CIvgene can be complex and confusing, but if you’ve got an hour, I lay out the basics in a simple way. Good way to get started.
What is a cult? It is a faith based organization that disallows exit. The open secret is that faith need not be supernatural, but can easily be theoretically provable, and yet still be just faith. Since human science controls are typically unethical, political organizations are faith based. Even worse, fundamentalist political organizations that are both corrupt and more focused on rules than identity may make exit impossible, becoming a stealthy cult.
The human conscience grows stronger to recognising risk as it is exposed. In some cases opponents may be few, but unanimous political support at scale indicates oppression. People then carry the flag of their faith based organization as though it gives them wizardly powers of truth, joyous in their lack of opposition. In reality they are supporting an organization that limits opportunities for external criticism and has removed the opportunity of exit of their perceived opponents. There are always externalities, a lack of their observers indicates the absence of freedom.
When a rule focused hierarchy faces opposition of it’s procedures or plans, it’s mechanizations slow. Warnings elicit groans and frustration from committees and meetings as the cost of ordinary business begins to rise. Risk/impact analysis can elude even well meaning actors and resources are squandered. If a hierarchies leaders are flawed through incompetence, naivete, or actively defecting, the hierarchy can suffer and ultimately fail.
If they hear every risk, resources are squandered, but if they miss even one high impact risk, the result is the same. Hierarchies need to get this right. High frequency risks have high currency(social or monetary) rewards for discovery, a feedback loop is naturally created. The low frequency risks are the ones that pose typical systemic threats.
Cults are dangerous because the low frequency risk examination is blocked with ultimate authority, or in other words, physical force. Just like any hierarchy it blocks the disruptions caused by low frequency risks to cut costs (or something worse from corrupt psychopathic defectors) You have been deplatformed, so you can not repair the system, and because it is an ultimate authority, you can not exit it. Traditionally, all non mainstream thinkers are trapped in cult.
This systemic risk has been accepted because of a lack of resources to correct it. Books and widely distributed publications, and the freedom of speech that protected them, have been the only externalities. These publications require enormous resources to utilize them. A lifetime can be spent popularizing a single externality enough that public pressure forces the review of it’s risk. Thanks to technology, this limitation is no longer the case.
The Internet has the power to be the uncult. It can identify the intent of ‘cost cutting’ to ignore or externalize low frequency risks. Risks without feedback loops no longer need to be deplatformed, they can be replatformed. Hierarchies can no longer hide behind natural resource limits. A simple address, redirecting people to low frequency risk resource sites can be employed for no cost, rather than cutting them off all together. Use their old platform to point to their new one. Allowing people to explore the risk for themselves, possibly leading to a failure avoiding fork.
The only coherent argument against this policy in general, is the lack of people’s ability to govern themselves in democracy, which I wholly reject. Democracy works because hierarchy attracts psychopaths and their behavioural spectrum, and the furthest people from that center are the least likely to harbour opportunistic ill intent. Make a personal change, absent clear and present danger, only accept the uncult. Hierarchies that replaform instead of deplatforming. It’s free, so anything less is a rejection of the viability of democracy itself.
Here is a progression of one line axioms to help you understand the nature and risks of cult. Broken down to small pieces to simplify debate. I will update this post as needed. These truths are self evident.
What is faith
Religion and it’s political cousins
Protopsychopathy
Cult
Theocracy
Democracy
Freedom
Edit: Typo.
Edit: Changed ‘outsider coexistence’ to ‘peace with others’ to cult test, for clarity. Non violence is required.
How do we stop psychopaths in government? If we ‘kick their ass’ aka: kill them, it won’t solve the real problem and law will be subverted to societal destruction again. The problem is humans are two behavioral sets, and one of the sets seeks power strictly as an end to itself. This is true if it’s behavioral or genetic(civgene).
We need the power of popular citizen veto. The right to fork is basic human right. Why? Psychopaths will take over ANY system we make because making mistakes, even for the smartest or the wisest, is a required part of learning. That’s how the conscience works. No conscience, no concept of risk, half your decision making power is in the toilet. Those mistakes feed critical data into subconscious risk calculator. Yes a wise person will keep their error impact small, but they still must make them. To err is human, ergo, forgiveness is divine.
The problem with the Austerity/Tea Party solution is the Big Bird(PBS) problem. Not all government spending is negative or useless. Even moments before inevitable economic collapse some new laws still reflect use to the society. This solution (sometimes) can throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead we must reduce the jurisdiction of a law solving the real problem, politicians grabbing power and money for themselves and not sharing aka:unchecked federalization. Psychopaths are adult children, it’s just like taking the toy from jealous children and saying, ‘now I’m going to keep it.’ Likely you don’t want their toy, but now they’ll think REAL hard before not sharing.
This is the essence of legal distribution. The power of popular citizen veto over power politics. If the corrupt abuse their seats to rob the treasury, at least they have to share.
If a law is sane at the largest jurisdiction, it will still be sane at the next smallest (or the next). It lets people closer to a problem separate the wheat from the chaff. Yes you will loose some economy of scale at a smaller jurisdiction, but you will also loose all the corruption in the author’s secret ill intent. That is a choice the citizen of a republic has a right to weigh themselves. The power of the purse strings is gone. Watch the power hungry hem and haw and try to beat the common sense out of your brain on this. National security, they’ll cry. Tyranny of democracy they’ll scream. No. The law will be just as unsafe and unjust as it was when they controlled it directly, but now you know who they are.
Time to let the social ‘marketplace’ of the states or cities shine some sunlight on the dark favoritism of shady republic law.
We are all psychopaths underneath our conscience. Since even low EQ/IQ empaths ace the psychopath variations of wants/abilities/limits with the aid of the metamind, and one third of that is (psychopath ‘abilities’ aka ASPD) we will always be capible of violence.
All animals are violent. It’s not personal. It’s survival. Compared to us they are all psychopaths. We project our love, compassion and empathy all around us. People, animals, plants, inanimate objects. Especially if it has a large head to body ratio and big eyes. A non psychopath human (an empath) can flatten any other selfless act in the animal kingdom to a rounding error in pure scale.
When our conscience/metamind determines that someone/something else doesn’t have a conscience, it sets our inner psychopath loose. Violence becomes many times more likely.
Note that a metapsychopath may have no negative reaction to a moment of external ‘no conscience’ realization. It’s because they have been conditioning their psychopathic self to act on behalf of the conscience, but without it’s typical continuous input. No loss of control occurs as the state of logical selfishness is reached, because it has been reconciled with and serves the temporally dormant metamind. The conscience simply steps back the and empath deals with the situation in strictly rational terms.
The metamind can even be the driving force behind violence. For instance violence in the name of a faith. A conscience can normalize the idea that a particular faith is the only valid demonstration of a person having a conscience. Then it lets the inner psychopath loose and screams, strikes, rapes and kills like a Viking raiding party.
That example is why it’s so important to separate faith from cult. Cult thinks it is the only true path, demonstrated by thinking it is above reproach. If you deviate from it, criticize it, or try to leave it, the conscience of it’s members shut off, and it’s members become temporary psychopaths in the face of a heretic. Sooner or later, violence results.
Why does this not occur with the metapsychopath? Because they are in control of the change. Their rational and metamind are resolved. Usually way in advance through inner work as rationalization and emotional self learning.
The cult is not just a faith but an organization. And organization that programs it’s members into protopsychopaths. The protopsychopath has no control over the change. They see, react, and act.
Faith is critical to the conscience, but it can never be allowed to monopolize it. The worst ASPD psychopath can’t hold a candle to the destructive power of a faithful fanatic with a conscience. For individual action, ruthless self sacrifice is unmatched in our world. The check to prevent faith from leading to protopsychopathy is the recognition that we can only grow emotionally through doubt and mistakes. That knowlage is critical to being in control of ones own conscience.
That’s the difference between a religion and a cult. Both are organizations of faith, but only one disables the individuals ability to control their own conscience.
I’ve written about this topic here several times, but it occurs to me I haven’t properly categorized it. All the appropriate blog posts are under Defense Against Psychopaths.
http://civgene.matthewnewhall.com/archives/category/defense-against-psychopaths
The problem is that category has become quite broad. So I’ve created a new category Defense Against a Psychopath. This is where to go if you’re trying to solve an immediate personal problem.
http://civgene.matthewnewhall.com/archives/category/defense-against-a-psychopath
Here is a quick guide to the new category, so far.
Shunning is key. The problem is no solution will work unless you can identify them BEFORE they take advantage of you. They will succeed unless you know your self
So…
If you can’t shun them keep all interaction public. This is a decent disincentive to anti-social behavior. This is so you never let give them 1. singular authority over data or 2. a supervisor role over another human (including yourself.)
So now it’s
If you want personal help, read the following in order.
I have, I really have. A couple of months ago I posted a great National Geographic video where they clearly lay out that there is no freaking way (to be technical) that the ‘warrior gene’ is a vital component of psychopathy.
http://civgene.matthewnewhall.com/archives/366
In case you didn’t notice you can click on the keywords on the right. You can look at all my thoughts on warrior gene, or any other category in one quick click.
http://civgene.matthewnewhall.com/archives/category/warrior-gene
It certainly could be argued that the lack of the civilization gene and the presence of the ‘warrior gene’ (which should be named the fly off the handle gene or the loose your temper gene) is a lethal combination. Together a psychopath would not only have the predisposition to get an early start on the ego or ASPD developmental stage, but barring both luck (socioeconomic privilege) and high intelligence never leave it’s orbit for sociopathy. A psychopath with the ‘warrior gene’ would be apt to solve EVERYTHING with both his or her body and invent confrontation where little conflict had previously existed. Truly a nightmare criminal in the making.
Please understand that psychopaths are not inherently violent. While their aloof dreamlike view of other humans means the ego stage can be violent, that with understanding and caution, they can live fairly normal lives. The key is both awareness and understanding of challenges that the lack of a metamind presents them with. Treating them like empaths is asking for confrontation, but understanding and accommodating their binary view of other humans, allows for distant but respectful relationships.
Compassion and trust, hopefully not to a fault, is the foundation of civilization itself. Non psychopathic humans are filled with an almost endless fountain of hope and trust, but also with a keen sense of unrealized danger. This strange combination, not just intelligence is what binds us together. When we leave psychopathy and it’s simple minded master/slave social approach behind, civilization will finally dominate mankind. Civilization is the logic of compassion.
Social pressure is our most important soft power. Soft power, creating change through influence and agreement is superior to hard power. It is superior because it embraces both cooperation and competition, leaving the future open for more economies of scale than it’s master/slave cousin hard power. Hard power, using violence and threats to achieve your ends is mainly a competitive power. Yet both are used in hierarchies that are the ultimate authority. Is this evidence of psychopaths abusing their power? In some cases, but just as often it is a reaction to external psychopathic behaviour. A fight fire with fire approach to hard power. Usually pushing productivity gains into the future in order to accomplish better logistics now. Addressing a present danger, real or imagined.
Rigid hierarchies justify all hard power off this dynamic. The supposition is that to protect you from other rigid hierarchies one must be erected/protected now and for us. This may be true at the front line in a hot war, where sheer terror can overwhelm a soldiers mind, but not before or after. The idea that a master/slave relationship must be established to quiet an empaths mind at some unknown critical moment is correct in some of the worst cases but not all of them. Some empaths complete the journey of self knowledge and are able to morally resolve greater purpose (murder versus kill for example.) Completely internalizing the master/slave relationship, with their conscience as the master and their psychopathic self as the slave. Some of the smarter war films like ‘Apocalypse Now’ or ‘Full Metal Jacket’ explore this dynamic.
in a world peppered with psychopaths, empaths with self knowledge, and empaths without it, a rigid hierarchy is necessary to align their personalities in a common ‘can’t fail’ effort against the cases of a real clear and present danger. But what happens if you completely remove all the psychopaths from power over data or other human beings? Just because defaulting to trust is a fundamental economic force doesn’t mean it’s a sensible defence strategy. I think history has shown us otherwise. A world leader could be incorrect or think to have the ethical higher ground and could attack the unprepared countries. What is interesting is the front line. Without the need to create a psychopathic cooperative among the soldiers, you eliminate the need for standing armies and professional soldiers. Periodic training both to help the volunteer part time soldier know themselves (not to be surprised by a shrieking fear of God on the front line for example) and to normalize justified violence in defence of the self and the innocent, you could create a more predictable, less expensive army.
More simply put, you can use the more self-sustaining soft power to prepare soldiers enlisted by whatever means for war part time when the need arises. They can participate in the society economically while bettering their emotional connections with the society they are sworn to defend. Lessening the negative impact of rejoining that society(PTSD/Shell shock) after a war. Having your society of soldiers as your most important society dedicates time and resources to training, but good planning can produce the same result with part time soldiers as well without the economic drain. History can be a guide here. It is dotted with revolutionary soldiers who won, in part because their conscience said they were morally right. Something a psychopath, or a scrutinized psychopathic society, can’t do.