A social history of crime, individualism and violence

When we talk about "crime", it's usually assumed that we all know what we're talking about, but it's also worthwhile reminding ourselves: what do we mean when we talk about "crime"?

"Crime" is the breaking of accepted social rules; or more exactly, the rules that government (and society) has defined as there to protect individuals. In this sense, "criminals" are also, by definition, anti-social i.e. against society and social rules. Crime is an anti-social act.

From a psychological point of view, this explains why psychopaths (who have Anti-Social Personality Disorder) may be responsible for a great deal of society's crime. There is an inherent aspect of individualism (which we could also call Narcissism) in the criminal act, for it means that the perpetrator wishes to do something knowing this is against the inherent rules of society. So, by seeing "crime" as the ultimate expression of malignant narcissism, this helps explain - from a psychological point of view - what is really going on. The individual wants to - if even for a fleeting moment - feel omnipotent. The question is: why does this happen? The "social" aspect of crime is something this article wants to look at in more detail.

The worst crime of all

A casual look through history books tells us that the history of mankind is also a history of violence. The nature of war means that for a "war" to be declared, someone in authority (i.e. an individual) must make that decision.
 "War" is surely the most extreme form of violence one individual can cause: a person in supreme authority has immense social responsibility towards his subjects; equally, given his whim, he can use that authority to cause unparalleled violence. While in modern international law, wars are "illegal" if they are not officially declared, this really makes little difference to the victims. The effect is the same: they are dead in either case. A brief look at the history of wars since the establishment of the ICC tells us that few individuals responsible for the worst violence are ever brought to justice. So the idea that war is somehow more "humane" today than it was a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago is (in many cases) a fallacy - for proof, look no further than the brutal wars that have been carried out in the Congo in the last twenty years, or (most obviously) by ISIS in the present day. Today's wars are carried out overwhelmingly in the "developing world", and these wars differ little in their moral conduct than they did millennia ago.

So "war" can be seen as the most anti-social act of malignant narcissism possible; the expression of an all-powerful individual's will on a population. The idea is that to this warmonger, the nation in question has somehow "offended" him. As wars are about territory or security, it follows that the ruler's brittle and insecure ego is where the desire for war comes from - in other words, narcissism. When we look at the events that led to the First World War, it has often been said that one of the main reasons for it spiralling out of control was due to the psychology of those in authority, such as Kaiser Wilhelm II. A look at history's most famous rulers - from Alexander The Great, through to Genghis Khan, to England's own Henry VIII and Cambodia's Pol Pot, is a look into the psychology of psychopaths and narcissists. History isn't just made by the victors; it's also made by the psychopaths. A look at the life of Stalin is an education in psychopathy.


A social history of crime

As said earlier, if "war" is the most anti-social act possible, then an individual's desire to commit crime is that same psychology on a more localised scale.

It's impossible to understand the motivations behind crime without looking at its social context. It's also impossible to do this without understanding how human society has changed, and also (in the modern day) how human societies change from one part of the world to another, and thus, how the level of crime changes.

It has been noted by researchers that Rhesus monkeys, when in captivity, exhibit greater levels of stress (and therefore violence, and sexual violence) than in the wild. Mankind progressed from being hunter-gatherers to settled agrarians thousands of years ago; this also resulted in people living permanently in close proximity with each other for the first time in their history. Not long after this, cities developed, and cities then built walls. Why? The reason for the walls was simple: war.

As we have seen, war is the ultimate expression of a ruler's will on a population; in the same way that Rhesus monkey's will fight for status and territory when forced to live in captivity, it seems that rulers of cities felt the need to fight war for status and territory; perhaps violence (and therefore "war") was a form of stress relief, which also served as useful for the city's male population.

In the ancient world, judging from records of official tablets, "crime" seems to have been a comparative rarity compared to more recent centuries. What we would today call "community spirit" might also have something to do with it. Individualism in the modern sense of the term is - hence the phrase - a modern concept (more in this later). Ancient societies seem to have been much more minded on each other than themselves. Religion probably had a large part to play in this, in that when  cities had their own gods, they all (even the ruler) felt subservient to a higher (or wider?) purpose. To put it in another way, these ancient societies were less focused on "material life" (the "here-and-now"); life was fleeting in any case due to short life expectancy, so it makes sense that people were more interested in their community as a whole, and also why the men were willing to go to war to defend it.
This also explains why, to modern eyes, this ancient mindset might seem extremely narrow-minded and ignorant; to the city's inhabitants, travel was difficult (even unthinkable due to social obligations) and daily life was about survival and planning for the next winter; thinking beyond that was pointless. So in this sense, "crime" was probably socially-unthinkable in these kinds of small communities as the effect on the criminal (and the city) would be socially-devastating.

This social analysis of crime probably rang true for most of the world until the nature of society began to change. Criminals were still considered something of a social aberration (and thus a source of entertainment when they were hanged); due to comparative difficulty in travel (e.g. with serfdom being widespread), foreigners a source of curiosity and mirth. A community's experience of "crime" would more than likely be through war than through personal experience: someone living in what is now Germany during the Thirty Years War would have had an endlessly-traumatic experience with "crime". But for many people, very little of any significance would happen in their community throughout their life. In many ways, their community was their life.

Society changes the rules

As we know, the human population of the world remained generally static, until it began to rise sharply with the onset of industrialisation and a growth in cities. The nature and frequency of crime seems to have seen a change around the same period.
To be fair, there had been some social changes in many countries prior to industrialisation, such as a relative decline in the role of religion and the rise of the scientific method in the 18th century in the West; some cities, such as London, grew noticably. With this came a gradual shift of culture, towards the individual.
But these were gradual changes. Industrialisation made living in cities and towns necessary for the new economic opportunities of industry to be taken advantage of, and it is this which makes fundamental changes to society.

Industrialisation gave new opportunities for movement of labour and capital; something which had been very difficult in an agrarian society based on static communities. In other words, for people to be successful in this new economy, they had to act more like individuals. It is therefore possible to identify the rapid growth in cities and changes to society as a factor that helps explain the higher frequency of crime; in particular, violence and sex crime. When this social change forced people to act more like individuals, the result was also a rise in crime.
We have already discussed how Rhesus monkeys react badly to captivity. In an insecure and uncomfortable social environment, such as in socially-cramped industrial cities, humans can react in much the same way.

The growth of industrialisation to different parts of the world has often seen much the same trend; a concurrent rise in crime, for the reasons mentioned above. Where this differs from country to country depends on the social structure. Obviously, not all industrialised countries have the same rates of crime: compare, for example, Japan and the USA, or China and Russia.
For the other factor that also seems to be important indicator of crime levels is the extent of what we might call "community spirit". As mentioned before, the "community spirit" that seems to have been a strong element of ancient cultures was a strong indicator of a "pro-social" environment where crime was almost morally-unthinkable. This was probably because those communities were extremely closely-knit and shared a high level of empathy due to their shared experiences, and therefore naturally looked out for each other. In other words, we could call this an ancient form of "crime prevention"!

Scandinavia is industrialised but has low crime levels because its society does not seem to suffer from the "dislocation" that is typical in most industrialised societies. This "dislocation" (or "social alienation") usually comes about through the nature of work: individuals forced to leave their families to get work in the city, for example. This situation is worsened by other factors such as lack of strong government institutions (e.g. a welfare state), which perpetuate higher levels of inequality, and a lack of a family support unit, feeding into the malignant narcissism that can gestate in an individual. When there is no-one there who seems to be there to support you, it takes little for an individual to resort to crime to get what they want.
The key to the problem is one of instability: when a society becomes unstable due to social or economic factors, this seems to breed crime. The complexities that modern industrialised society brings simply compounds that. Countries such as South Africa have extremely high levels of crime partly because of the lack of strong government institutions, gross inequality, and weak family connections. All the devices which can were used as a social form of "crime prevention" - as they were in pre-industrial, traditional societies - are not there. This can also be said (to an extent) of the UK, when comparing crime rates to those of other European countries such as Germany. Scandinavia seems to have few of these problems because of a strong social fabric from both government, the family, and society in general.

In this way, a study of the history of crime is also a study of social change: from traditional, closely-knit societies of the pre-Enlightenment (and pre-Industrial) age to more individualistic and fractured societies that came about through Industrialisation. From a psychological point of view, human society became more self-centred, but also dissatisfied, as it took itself further from its roots.
This social tension is not surprising, given the relatively short time that has passed; our minds have yet to adapt to the fact that we are not hunter-gatherers, and in spite of the advances made in technology and insight, our instincts are fundamentally unchanged. This explains why war is still fought because of the same basic drives for security and territory. At the individual level, this "instinct" explains why some people's desire for individualism (i.e. selfishness) crosses the line into criminal behaviour; they have been unable to discipline these instincts in the setting of the modern city. Like the Rhesus monkeys, they feel both trapped and frustrated by their "urban zoo", and are unable to restrain their urges.

This explains why urban life is more dangerous than country life, and why conservative societies in the modern world tend to have less crime: not because liberal societies are "more permissive" (and therefore "worse", as the reactionary right believe), but simply because what some would call "conservative" culture is also usually community-based rather than individualistic. Small-town and village life is safer because people are more likely to know their neighbours and look out for one another; while city-dwellers might mock this as an insular perspective, it is also fundamentally a more socially-protective one, too, which goes back millennia.
Yet this also raises one of the odd (and fundamental?) contradictions in modern conservatism's embrace of neo-liberalism. Because conservatism is meant to be about "communitarian" values (i.e. about what's best for the family, village, nation etc.), how does the "individualist" spirit of modern economics fit into this? It feels like a square peg in a round hole. No wonder societies like the USA and UK which embrace this contradiction have such social issues. Those nations that have copied that same flawed socio-economic model have developed the same problems with crime: a social model that creates social instability and encourages an amoral form of individualism also increases the risk that those people will become malignant narcissists, and criminals.

In some ways, crime in the UK bears more similarites to those in Russia. As British society has become more unequal, government support less reliable, family units breaking down, working life more insecure and stressful, we can see the effects of this in the crime and violence on Britain's streets. The drugs epidemic which seems to be sweeping through the country (especially its homeless) is surely a result of this variety of social pressures. Russia has experienced the same "social pressures" (albeit in much more extreme manner) since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The same culture of casual violence, petty crime and alcoholism exists in Russia as it does in Britain; the only difference is the question of degree. It would be interesting to make a social (and crime) comparison between the post-industrial cities of Northern England with those in, say, Siberia; the similarities may well be striking.

One wonders what the Rhesus monkeys would do.

Cameron's war on pornography, and the strange destruction of privacy in the 21st century

I wrote a few months ago about the misconception of humanity living in an unprecedented age of freedom. Censorship and the restriction of freedom of speech is alive and well, and is used extensively by the state, the private sector, and the religious fanatics when they can get away with it (which is often).

That misconstrued sense of freedom is further destroyed when you think about the erosion of individual privacy that has taken place over the last twenty years. You need look no further than David Cameron's recent declaration of war on pornography. Here the British Prime Minister wants to introduce control over what British individuals watch on the internet; effectively have people "tagged" as porn users, and ban all forms of child pornography and "violent" pornography.
I'm not here to make a blanket defence of all forms of pornography; instead I'll simply state there being no proven causal link between porn and sex crimes (violent crime has gone down in recent years, and there has never been a coinciding rise in sexual violence with the massive surge in available online porn; besides, if you are going to ban porn, then why not violent movies, and so on). This is just another example of intrusion into individual privacy for the sake of it.

More cynically, it is a blatant piece of opportunist populism for the purposes of diversion. More seriously, it is another weapon of control against the individual.  As a classic tactic of Fascist propaganda, it fits the bill, as Cameron's "war on porn" is a) superficially-popular b) gives greater powers to the government, and c) has only a negligible effect to the actual target of the policy.
Propaganda as a political tool was mastered by the Fascists in the 1920s (which coincided, not coincidentally, with the rise of marketing and advertising as a social tool - more on that later). Fascist tactics are to concentrate power to the central government, while at the same time appearing popular, and having a useful scapegoat. Using "moral panics" about phantom social threats is recurring theme in authoritarianism.

Ever since the widespread use of CCTV across the world began twenty years ago (The UK being the worst offender), privacy has become so eroded in so many ways it's difficult to remember.
CCTV is trumpeted as a great weapon against crime: well, it is true that it theoretically should make it easier for the police to catch criminals after the event, it does little to actually prevent crimes from happening. Even so, most of the cameras installed around the world are not even really used for crime prevention purposes, let alone used by the police. The vast majority of cameras are not owned by the state, but by private companies, who are therefore much less accountable to the public, and the technology much more open for abuse. The fact that we take all this for granted is simply a sign that people have learned to mentally block out the fact that their every move is recorded on cameras mostly owned by private companies.

Apart from the surveillance society, we know that the internet is watched by governments around the world. The Edward Snowden scandal showed us that there are no limits to what the US government is capable of if it is given unchecked power to watch humanity online. The British government is little better. These days, it's better (and more accurate) for people to assume that everything they do online is recorded somewhere, regardless of how trivial or utterly useless the data is. As cynicism has increased as we entered into the 21st century from a more idealistic 20th century, people are no longer surprised that governments flout the law and any individual's rights: as true cynics, many people assume that the worst will happen, most of the time.

While governments around the world gather data on people en masse simply for the sake of it (in case it is useful later), it is private companies who are the some of the worst offenders of all.

Technology has allowed people to communicate as never before; it has therefore also allowed technology companies to gather masses of an individual's communications and data as never before. The most obvious example is "Facebook".
What's worse about this is that private (online) technology companies like Facebook use marketing techniques to gain more and more information on people, to allow individuals to "customise" or "tailor" their personal webpages. People are encouraged to add more and more data to these companies' records for the supposed purpose of giving these individuals a "more complete service"; this is Orwellian Doublespeak at its best, and encourages individuals to freely give information to an unaccountable private company that they would never dream of giving to their government.

This is what makes this erosion of privacy so dangerous. Governments are at least (theoretically) accountable. Private companies are only accountable to their shareholders; no one else. Even worse, the information that individuals do give to these private companies is often shared with government anyway, as the Snowden scandal has exposed. So this makes the whole charade even more absurd.

But the strange erosion of privacy in the 21st century seems to snowball ever larger. The Orwellian dystopia he predicted in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" in many ways already exists. Technology has been used for the purposes of greater and greater surveillance, and people are happy to shrug their shoulders and continue to freely offer up the contents of their lives to private companies like "Facebook"; myself included!

Teenagers and children now raised in the "Facebook and Twitter Generation" think nothing of sharing every thought in their head online, to be recorded for all eternity. Technology and data retention online means that "Facebook" has an even greater hold on your life after your death that even the government; when you die, you no longer exist on the tax records, but you'll always be on "Facebook". You are never dead on the internet.
On a psychological level, part of this generational shift in the attitudes towards privacy may well come down to a more narcissistic attitude of the newest generation - I've said more about this elsewhere. "Facebook" is the kind of online service that appeals to anyone with a weakness for self-promotion. As Individualism has increased in society, especially over the last thirty years, these advances in technology and communications are now being used as vehicles for gathering unprecedented amounts of information on humanity, while at the same time indulging post-modern humanity's joy of Individualistic Narcissism. It is a clever ploy.

As I said earlier, marketing as a social tool coincided with the rise of Fascism. The clever "marketing/propaganda" behind "Facebook" is that feeds the perception of granting people greater scope to express their Individualism/Narcissism, while at the same time sucking masses of data from individuals to a central database, which can be transferred onto government on demand. The Snowden scandal has put meat to the bones of this theory. So this is how Fascism and marketing have fused in the 21st century, through the advances in technology. Whereas Communist/impersonal regimes find it difficult to obtain individuals' data without using coercion, Fascism's symbiotic link to the unregulated private sector means that individuals can be easily persuaded of their own free will to give up their own right to privacy. The Neo-liberal world we are living in is one where Fascism has morphed into something bigger, smarter, and more adaptable than its pre-Second World War origins.

"Privacy" has almost become a dirty word; that is certainly the suggestion implied by Cameron's "war on pornography", and the mass use of technology for sharing information.

If you want to have a private life, it means you must have something to hide!

Adoption, Narcissism and psychopathy

I wrote at the start of the month here about the relationship between family breakdown, the individualist structure of modern society, and narcissism. I said there that there seemed to be conclusive anecdotal and scientific evidence that suggested a link between narcissism formed in early childhood, and the dysfunction of the parental unit.
 In other words, the perceived rise of individualism and the "me" culture in modern society I saw as stemming from the rise of the "baby boom" after the Second World War, and the erosion of the stable family unit/parenting skills. Thus when the parents themselves become narcissistic, the children they raise are bound be be at a higher than average risk of developing the same (or even worse) psychological disorders.

We know now that many psychological disorders, such as narcissism, ASPD and psychopathy, have their origins in early childhood. Narcissism (and psychopathy), apart from any biological factors, stem from an unstable and dysfunctional parental relationship in a child's first years. The issue is even more complicated when the child is an adoptee or foster child.

For decades, adoptions have been seen by many governments as the answer to the problem of unwanted children; either as the result of family poverty, rape, or any number of other social factors. It seems clear that as the level of social instability increases and destroys the family unit (as I mentioned in the previously-related article), the rate unwanted children is bound to increase by a correlating amount.
Adoption was seen by governments and psychologists as providing a stable family environment (provided the parents-to-be were properly screened) that allowed the adoptee the right environment to develop healthily. However, more recent research has revealed a previously-unexplored reality. That although many adopted children do develop normally, an alarmingly-disproportionate number of them develop psychological disorders - such as narcissism, and in extreme cases, psychopathy.

A closer look at the prison population, and the biographies of notorious serial killers, tells us a different story to the one told by government. Many of the most notorious serial killers were adopted children; and the proportion of adoptees in the prison population (and violent offenders) is significantly higher (as much as five times higher) than their proportion of the general population. The fact that adoptees feature so disproportionately in crime statistics is highly revealing, as well as an indictment of the how badly this issue is downplayed.

There are two contributing factors to this trend.
Because adopted children are severed from their biological mother, the damage this does to the baby had been previously-downplayed (partly because of the obvious difficulty of analyzing the psychology of newly-born babies). Lacking a mother's warmth is a huge blow to the infant's needs, and makes it more likely that the baby will become either self-absorbed or worse if not remedied quickly. So from the start, adoptees are psychologically fragile, even before we factor into it the prospective parents.
Next is the psychology of the adopting parents themselves. What is the real motive for them wanting the child? This factor cannot be emphasized strongly enough, and can make the difference between a well-adjusted adoptee, and mal-adjusted one. Adopting parents who want a child for the sake of their own vanity (such as to fill a void in their life, or as a source of love) are running the risk of making the adoptee's psychology even more dysfunctional, and making the likelihood of the child developing narcissistic/psychopathic traits all the more certain. Narcissistic parents and parenting makes the child feel like they are looking after two adult children. Such parents do not really "love" their adopted children, they need them, as a form of Narcissistic Supply. A parent-to-be who already has Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is the last person who should be responsible for the upbringing of an adoptee. As a result, the adoptee's psychology becomes even more self-centred and narcissistic: the worse possible result. If the child is then not given a proper moral grounding either, the child can even develop into a psychopath.
Then there is also the factor of the social conditions of the parents themselves: adopted children raised with parents from a socially-deprived background, regardless of good intentions, may well do more harm than good. As mentioned in the previous post on this issue, social deprivation and economic instability can cause great psychological harm to the already-insecure mental health of an adoptee.

Set with the wrong-minded parents in the wrong social conditions, an adopted child can be akin to a psychological time-bomb. 

This is why emphasis should be put on doing extensive research into the motives and social background of the prospective parents as well as the child, in order to avoid such a situation. Unfortunately, the damage for many has already been done, as any trawl through adoption forums can tell you.

I explained in my article "Individualism, Narcissism and Psychopathy" how modern society has helped to gestate these psychological disorders. Social breakdown creates broken families; broken families create unwanted children; unwanted children can become wanted by insecure and narcissistic "parents"; and the adopted children's psychology becomes even more dysfunctional.

This is a vicious circle, and one that even the UK government is exacerbating. The Education Minister, Micheal Gove (an adopted child, with a personality possibly indicative of some form of narcissism/psychopathy) is eager to make it easier for parents to adopt children. The horrible irony is not lost here: that a man who was an adopted child, and possible psychopath, wishes to make it easier for other adopted children to become potential psychopaths.

Perhaps there is a method to the madness after all.

A more general description of the main attributes of Psychopathy, see here.

Individualism, Narcissism, and psychopathy in modern society

The rise of the culture of individualism has been blamed for the breakdown of the family unit in the Western world over the last forty years. This is nothing new, and there have been many studies done over the years on the subject. I don't want to go over the same ground; instead, I am more interested in the psychological grounding of this trend, and the psychological implications it has had on society, that we can see all around us, under the surface.

I said that individualism has caused the breakdown of the family, but Western society's change began in the "baby boom" generation after the Second World War. That came about at the same time as unprecedented levels of rising prosperity in Western society, allowing children in the West to experience previously-unknown levels of parental attention. By the sixties, this prosperity created a greater emphasis on "self-improvement" and "individual achievement" in children, resulting in a greater degree of people's self-awareness generally. This culture of self-expression and exploration, and a greater tolerance of diversity of thought therefore created an unprecedented level of narcissism in children growing up in this social environment.
As long as this occurred at the same time as a healthy economy, this was not overtly harmful to society. The social culture of the West was radically different by the end of the sixties than what existed ten years previously, and was a direct result of both rising prosperity and rising self-awareness in Western society.
But by the seventies, the economy had become unstable, and one half of the equation (improving social conditions and rising self-awareness) had been destroyed. The effect on society was almost immediate: a culture of rising self-awareness had now grown to one of increasing narcissism, but in an unstable socio-economic climate. The collective psychology of Western society now became more dysfunctional, as an increasingly narcissistic society was unable to properly deal with a change in economic circumstances. The result was more family breakdown, and more crime. Thus children born of narcissistic parents (such as those in the social conditions of the "baby boom" generation) are even more likely to be narcissistic, if not outright psychopathic, when you combine narcissistic parenting with an unstable social environment.

When I talk about "narcissism", we mean Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), which, with Anti-Social Personality Disorder (ASPD), is one half of the psychological conditions required to create Psychopathy. I wrote here about what the medical definition of psychopathy is, as an (until recently) under-examined and virulent psychological plague on society, and how it can be seen as the cause of much of the problems in human society.
Narcissism (NPD) is largely a result of environmental factors: a combination of parental dominance/indifference/excessive adoration and/or abuse in the child's formative years. Instability in the family unit, such as separation and parental conflict also contribute to the problem. Narcissism results from the child's inability to see healthy and suitable psychological support from the parents and elders, as mentioned: the child then begins to see itself as the only reliable place to receive support, becomes self-absorbed and misanthropic. A narcissistic personality sees itself as grandiose, entitled to superior treatment, and abusive towards others it sees as inferior to itself (i.e. everyone), who it sees more as objects to be used rather than real people. A narcissist cannot take criticism easily, and refuses to take responsibility for his own actions; he finds it difficult to focus on one task (be it a job or a relationship) for a long time, as his grandiose nature makes it difficult to "waste" time on what he sees as fruitless pursuits. Cynical towards humankind in general, he finds it hard to trust people, and thus have many real friendships; superficial, his emotions are shallow and not to be taken at face value. In personal relationships, the narcissist uses partners as objects of his own amusement, causing emotional distress and potentially long-last psychological damage.
The above characteristics, when combined with ASPD (Anti-Social Personality Disorder) create the dysfunctional and amoral personality of a psychopath.

The increase in economic instability in the seventies therefore created the knock-on effect of familial instability, exacerbating the conditions suitable for incubating NPD in children. This effect is then multiplied over the generations; parents born of the "baby boom" generation, potentially narcissistic and dysfunctional in their own right, made the likelihood of causing NPD in their children all the more possible. Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence to link the rise in consumerism as part of the modern Capitalist economy over the last forty years with the concurrent reported steep rise in narcissism in society.

The unstable economic climate of the seventies also destroyed the "Post-war Consensus" in the West; Western economies, such at the USA and UK in particular, saw the former Keynesian economic model as discredited. Monetarism, which emphasized the downsizing of government and social bonds, and the emphasis on individualist pursuit, became the new model to follow. While the economy improved over the next twenty-five years in both the USA and UK, the levels of inequality increased to unprecedented levels - the gap between the salary of the average CEO and his workers had increased tenfold in thirty years, while the salary of the average worker had only slightly improved, if at all, in real terms. For those at the bottom ten per cent, their earnings have fallen.

Monetarism, and the moral philosophy of Ayn Rand that inspired it, may even be compared with the economics and ideology of psychopathy put into practice. Psychopaths, because they are amoral, cunning, ambitious and promiscuous, act like a psychological plague on human society; literally spreading their psychopathic seed, and the unstable family conditions required for it to gestate in their offspring, they create more psychopaths in their unloved and misanthropic children.
Psychopaths cause chaos, and want to cause chaos because they gain pleasure and power from it, in equal measure. The Monetarist economic model, and its contemporary successors in the USA and the UK (The Tea Party, formed by the billionaire Koch brothers; and the Conservative government, intent on transforming and shrinking the public sector), is an ideological justification for the destruction of the social unit, and for destroying belief in government overall. 
Like Ayn Rand's ideology, Monetarism justifies itself by saying it advances individual aspiration, innovation  and achievement, like the Capitalist economies of medieval states like the Venetian Republic did, for example. This is a misnomer, and a smokescreen. For a start, the Venetian Republic was much more state-controlled than contemporary capitalists like to admit, as well as creating some progressive social measures to improve society (such as a rudimentary form of "NHS"). Secondly, by focusing on individualism as the primary method of improving the economy and society, it becomes an inherently misanthropic ideology; as all motives are seen through pure self-interest, cynicism in human nature becomes the norm. If people exist to simply get what they can more themselves, the motivation for co-operation decreases.
Ayn Rand argued that co-operation in society only exists through mutual self-interest: companies caring for the wider environment, for example, because they see the long-term benefits. But there is little evidence for this in reality. Companies are far more likely to do the bare minimum to benefit society, and will only behave in an altruistic way when compelled by government instruction; the same is true for individuals when there is no altruist motive. Rand's book, "The Virtue Of Selfishness" makes such counter-intuitive logic (that self-interest benefits society, while altruism destroys it), and turns the moral compass of society on its head. Thus people are poor simply through their own actions, people are made rich through purely their own actions, and charity becomes a counter-productive indulgence (as Ayn Rand thought herself).
Thus caring selflessly for others is akin to stupidity (if not outright evil), and human motive is reduced to pure self-interest: "he's helping me because he wants something, not because he cares about me", for example.

This is why Conservatives always emphasize self-improvement as the best method out of poverty, while conveniently ignoring the natural advantage of the wealth which they were born into. It is no coincidence that Conservatives are more likely to be rich; those that were not already born into comfort and wealth, most likely made their wealth through moral flexibility, if not outright ruthlessness and inhumanity. In other words, they are likely to be Narcissists, if not outright Psychopaths.

An economy based on these principles is most likely to create social inequality and sporadic bouts of  economic chaos, which inevitably benefits those already at the top. The West, especially the USA and UK (where Monetarist policies are at their most virulent), has therefore created an individualist (and more psychopathic) society that is predisposed to perpetuate itself; greater individualism in society, greater family dysfunction, and greater economic instability are all conditions that will create a greater frequency of NPD and Psychopathy in society as a whole, which will create further chaos, and so on.

There is also much that links the psychopathic factors in Capitalism with that of the earlier human hunter-gatherer instinct; and in this sense, Capitalism is simply an adaptation of the hunter-gatherer mentality applied to a higher stage of evolution.

In other words, using this projection, narcissism and psychopathy will continue to grow like a virus throughout Capitalist society as long as the social and economic conditions allow it to.

Morality in the 21st century is an optional extra

In the year 2012, who can we say are humanity's role models? Our politicians? Hollywood celebrities? Religious leaders? Writers? Musicians?

Until the middle of the 19th century, the answer for most of humanity was a simple one: God, Allah, Buddha, or whatever divine figures were relevant to your culture. After a moment's thought, a person may have thought of a living religious figure (priest, imam, or whatever), and then they may have thought about secular humanity, and the leading figures of the time: in the 19th century, where the vast majority of humanity did not experience democracy or free thought, so the moral role that a politician had, even less a "celebrity" was of little relevance to most people's lives.

In 2012, the only parts of the world where religion still holds a significant role in morality are the Middle East/the Muslim world, Africa, India and "Middle America". In all other parts of the world ("liberal" USA, Europe and the rest of the "developed world", China, Russia and South America), humanity is either indifferent about religion's role in morality or ignorant.

So, where does the agnostic rest of humanity get its morality from?

As China is the most populous of these "agnostic" parts of humanity, it makes sense to talk about them first. China gets its morality from Confucius. While Chinese people are atheists and their government officially Communist, their moral philosophy still is based on principles established more than two thousand years ago. The basic premise is "know your place": to conform with the rest of society; see yourself as one part of the seething mass of society as a whole; respect and listen to your elders; maintain the system and hierarchy. These key principles have been used to maintain social and moral order in China ever since, and are a key part of the Chinese mindset. When Westerners go to China and feel like they are in Mars, there is a good reason for this: because the people have maintained an ancient conservatism. They are not interested in democracy (or most of them) because they see it as dangerous; part of this is government-speak, but part of it is also genuine truth.

The morality of the rest of the "agnostic world" could be summarised, for the most part, as an extension of the morality of modified versions of the Capitalist free market. Some parts of the world are more concerned about "society" (such as Europe), whereas others are more concerned about the morality of the "individual" (such as the USA and Russia), but they all broadly adhere to an obedience to moral principles of Capitalism.

You might wonder why I rank Russia and the USA as morally equivalent. It is because since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has replaced its "social" morals with "individual" morals, to such an extent that there is effectively no real safety net against poverty in Russia; as is the same in the USA. Furthermore, this "morality of the individual", in both the USA and Russia, has resulted in a ruthless corruption of society.

In Russia, that corruption permeates almost every level of society, from the top to the bottom. In some parts of Russia it is worse than others (as is the same for much of the rest of the former Soviet Union), but this corruption means that "individual morality" becomes a moral black hole: if no-one follows the rules, then individuals have no incentive to have a "moral code": the only rule is "me".

Many Russians have fled to the USA, which they see as an ideal market-place to put into practise the "dog-eat-dog" psychology they have honed in corrupt-individualist Russia. Although corruption is not as endemic in the USA as Russia, USA has corruption of its own kind, just by another name. It is true that Russians move to the USA because there are objectively fewer hurdles to opportunity (such as low-level corruption), but the USA has its own atrophied elite as it Russia; it is simply older and a little more diverse, including dozens or hundreds of established families that have the real power in the country - the medieval Republic of Venice operated on a similar level for hundreds of years. The fact that a black man with a Kenyan father can become the American President may be an inspiration to others, but it is also worth noting that for all Barack Obama's good intentions, he had to gain the financial support of the elite in order to become a viable candidate. In other words, it suited many of the elite's plans that an articulate, smart black man become President. Why this is, is worth thinking about.

I'll return to the question I asked at the start: who are humanity's role models? Apart from China (which I've already discussed), the average human being in the developed world has very few real role models. I've just mentioned Barack Obama: as it happens, I am quite a big fan of his, but there are important things to remember about his time in office. Apart from restoring some of America's lost respect around the world, at home his achievements have either been stymied by his political enemies (supported by those in the elite who are against him), if not blocked entirely, as well as him receiving continual insults and slurs. It's fair to feel sorry for him in that way, and I do. And yet, because of all this, the financial crisis has gone by with few real lessons being learned, as well as the banks responsible effectively getting away with mass fraud, while at the same time, the average person suffers more than at any time since the Depression in order to pay for it. It's enough to make a decent person's blood boil.

The living role model that most people in the world would agree gives humanity the most inspiration is probably Nelson Mandela. It's worth remembering the reason he was imprisoned for nearly forty years: because he was promoting civil disobedience and strikes by the black population to get equal rights. In other words, he was following the same strategy as Gandhi. Thus when he was released from prison and became President of a free South Africa, the black population expected everything would become better. But it didn't happen, and still hasn't, really. Yes, they have equal rights under law as the whites, but their decades of poverty through lack of opportunity still mean that most of them are effectively second-class citizens, through circumstance if not by law. And also, when Mandela took power, the white elite pressurized him not to do anything else too radical that would frighten away the rich whites from South Africa, so another opportunity was lost. I wonder what kind of conversation Mandela and Obama would have about these types of harsh lessons in political reality.

And forgetting politicians, what about others, the celebrities, who have taken the place of role models? The problem here is that the media are wont to build up celebrities for their own ends, and then when celebrities demonstrate that they are (shock, horror) all too human, knock them back down. In other words, the necessarily symbiotic link between the media and celebrities feeds a selfish, amoral cycle that is fed into our senses on a daily basis.

So if the media are amoral, and most famous people are amoral, and the capitalist elite are amoral, where are the moral guardians?

A footnote here worth mentioning is that the European court just gave the green light to "kettling" by British police. It is also worth remembering that in the UK, as I understand it, you should ask permission from the police to have an organised protest. So in the UK, people can be detained in the open air without human rights for hours on end without charge; at the same time, there no automatic right to freedom of protest.

That's just worth remembering what Syrians are dying for: the same rights that the UK took away. Hypocrisy? Who would have thought it?

How To Raise A Generation Of Psychopaths

In my last post, I talked about why it was wrong to blame "Liberalism" for the August riots, saying that both the left and right who had part of the correct answer.

The left blame social deprivation and government under-investment; the right blame a culture of liberal indulgence. Both are correct, but I want to explain exactly why, and how this creates a psychopathic psychology in some of our youngsters.

Listening to young people who are also from deprived backgrounds, asked why they chose not to get involved in the riots, they shrugged and said "Cos I had good parents, I guess". If you want to hear why it's happening, ask those who choose NOT to do it, then the answer will become clearer.

Listening to parents who choose not to discipline their children, one of them said "Because the government doesn't give me the right to be a proper parent". What this parent means, is that because of a culture that defends the right of the child, the parents feels (and in a legal sense, this could be true) that they are subordinate to the rights of their children.

The extention of the rights of the child is one of the major things (as well as women's rights and the rights of gays and ethnic minorities) that seperates modern times from decades such as the 1950s and earlier, when children were beaten behind closed doors. Some on the right wish for a return to those values; it that would be simplistic and lazy thinking, as it ignores the truth that while for some children raised in that environment it enforced a strong discipline and fear of punishment, it gave a green light to any parent of a violent temper to indulge their weaknesses onto their offspring. So let's not return to that era.

The historic result of that was the "baby boomer" generation, who wanted everything to be better for their children; a harmless enough wish, but not when implemented at a goverment-sanctioned level.

The "rights" pendulum swung to the other extreme, where any teacher was obliged to tell social services of any incident of parental violence reported by children. Furthermore, teachers themselves could be reported for any perceived "violence" in the classroom. Added to that, children are legally immune from effective punishment, and those punishments that exist are more influenced by preventative "behavioral science".

In this environment, with children being told that they are worth more than the earth, and at the same time being protected by law from their own parents, a certain psychology develops in the mind of the child. But more on that later.

I should also mention the fact that since the 1950s, and especially in the last thirty years, the gap between the top ten percent and the bottom ten percent has grown to an unbridgeable gulf. It is therefore not surprising if some of the parents at the bottom therefore think that since the government has taken away their rights as parents and transferred them to their children, they have a common excuse to hand the parenting of their children onto the government themselves, and society in general. So a culture of government dependency is born. And also a culture of lack of responsibility. The children raised in the "sink estates have few real chances at the advancement that has been fed into and encouraged by their parents' generation; the frustration grows, with a psychology of interal all-empowerment and external impotence.

So some parents feel disempowered by the law; some parents use that same sense of disempowerment as an excuse to abrogate on their responsibilities; and many parents feel the need to indulge their children (either because they instinctively feel the need to give a better upbringing than they got themselves, or simply through lazy discipline). Either way, it's the children who are psychologically changed from that.

Add something else to this psychological cocktail: as well as the growing gap between rich and poor (by many estimates, one of the largest in the developed world), there is the change in the moral guide that keeps our culture together; I'm talking about amoral materialist capitalism.

This may seem like an easy target, but it's also a pertinent question. Why did so many teenagers go on a mass looting spree (in the French riots, they burned cars rather than looted, although that may also be because their deprived neighbourhoods had so few shops ready to loot) rather than indulge in other violent activities?

They did so because, as many of them put it, it was their way to stick it to the rich and get their own back. For the past thirty years in particular, British culture has been fed a morality of getting rich by any means; the only key to happiness is to get rich, and get lots of stuff. Some on the left blame Thatcher's long legacy for these riots. Again, that's too simplistic, as I've mentioned in the points above; there are a number of components that all need to be in place, rather like a necessary compound to make a dangerous substance.

They all need to be in place in order for this to happen. But now, in August 2011, it DID happen.

So, to summarise: we created a generation of youngsters, many of whom have no sense of right or wrong; who have a sense all-powerful impunity; who feel conversely angry and disconnected from the success enjoyed by those celebrated in the media, and the false sense of opportunity encouraged by their parents.

In other words, these are the bones of the psychology of a psychopath. They are fearless; boundless; and angry.

This is contemporary Britain's bastard creation: a "lost" generation, disconnected from their parents; disconnected from morality; disconnected from material reality. Their only connection is to their peers, the "gang", and whatever they can grab for themselves. Without role models, the only "role model" is the one they create from fake "media reality".

A Clockwork Orange, come to life.

Ayn Rand: She´s The Devil In Disguise

In a second hand bookshop I recently found a book (published in the 1960s) which was a series of essays in praise of capitalism, by Ayn Rand and a few others.

The most striking thing about her ideas is how they became so popular. Rand was a Russian immigrant who fled the Bolshevik Revolution, and thus became an ardent anti-Communist and arch-capitalist. Considering her traumatic early life experience, it´s not hard to see why.
Her school of thought can be traced through the 20th century to today: from the the actions of financiers that led to the Great Depression; to the formation of the Chicago School; to the establishment of Monetarism and "Reaganomics"; to Newt Gingrich´s "Contract with America" in the 1990s; to the actions of the "Neocons" during the Bush II administration; and finally to the beliefs of the Tea Party.

What all these successive "belief systems" share is a core value that government (and collective action) is by nature evil, and that individuals (human beings) are by nature good. Looking at this viewpoint from a different, moralistic, way: altruism and selflessness (according to Rand´s logic) is precisely what led to Communism, therefore the only way to defeat this "evil" is to abolish government and allow private individuals the right to figure things out for themselves.

From Dante´s description of Lucifer as the fallen angel who fell in love with humanity and loathed the collective moralising of God, Rand´s moral compass seems very close to the beliefs of Lucifer. Because, in essence, it could be argued that Lucifer was humanity´s first model for anarchism: to destroy all things that hold humanity back from the unrelenting pursuit of self.

This, then, is the conclusion of Rand´s creed: the ultimate, individualistic pursuit of selfishness. Rand argues that human progress only happens in societies which are rational and free - by which she means free of government regulation, government welfare (because she sees "welfare" as an intrusion into the lives of individuals) and so on. She argues that all human discovery happened when people were free to pursue their goals free of government influence.
All this sounds idealistic and appealing to an extent (as it is meant to), but it disguises a ruthless truth: that unregulated capitalism in the real world leads inevitably, not to a free market heaven, but to an oligarchic hell. Companies, by their nature, are psychopathic: they care about the profit motive, and are very far from "rational". Short-termism, making a quick buck, cutting corners, downsizing, these are all words that abound in the capitalist world created by the disciples of Ayn Rand like Alan Greenspan and the like. Let´s not forget that now there are only a few major banks left in the USA, thanks to the deregulation that Rand promoted, and created the conditions for the financial crisis. Goldman Sachs is now the primary shareholder of the USA; many of its former employees now run the government, or ran the last one.

So the primary economic model that runs the largest, most important economy in the world, was devised by....well, you know what I mean.