A study by psychologist Paul Babiak indicates that one in twenty-five leaders could be a psychopath. This affliction could actually be an advantage in a workplace:
Link -via Geekosystem | Image: Lions Gate Films
The survey suggests psychopaths are actually poor managerial performers but are adept at climbing the corporate ladder because they can cover up their weaknesses by subtly charming superiors and subordinates.
This makes it almost impossible to distinguish between a genuinely talented team leader and a psychopath, Babiak said. Hare told Horizon: "The higher the psychopathy, the better they looked – lots of charisma and they talk a good line.
Link -via Geekosystem | Image: Lions Gate Films
Comments (6)
If you have a group of friends and one of them turns out to be a psychopath who fucks everybody over he will sooner or later be expelled from the group. Extrapolate this to society in general and that's the reason society today is not made up entirely of psychopaths.
Today however we have a problem. Corporations and banks are getting so huge they often have more money and power than whole countries combined, they are ruling the world. And they are run by psychopaths. The psychopaths are winning and we can't get rid of them anymore.
This might self-correct at some point in the future but in the mean time we are all fucked.
As for Sparta, I don't think it's viable to look back on their culture from 2010 and just condemn their militaristic culture. If a society wishes to protect itself, it needs people who know how to fight. If a society wants to wage war, it needs the same. Spartan society became rich and powerful in part because Spartans knew how to fight. Even if you might think that a bad choice from your modern viewpoint, it was a choice that worked for them and we should try to understand it, not condemn it. It's ancient history, after all. Condemnation serves no purpose. Even today, you would not condemn a German that you met in the street for the Holocaust. And that was but a few years ago.