Charming Devils

There’s a new movie out, The Corporation, that manages to skirt the issue of the psychopathology of corporatism.

You don’t have to be a sociopath to work here but it helps? Here’s a quick trick: “enter suitopath” into Google and you get “Did you mean: sociopaths“.

It seems a simple notion to me that within organizations where the drive to succeed without remorse and without any moral sentiments, those human cogs who are similarly devoid of remorse and moral sentiments will tend to succeed more frequently than other cogs encumbered with burdens such as empathy and conscience.

Of course, the idea of the corporation-as-psychopath goes back a few years, and has gained in popularity as the media fad for serial killers and other moral panic ghouls swelled during the 90s.

Robert “Mr Psychopath” Hare’s classic Without Conscience had this to say on the subject of sociopaths/psychopaths:

There are at least 2 million psychopaths in North America … the prevalence of psychopathy in our society is about the same as that of schizophrenia … many psychopaths are criminals, but many others remain out of prison, using their charm and chameleonlike abilities to cut a wide swath through society.

They exhibit a cluster of distinctive personality traits, the most significant of which is an utter lack of conscience. They also have huge egos, short tempers, and an appetite for excitement — a dangerous mix.

If that doesn’t describe some extremely charming-yet-ruthless CEOs and marketing types that I’ve run across then I don’t know what else could do a better job.

Hare even got some PR a couple years back by urging mandatory screening of CEOs for psychopathic tendencies, using his copyrighted diagnostic utilities, of course.

Finally, in his first book The Theory of Moral Sentiments (that preceded Wealth of Nations), Adam Smith refused to believe that there could be amoral psychopathic individuals operating within capitalism who were devoid of such moral sensibility as he felt was an essential part of human nature. Thus, it is implicit in his ideology of unfettered capitalism that corporations are governed by non-psychopathic personalities. And therein lies the flaw in the idea of enlightened self interest and markets unregulated by the people for the common good.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrows of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or the humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.