by Joe Kandra, Kathie Malley-Morrison, Pat Daniel
Tag: economic inequality
Psychology’s “Dark Triad” and the Billionaire Class, Part 2
by Roy Eidelson
Psychopathy
The second component of the Dark Triad — psychopathy — refers to a person’s lack of empathy toward others and a tendency to behave in a callous and uncaring manner toward them. Here too, research by psychologists supports the view that, compared to their “lower-class” counterparts, “upper-class” individuals act with less compassion — and also fall short on certain basic skills necessary for building positive connections with other people.
In one experiment, for example, lower-income participants were substantially more willing to take on extra work to help out a distressed research partner than were the upper-income participants. In another study, lower-class participants demonstrated a stronger compassion-related physiological response than did their upper-class counterparts after watching a video of children suffering from cancer. In a related study, the lower-class participants in a stressful interview process showed greater sensitivity and compassion toward their competitors than did the upper-class interviewees. And in an experiment with four-year-old children, those from less wealthy homes behaved more altruistically than those from wealthier homes, donating more of their prize tokens to children they were told were hospitalized.
In other studies, individuals from a lower social class were significantly better than upper-class participants at judging the emotions being portrayed when they were presented with photos of human faces. The researchers concluded that this enhanced ability may reflect the reality that those who are less well-off must rely more on accurately reading their social environment, because they depend more on interpersonal relationships and collaborative efforts in their daily lives. On the other hand, individuals with extensive material resources like today’s super-rich are more likely to find close relationships, especially with people of lesser means, quite unnecessary in their goal-oriented pursuits — and their perspective-taking abilities may suffer as a result.
In the business world, a compassion deficit among members of the billionaire class isn’t very hard to see. For example, rarely do we hear the CEOs of today’s corporate behemoths acknowledge the critical role that they themselves play in blocking upward mobility and financial security for millions of working-class Americans. Most obviously, union-busting and related “right-to-work” efforts suppress the wages and benefits that could dramatically improve the lives of working families. More broadly, despite substantial increases in worker productivity over the past few decades, the super-rich have directed the rewards of economic growth into their own pockets rather than into their employees’ paychecks. Likewise, international trade agreements, written in secret with strong corporate representation, have prioritized protecting profits for huge companies over safeguarding wages, human rights, and the environment. Perhaps this callousness is captured especially well by Amazon’s billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos, who reportedly once described his negotiating approach as similar to “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.”
Narcissism
The third trait of the Dark Triad — narcissism — refers to an individual’s sense of superiority over other people and convictions about personal entitlement to special treatment. Once again, in a diverse set of psychological studies, individuals of higher social class displayed greater levels of narcissism and entitlement than did their less wealthy counterparts.
In one study, for example, participants who rated themselves higher on a measure of socioeconomic status also scored higher on a scale designed to measure psychological entitlement; a sample item from that scale is “I honestly feel I’m just more deserving than others.” Another study instead used a nonverbal measure of entitlement. Participants looked at sets of circles of varying sizes and were asked to identify which size circle best described how they saw themselves compared to others. Those of higher social status picked larger circles as their self-descriptors than did those of lower social status. In a third study that used a behavioral measure of narcissism, upper-class participants were more likely than their lower-class counterparts to make use of a wall mirror before having their photos taken. In a survey study, researchers in Germany directly assessed a sample of very high net-worth individuals. They too found that this group scored higher on a measure of narcissism compared to a separate sample of people of lesser economic means.
In the board room and beyond, the narcissistic super-rich are accustomed to being in charge and to having things their way — unlike those they sometimes refer to as “the little people.” Of course, they don’t necessarily feel fortunate in this regard because, by their own account, they fully deserve all the benefits and privileges bestowed upon them. The special favors they receive are particularly apparent when we consider the corrupting influence of wealth on “equal justice under law,” the hallowed words engraved atop the Supreme Court Building in our nation’s capital. Indeed, unequal treatment runs the gamut from the likelihood of arrest and prosecution to the leniency offered in sentencing. As one example of these unwritten norms, wealthy tax cheats have developed a broad repertoire of arguments — based on notions of personal superiority — for why they should receive a light sentence or no sentence at all after being caught, prosecuted, and found guilty (all rarities in their own right). Their farfetched justifications — which some judges nevertheless find persuasive — include all of the following: they’ve already suffered sufficient public humiliation for their misdeeds; although they cheated, they’ve also been generous in their charitable donations; the fines they’ve paid were sufficiently punitive; and their status as “job creators” makes it unwise to remove them from the community and put them behind bars.
Note from KMM: Pegean says, Narcissism? Narcissist? Where have i heard those words before? Somewhere in this blog….
Through the Looking Glass and Under the Facade
By George Cooper:
Assuming she could get a visa, a visitor to the US from abroad would find, with some exceptions, a prosperous country with friendly, gregarious, and industrious people. She would see occasional political bumper stickers on cars and trucks and a few residual political yard signs. Conversations in coffee shops might indicate whether she was in a blue or red area. But, if she stayed away from cable news, she would likely come away thinking that America is doing well.
Underlying this façade are deep fissures. Many, justifiably, feel left behind in an economy where a disproportionate amount of wealth flows to those who already have the most. Tepid growth in wages leaves most people with little to show for their efforts. Some can keep pace financially, but far too many are falling inexorably behind. For them, the American Dream appears out of reach.
Distrust is rampant. Distrust of government, distrust of the media, distrust of foreigners, and– most concerning–a distrust of one’s fellow citizens. Demagoguery, along with coarse and fallacious public discourse, encourage this distrust.
Most agree with the statement: “Our country is going in the wrong direction.” Agreement ends abruptly there. The “wrong” direction is entirely different depending on whether one breaks to the right or left politically. Rampant tribalism encourages a stiffening of views enhanced by one’s echo chamber of choice and the respective bubble in which one lives. Technology has played a significant, yet little understood, role in this. Virtually everyone can become a talking head, myself as a point in case. Add bots and trolls to the equation, and you have a seething maelstrom of genuinely held views alongside the mischief spread by said bots and trolls, creating a witches brew of epic discontent.
What divides us can be distilled down to the politically toxic trifecta of money, religion, and guns. These are the three pillars of twenty-first century American tribalism; currently, there is no end in sight to their destructiveness.
America has perhaps never seen itself as others do. Maybe that’s why we so little understand the rest of the world. No doubt, America is going through a rough patch. Which reminds me of the pithy line, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” We will, but we won’t be the same on the other side.
Tell us: What are you wondering about? Where will be if our hypothetical visitor see us in ten years’ time? Still heading straight for hell, or on another path?
Note from Kathie MM: Article republished with permission. Visit George at www.NotesfromAcrossthePond.com
TO EDUCATE OR IGNORATE: That is The Question
by Guest Author Stefan Schindler
“Fascism ought more rightly to be called corporatism, since it embodies the fusion of state and corporate power.”
Benito Mussolini
“That’s how wars start. Politicians lie to journalists, then believe what they read.”
Karl Kraus
“America’s flag should be a skull and crossbones.”
Mark Twain
To manipulate, ignorate, stupefy, distort and deceive – such is the primary function of America’s mainstream news media, political establishment, and compulsory system of miseducation. George Carlin declared: “That’s why they call it the American dream. You have to be asleep to believe it.”
The Weapons of Mass Dysfunction employed by the national security state and corporate elite have also infected America’s colleges and universities. How else to explain the explosion of high-paid bureaucrats, the implosion of student minds, a 50% faculty of adjunct teachers with slave-labor wages, the astronomical rise in tuition, collective student debt now more than a trillion dollars, and the graduated lunatics who assume positions of political power?
Gore Vidal once observed that in the United States of Amnesia, “words are used to confuse so that citizens vote against their own best interest.”
Recalling Plato’s cave parable, Howard Zinn observed: “The truth is so often the opposite of what we are told that we can no longer turn our heads around far enough to see it.”
Noam Chomsky adds the koan-like conclusion: “The problem is not that people don’t know; it’s that they don’t know they don’t know.”
Did I use the verb “ignorate” in my opening sentence? Yes indeed. We have the word “educate.” Why not “ignorate” – especially if it names the fundamental rot at the core of American politics and culture?
Of course, not all graduates are historically illiterate and ethically warped. Great teachers, informed writers, astute students, ethical businessmen and women, brilliant artists, morally authentic political activists and office holders – they are by no means absent in American society.
From William James and Mark Twain to I. F. Stone and Martin Luther King; from Mother Jones and Emma Goldman to Hellen Keller and Dorothy Day; from Woody Guthrie and Lenny Bruce to Dalton Trumbo and James Baldwin; from Sam Cooke and Muhammad Ali to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan – the United States has always had its politically enlightened rebels. Of course, they don’t agree on everything. But they are independent thinkers, and they do follow in the footsteps of Thomas Paine.
Nevertheless, their ideas are mostly drowned-out by the blizzard of epistemological confetti blown relentlessly at the American populace by mainstream news, ubiquitous advertising, and pseudo-“conservative” talk radio. Result? An American economic apartheid more egregious than the Roaring Twenties that led to the Great Depression and World War Two.
What is to be done?
In addition to dismantling the American empire – the largest empire in world history, with a thousand military bases scattered across the globe – we can start by integrating “ignorate” into our educational and collective vocabulary, as a way of diagnosing the linguistic poison that more or less began with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, was perfected and championed by Newt Gingrich, and climaxed in George W. Bush and Donald Trump, generating the divisive sophistry that went unchallenged and was silently sanctioned by Republican Lite (i.e., the almost equally soulless Democratic Party).
In addition to “ignorate,” we also need to employ the word “interbeing.”
Interbeing names the socially relevant discovery of quantum physics: All things are thing-events, and all thing-events are interconnected, interdependent, interpenetrating. To be is to interbe.
This was illustrated by Chief Seattle when he said: “What we do to the earth we do to ourselves.”
Interbeing was also long ago affirmed by Socrates, Jesus and Buddha when they said that what we do to others we do to ourselves. Hence they recommended a pragmatic path to the Peaceable Kingdom by the individual and collective practice of the Golden Rule at the heart of the Torah: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
If we commit to moving in that direction, we could inaugurate an educational and political revolution that would light the world.
Bio: A graduate of Dickinson College, guest author Stefan Schindler taught philosophy, psychology and religion for 40 years at institutions of higher learning, including The University of Pennsylvania, La Salle University, Berklee College of Music, and the Boston and Brookline Centers for Adult Education. Co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a recipient of The Boston Baha’i Peace Award, and a Trustee of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey Foundation, Dr. Schindler received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College, worked one summer in a nature preserve, lived in a Zen temple for a year, did the pilot’s voice in a claymation video of St. Exupery’s The Little Prince, acted in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and performed as a musical poet in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City. He also wrote The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Awards for Howard Zinn and John Lennon. He is now semi-retired and living in Salem, Massachusetts.