The Answers.

As societies we’ve known for centuries that power corrupts and introduced democracy to limit its effect. Over those centuries psychopaths have leant to overcome it by forming two psychopathic groups for the public to choose from. It simply becomes a two or three-headed mutation of a one headed dictatorship. Or psychopaths in the non-democratic elite of commerce and the media join together to psychopath-ise government. We must remember that psychopathy is a latent trait in all humans that can become sociopathic under certain circumstances. It is not a personal failing, a rational choice of deception, cruelty or criminality but a creeping change in cognitive processing due to those circumstances. It is not appropriate to lord them then execute them, we need to change the circumstance. It’s as ridiculous as giving a person mind altering drugs then indicting them for believing they’re Napoleon. The real criminality is providing the drugs in the first place. But the fact remains we do need governance. In our current paradigm governance is responsibility is elitism is power is isolation is omniscience. Each follows the other like an inexorable line of elephants. The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protesters under this paradigm can be easily dismissed as having no leader, no proposals etc. What a bunch of brainless powerless losers. But their underlying phenomenology is so different it produces an unfathomable, confusing and frightening picture. We must surely build a new house before moving out of the old one. But this one is like moving from Downton Abbey into a compact sustainable self-build. OMG! Lets take the elephants one by one. Responsibility is for one’s own functioning not ‘for’ other people. Elitism cannot occur if responsibility is restricted to self-function, ‘how well do (you think) I contribute?’ The mindset of contribution, giving, does not fit with the mindset of power, which is taking, but then most current politicians espouse motivations of giving, supporting and providing without being particularly motivated by them. This is perhaps a result of the next elephant, isolation. Isolation provides fertile ground for misguided conjecture. For example in isolation greed can be appealing, a victimless objective, but with the consistent direct experiencing of its consequences a more realistic view can be maintained. The Wall Street protesters by camping outside its financial institutions are, as best they can, making this happen. To enact a policy of requiring direct experience as illustrated by TV programs like Secret Millionaire and The Shop Floor there would be benefits to governance as well as the personal well-being of all concerned. And finally omniscience. This whole structure is founded on a hierarchy of ‘knowing’, not the knowing of some scientific law but the individual knowing of the individual. This is merely conjecture. Here again the psychopathic tendency needs to be quelled, biffed on the nose. At the beginning of the Iraq war millions of British citizens protested but the government ‘knew’ best. Even without raw factual information the population ‘knew’ better. My proposal would be a new discipline within or adjacent to government tasked to provide independent, unbiased information and analysis to the public and for the public’s response to constitute a percentage, say 50%, of the vote in parliament. In all these things there appears a need for a paradigm shift to counteract the psychopathic clubs emerging at the top of all our major institutions. We need to do something if not for our sake for theirs.