How do you live in a world that rewards psychopaths?
When "fuck this noise" starts to make more sense than doing the sensible thing, people will do wild shit - like electing Trump, again
In the educated lefty political mainstream, there are largely two camps. There are those who are baffled that Trump won a second term, and are wondering what the world is coming to. Then there are those who aren’t surprised at all, even if they hate the actual outcome itself. I fall into the latter, and this does not make me smart, or sophisticated. In fact, it probably means exactly the opposite. It means that I understand the rage, the hatred, the nihilism, and the disillusionment which leads a person to conclude that they’d rather flip the table than continue playing this game.
When I get destructive, I’m not doing so because I think it will me closer to my goals. In fact, I’m not doing much thinking at all. At that point I’m simply pressing a giant “fuck you” button. If I thought I had a better option, I’d take it.
I’ve never met a person who doesn’t want hope, dignity, growth, and a sense of accomplishment. When given a genuine path to these things, most disillusioned people will rabidly consume it like a drink of water in a motivational desert. We see this in the cults of hero-worship that erupt like wildfire in our society, around any person who is charismatic enough of a psycho to actually display some conviction and personality. Peterson. Musk. Trump. The common denominator is that they stand for something, and will say it out loud no matter how many people they piss off. (Whether or not that something is good is up for debate - to make an understatement.)
We have a tragedy of the commons when it comes to mental-modeling around hope, growth, human potential, and redemption. Anybody can carelessly use these words, which defaces their value as concepts to be taken seriously. Trump literally won on the premise that he’s going to make America great again - but is he rhetorically doing anything that the rest of us aren’t guilty of? Look at the abundance of “life coaches” on Instagram, or backyard self-help “gurus” on Tiktok. Corporate, HBR-tinted circle-jerking around performance and achievement carries a particular intellectual stink.
For every church led by someone who genuinely cares about its people, there are fifteen more who are corrupting the mental models of Christianity to advance political and financial interests. For every therapist who is truly doing their best to help their clients become more emotionally capable, there are hundreds more who don’t recognize their own incompetence, and are content to collect a paycheck and spout out whatever they’ve memorized from the DSM. For every manager who is genuinely interested in people and how to motivate them to achieve great things, there are hundreds more who have only taken the job because it was a path to more money and prestige.
In such a world it becomes tempting to reject all outside perspectives and attempt to figure shit out on your own. The problem is that I’m not very smart, and will probably get things terribly wrong. But I’d rather get it terribly wrong via my own misapplied agency, than willingly be an object for someone else’s use.
It’s conventional wisdom that a person with nothing to lose is dangerous. They are dangerous because they cannot be counted on to act rationally. There is no such thing as acting rationally if you do not see any way in which reason and action within a system can be applied to achieve a desired outcome.
Whether this perception is right or wrong is besides the point. Most of us are the cause of 99% of our own problems, but there’s a difference between knowing that intellectually, and actually understanding what needs to change and being able to change it. If we could all do this, we wouldn’t need therapists, nobody would ever get divorced, and there would be no need for a legal system. We would just communicate effectively with each other to solve problems. The world would be a lovely place.
Two things are generally necessary for a relationship to not be pure hell: trust, and effective communication. The presence of both at the same time is the relational equivalent of a unicorn. The presence of one is rare enough, and goes a long way to explaining the endemic nature of loneliness, anger, disillusionment, and nihilism in our society.
If you don’t see these things as endemic, congratulations. You’ve done the hard work to become incredibly well adjusted.
If you do, then the outcome of this election shouldn’t surprise you at all. In a sad, tragic way, it’s reassuring. Maybe you’ve suspected for a while that the world might be a broken, selfish place with no real paths to goodness.1 Maybe you’re tired of trying, and the “fuck you” button is looking awfully tempting right now. You’re certainly not the only one.
#150
I had a brief existential crisis when I found this children’s book (0:24) last weekend, because this fish is a complete psychopath:
[SPOILER] At the end, it is implied that the fish in this book gets eaten by the bigger fish that he stole the hat from.
Is that justice? Should the little thief fish have been given a chance to think about the nature of his actions and redeem himself? Or is the author basically arguing for capital punishment because he thinks psychopaths are stuck that way forever?
Is this what I want the 2-5 year olds of the world to be meditating on?
Won’t they have to meditate on it one day anyway?
AHHHHHHHH