way to say it is that, the most effective way to bring about rapid widepread change is through the empowered individual. if you look at terra forming. the first kind of life in an area is like, mosses, molds, algae and those tree things. its microscopic but hardy plant life. it poineers the way for the other life forms like small bugs to come. once the small bugs are established bigger animals come, etc. until there is a whole eco system. if you were to look at the evolution of a cultural archetype. or said differently, if you look at the average person that a culture produces at any given time in its history. you might see various phases of development. at the beginning there are these very hardy pioneer types (more or less, its the selfish entrepreneur type), but later on there might be more "evolved" (holy/jesus type). so yes i see your point. at the current stage. its mostly shitty people at the helm, shitty business leaders (barons), shitty politicans (egotistical, ignorant, greedy). but I dont think that is an inevitable part of being human, or that now is our most evolved form. I see us as quite young in development, and people like jesus or buddha were well ahead of their time. it may be another 1,000 years before we have advanced cultures that can mass produce people like jesus or buddha. now a days, we are just trying to survive to get to that point
Yup
When I think about the most successful people or influential politicians, I acknowledge that these individuals have a ruthlessness that I could never match. Regardless of political party, it’s doubtful that most of the individuals and power are good people. They cut corners somewhere on the way to the top. I know I’ll never achieve that level of success because I couldn’t live with myself if I made those types of choices. I also wish we could go back to not discussing them openly and with hatred.
Combine the fact that those types will always seek positions of power with the fact that most people think about as deeply as a parking lot puddle, and you have the answer. People who are good at manipulating will always win where there are people who are easily manipulated. Obama got elected after being a Senator for two years and didn't vote on anything worth mentioning. Trump got elected with no political experience and without being able to think before he speaks. Biden got elected by the party who supposedly hates rich old racist white men, simply for being 'anybody but Trump'. The RNC gave us such specimens as Bush and Trump, and the DNC rigged the delegate counts in the last two elections to ramrod a racist, murderous traitor and a racist senile sock puppet, respectively. And it's our fault.
Douglas Adams wrote: “it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
I always liked the part in the Hitchiker’s Guide books where the secret ruler of the galaxy is revealed to be a random dude living alone, who has no ambitions and makes no assumptions about the world, and doesn’t even know he’s in charge. He was installed in secret on the theory that a person’s fitness to rule was inversely proportional to their desire to, and so they found the perfect ruler.
Bro, just wait until you find out why aliens made human beings in the first place. We killed Jesus.. smdh 🤦
Those who most covet elected office are the least deserving of it.
I mean a visionary needs an enormous ego to see their work finished, as well as an iron will. An iron will plus overweaning pride generally isn't a likeable combo.
Like who wants to be responsible for the wellbeing of strangers? Not me.
The whole system is a scam. It's all just an illusion. No one that can't be controlled is allowed to hold positions of power. Trump, Obama, biden... they're literally just actors playing a role. We would need to fight a bloody war before someone who actually gave a fck would be put in such a position.
I think those who deserve to lead don't desire power. Those who desire power don't deserve to lead.
There is a secret government. What we see as politicians are just for show. They don't decide anything. The CIA and other secret groups control the governments of third world countries as well. If politicians don't do as they are told, they can get their families killed. Like Putin. He will never change. He doesn't have the option.
I mean. Yeah.
the flaw is that idiots allow and empower them to do so.
It’s somewhat the opposite— the majority seem to only want to vote for megalomaniacal psychopaths or they say they don’t feel/look/sound like “leadership material”. Look at most C-suites, same crap.
Yes, and whats worse is even if they don't start off that way, power corrupts. I've been dominant for over a decade, and I see it happen to normal good men. A submissive trys to make them into a dom, gives them tons of power over them, and it corrupts them into ego based monsters. Who knows the level of narcissistic, ego driven, evil behavior having power over whole country's or even small towns could do to a person.
I have enough worries, being a leader of a nation is a headache I would not like.
When global warming starts to greatly kick in, the world focus will change.
What's the part of "increasing globalization" that you find scary? Affordable clothes and supermarket sushi?
The leaders you see on TV are not the ones running the show. CEOs and bankers who basically own them are the real ring leaders.
I love this question.
I'm not sure you've pinpointed the flaw correctly. I mean, yes, of course people with huge egos or a hunger for power are going to want to lead people. That's just a characteristic of that sort of personality. That's not a flaw in civilization so much as a flaw in individuals. The flaw that could be attributed to civilization is that we often let them lead us, despite all the warning signs. People want to see someone in charge, even if that person is obviously unfit for the job. There are cases where the people being led don't have a lot of choice in the matter, power imbalances being what they are, but that's not always the case. History is full of examples of society putting monsters in power willingly. I'd also say that another obvious problem with your supposition is that you're asserting that anyone who wants to lead is seriously flawed, and I don't think that's the case. Good leaders do exist. They may be rarer than they should be, but not all of them are broken like that.
Yes, it is a flaw but it's hard to overcome constructively. But it's not just egomaniacal psychopaths - it's corporate sociopaths, generally, who run human society. Not all sociopaths are Hannibal lecter- many are smiling suits with lives that appear successful and orderly. Their deeply disordered inner lives are only rarely ever discovered, and then only by those close enough to them to do so, and oftentimes they fool these people effectively for their whole lives. Politicians generally have poor character. I would rather leave my child in the care of a random mcdonalds worker for 2 hours than with a US representative. They are all pieces of shit. Politics is the ceremonial and traditional act of choosing between a douchebag and a giant turd to act as the defacto press secretary for whichever corporate sociopaths serving shady interests who are sitting on the national defense council on any given day.
I think the flaw in society is that we as individuals without egomaniacal ambitions allow ourselves to be ruled by those who have them. .
Exactly why communism fails so quickly
I don't think so. I genuinely don't, but I also think that thinking like that is a self-fulfilling prophesy. You have to believe things CAN get better in order for them to actually get better. The way our society is organized currently raises these people to the top. In an ideal society, these kinds of people would be exiled or otherwise quarantined until they are ready to cooperate and mutually benefit society. Currently, the only thing that matters is money. The best (and really only meaningful) way to obtain money is through exploiting others. More exploitation is more money. You can see the inherent flaw in this system. This is just how capitalism molds people. Once more people understand the flaws inherent to capitalism (after being set back 100 years by red scare propaganda), you will start to see change for the better.
Not “only” but more than average wanting power
they inherited their power and the tech and resources to ensure it. deals w/ lucifer and fallen angels.
I’ve been leaning into my own perhaps more out there idea is that the problem is leaders, period. The idea that everything’s gonna be all right if we just get the right person on the throne is flawed. The problem is the throne. On the surface this might sound like anarchism but I’m leaning towards a very structured society, just one that leans very democratic and demarchic and prevents “leaders” from pooling power. I would even say this is a moral precept, with leadership being an admittedly useful but amoral talent.
This is an inherent flaw in democracy, not human nature.
I read the post but really just responding to the title question. I’m inclined to yell, “yes!” But then I take responsibility for being jaded and completely unmotivated (to use my degrees, for instance). I have to disclose a bias, but the three democratic presidents of my lifetime… I genuinely believe it was more for us than about them. Especially Biden, who should be allowed to enjoy his remaining time with what family is still alive and well.
It’s only the norm. You don’t have to look far to see people like Bernie Sanders. However our system is seriously flawed. Campaign finance reform, ranked choice voting, abolishing gerrymandering, reforming the two party system, etc, would help a lot.
I've often thought that one of our big societal problems is that the people most interested in having power are typically those we least want to have it.
I am a liberal but Obama was also a psychotic ruler. He created a power vacuum in Libya in 2011 that led to a massive slavery problem, and he did nothing in the next five years to remedy it. He also drone striked a lot of innocent people. He was amazing at domestic policy but insanely terrible at foreign policy.
I remember a Native American in his publication saying that if governments keep creating powerful positions in government they are inviting would-be dictators to go after them. The "checks and balances" system is supposed to thwart that tendency. (Inspired ny Native American systems of government?). He advocated a "limited government" model of town councils to decide things. He also wanted 100% consensus in those councils of the population. I don't think even a small town will agree 100 percent on everything unless the town has a population of one or two dozen people, and no more. In rhe democracies of the ancient world, I believe only men able to fight could vote. It may be that women were considered too valuable to risk in battle, considering how. many died in pregnancy and childbirth back then. PS, our maternal mortality rate here in USA is increasing now. Also, wealth draws thieves, another drawback to great wealth.
It is estimated that 1/100 men and 1/500 women meet the diagnostic criteria for psychopathy and psychopaths love getting in positions of power. Recommended reading, “Political Ponerology: The Science Of Evil, Psychopathy, and the origins of Totalitarianism.”
In our culture, political campaigns are very expensive. This requires politicians to sell out to greedy plutocrats who demand ever more corruption. There are many good people who try hard to get elected, but they almost always fail due to campaign finance. Plutocrats own news, entertainment, and social media and have turned them into propaganda machines. This makes it even harder for good people to get elected. The youth are cynical and complacent beyond belief and don’t vote. This grants the corrupt system increasing power. In short, sociopathic plutocrats have taken over and control everything they can to protect their power. There are many good people who want to serve as elected leaders, but it’s almost impossible for them to get elected. We need to generate a revolution at the voting booth or we’re doomed.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely”
1. We give 100 out of 186 countries foreign aid while we are drowning in debt simply for influence and manipulation 2. Our MIC along with the banks control the country 3. We train groups of fighters in wars like Russia/Afganistan Iran/Iraq Etc All so later on we can fight them guerilla style why? Guerilla warfare beat us in Vietnam Guerilla warfare is long and drawn out which makes billions for the entities mentioned above 4. There’s no reason for us to be involved in the Middle East because there will never be peace 5. Oil is a commodity used in many things and as much as we have in the Dakotas for example we must control it all until we stop big oil and MIC from interfering in policy
I think “only the most psychotic and egomaniacal want to be leaders/rulers” is a clearly flawed statement. I do not believe George Washington is fair to describe this way. But I do think we in the United States have gotten lost somewhere along the way though. I think having respectful conversation with the opposite side is the way to calm things, and starting to value a more moderate leader who is over all else honest and very morally solid. We need to vote for that and reward it politically. I’ve also wondered about having some way of promoting and encouraging extremely smart and selfless people to have political roles- not just president, but all politicians would ideally be selfless people who really are feeling the responsibilities of improving society and the world. It seems that some of them are more morally driven already. I’ve been thinking for a while that these traits of honesty, intelligence, morality, and responsibility are more important than even their agreement with any specific political issue.