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Comment by AlexCoventry

2 days ago

How do you reliably prevent a clever psychopath who's set their mind to it from gaining power?

That is the question worth focusing all the available energy and enthusiasm that is always somewhere else, but never at the humankind's worst problem.

I think the answer could arise from a widely growing understanding of

a) the methods of mass manipulation. Without manipulation, or outright mass hypnosis, no dictator is possible;

b) the whole structure of power, and the fact that there are numerous barriers to filter out all non-psychopaths along the way to the top, with multiple checkpoints where an ever increasing degree of corruption and depravity must be demonstrated to the controllers.

But even a) alone should be sufficient.

  • Where there are simians, there is war. The more primitive the society, the bloodier and more total the war is. I wish our problem were psychopaths in power, but the truth is we are a tribal and fearful species and war is in our genes. It's as certain as a sunrise as long as there are humans.

    • This is the goto excuse, or mantra if you will, deeply programmed into people by those who need cannon fodder to protect heaps of loot robbed from said fodder.

      "We". "War is in our genes".

      Start with "me". Do I need war? Do I want war?

      Do I have something that differentiates me from a simian?

      To bear a reasoning mind, and have a heart that is capable of love, and still to appeal to the animal foundation is a total betrayal of everything that makes you not just yet another animal.

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