The people in power are psychopaths. The rate of psychopathy in boardrooms (i.e., among corporate higher-ups) is significantly higher than in the general population. Shouldn’t it be lower? Shouldn’t psychopaths be kept away from positions of power?
Well, some people don’t believe that. A psychopath, they think, can defend the company (or the country, in the case of Donald Trump) better than anyone else because of how ruthless they are. They won’t commit the sickening error of loving their enemies. They have a perfect focus on their goals. It takes a bad guy to prosper.
Firstly, if it takes a bad guy to prosper then that’s a problem with the world, and no psychopath is going to change a world from which they benefit immensely. Why can’t good guys prosper as easily? Because psychopaths who have no moral qualms necessarily have a broader repertoire of strategies and thus will probably win. The only way good guys can prosper is if we impose goodness on the system as a whole, yet so-called free-market capitalism is all about having the least amount of regulations possible. It’s therefore a system designed to play to psychopaths.
Secondly, a psychopath may care about the system that shores them up and gives them a pedestal, but you must realize that you are by no means indispensable to that system. They will ignore you the moment it suits their personal interests. Psychopaths are out for themselves, no one else. They may be ruthless when it comes to their enemies, but they are equally ruthless when it comes to their “friends” (which they do not have, by the way – they have resources, not friends). One person said on social media that they couldn’t understand the point in being friends with someone unless they got something out of it. That perfectly illustrates the psychopathic mindset, and if you seriously want someone with that mindset to have power over you, you’re an ill creature.
Psychopaths belong nowhere near power. Yet the fact that psychopaths are actually more common in positions of power than in the general population demonstrates that humanity has paid no attention whatsoever to this fact.
There are some important exceptions to this general putdown of dreams, but for the vast majority of people in our society today, dreams are not things that serious people concern themselves with.
Robert Monroe
No genuinely serious intellectual person can disregard dreams. Dreams are what happen when we shut off the physical senses and we are exposed only to our own mind and thoughts. And in our own mind, we are capable of creating entire worlds that feel just as real as the waking world – some even more so! Disregarding dreams is a fatal mistake for any philosophy, religion, or science.
We spend a third of our life sleeping, and yet most of us give it no attention. It’s just a need we let our body fulfill on its own and then we get on with our usual waking things. Yet what could be more fascinating than our ability to create realistic worlds and scenarios in our minds?
Most people are terrible at understanding what’s going on around them and even within them.
Get smart! If you don’t understand yourself, how do you expect to make good decisions for yourself?