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Jon Roland explains how sociopaths come to power more than normal people do. With Lela Pittenger. Austin Constitution Meetup Jan. 25, 2010.
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0:00
but it just goes to show how things work
0:02
in
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Washington and I I'd have to say too
0:06
that most of the gals weren't really
0:08
that
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attractive they were kind of attractive
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in a uh certain sort of way a CD kind of
0:16
way no CD is not really the word for it
0:20
they were they tended to be very smart
0:23
good
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conversationist they weren't cosmog
0:26
glamorous right uh they were more
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um
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interesting I put
0:34
it um but they could be very sexy when
0:37
they wanted to be and I saw them turning
0:39
it on and I said
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okay you know I don't know how far
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that's going to go but she's not leaving
0:46
with me
0:48
so it's going nowhere with you but
0:50
someone went somewhere yeah I was just a
0:54
convenient guy fair
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enough but it it it was it was really an
1:00
interesting Social
1:02
Scene uh disturbing kind of like a train
1:06
wreck where you know you should look
1:08
away but at the same time you
1:10
can't well the fact is it was power MH
1:14
and power attracts a certain kind of
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people I found a lot of
1:21
sociopaths uh I've learned to recognize
1:24
them uh fact I sort of learned to
1:27
recognize them in that environment
1:31
um sociopaths as you know are people
1:34
with no
1:36
conscience and yet they are fully
1:37
functional they can get along with other
1:39
people they can be very manipulative
1:42
very Charming but they really don't care
1:46
about where they hurt other
1:48
people they're probably not sadists
1:51
sadists are a different kind of so
1:54
psychopath so they don't really enjoy
1:56
hurting anybody but they don't care
1:57
either
2:00
a very very high proportion of the
2:04
people who rise to public office in this
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country and other countries for that
2:08
matter are
2:11
sociopaths they are tend to be
2:13
particularly good at making
2:16
connections and they even appreciate
2:19
other sociopaths I mean the sociopaths
2:22
tend to flock
2:24
together so uh they can be very
2:28
effective once you know they flock and
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they form
2:33
relationships to uh putting one another
2:36
in key positions with mutual goals
2:40
yeah now it's so these relationships
2:44
tend to be unstable because you can't
2:46
trust
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them uh no they can't trust one another
2:51
right and so they might be bought but
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they don't stay bought as expression
2:57
goes uh that I also found
3:01
disturbing because I don't really didn't
3:04
like the idea that our country and our
3:09
the lives of our children were in the
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hands of people who really didn't care
3:13
right about other human beings they
3:16
could act the part they were often very
3:20
convincing but there were little moments
3:22
when their true nature came out right in
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conversation or in other ways and uh so
3:30
I learned to spot
3:32
them and to appreciate the the ones who
3:35
the exceptions to
3:37
that
3:39
um but there weren't very
3:41
many now contrary to popular impression
3:46
sociopathy is not an onor yet either or
3:51
proposition it's a matter of
3:54
degree so most people who lack a
3:57
conscience have a little bit of cons
4:00
ience they're limits to how far they'll
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go to allow other people to be
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heard um what usually happens with most
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is they distance themselves from other
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human
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beings they might have a conscience for
4:17
their immediate
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family their wife their kids their dog
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and so forth but once it gets beyond
4:26
that immediate circle humans just become
4:29
abstract
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actions and it's sort of like a lot of
4:34
people might feel about a disaster in
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Haiti or elsewhere by the way try to
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help the poor people in
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ha
4:44
um
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people can look at a suffering on a TV
4:50
screen and it doesn't register with
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them it's just an
4:56
abstraction whereas if they had it right
4:58
in front of them they would respond to
5:00
it so that's a kind of sociopathy too
5:04
and let me ask you when you have studied
5:07
this on your own would you say that our
5:10
society over maybe the last 25
5:14
years have we enabled or created more
5:18
sociopaths through things like the vast
5:21
amount of violence in television and
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entertainment the degradation of both
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sexes through music and entertainment do
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you think that Fosters an atmosphere
5:32
that we will have a greater number of
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sociopaths because they've been so
5:35
exposed to it and and pain and suffering
5:37
of others doesn't seem to be a real
5:40
concept I don't think we've probably
5:43
increased the number of genetic
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sociopaths those who have you know
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neurological flaws cing it but I think
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we probably desensitized people and thus
5:56
increased this uh
6:00
uh partial
6:02
sociopathy so of course that's problem
6:05
itself the effect is the
6:07
same
6:09
um the
6:12
solution is to get out and engage
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people in situations where your
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conscience can be
6:22
developed uh when I was a kid growing
6:25
up I didn't just intermingle with my
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uh immediate
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family uh the standard those days we
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didn't have you know Public
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Welfare so for example we had old people
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that we took care
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of they old people were kind of parceled
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Out Among younger
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families and if you of course they might
6:51
be a
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relative uh a grandmother grandfather
6:55
like you're doing with your with yours
6:58
but sometimes they wouldn't be there are
7:00
people who didn't have kids didn't have
7:02
any relatives just were in need yeah so
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this tended to be organized by the
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churches but what they do is they say
7:09
well this old person needs somebody to
7:11
look after them and you know could you
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do you look after them and so in this
7:17
process uh the whole Community tended to
7:21
get the old people and infirm and
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another tended not just old
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people um uh s
7:30
to somebody so they wouldn't be
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completely alone now in most cases they
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had uh you know pensions or social
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security or something to to pay the you
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know the bills but usually that wasn't
7:44
enough you still had to look after them
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right make sure they were okay visit
7:48
them say how they were doing that kind
7:50
of thing which is not a culture we have
7:52
today yeah and I watched that collapse
7:56
what do you think was what do you think
7:58
led to that collapse
8:00
television okay I saw the onset of it
8:03
starting by
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1952 before that on a typical evening
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people were out walking around visiting
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connecting yeah connecting you know at
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the social level uh everybody knew
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everybody small
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town uh once the tube got turned
8:23
on people withdrew into their houses and
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the streets became deserted I've also
8:29
heard someone say that we also became a
8:33
garage Society where at one time when
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your car was parked in your driveway
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you'd get out and you'd interact with
8:40
your neighbors but now we can pull into
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a garage close the door and shut the
8:44
neighborhood out even in an even greater
8:47
way well I don't know about that
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mechanism what I've generally observed
8:52
is people who start with garages fill
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them with stuff that becomes storage
8:57
sheds and and the car stays out
9:01
well hopefully that would work in our
9:02
favor right but definitely turning on
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the television and also maybe a society
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that has your mobile entertainment that
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you can put your earbuds in your ears
9:13
and shut out everyone on the bus the
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train in your own family car in your own
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home we've become increasingly isolated
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thus leading to a cultivated
9:26
sociopathy yeah and uh guy wrote a book
9:29
about it a few years ago they call
9:31
Bowling
9:32
[Laughter]
9:34
alone uh he he used a study of uh
9:40
bowling leagues as a way of bringing out
9:43
this
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sociological
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phenomena he examined the course over
9:51
the course of history bowling leagues
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and how they declined in number of
9:56
members until he got to the point where
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there were no more bowling leagues there
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were just a bunch of individuals bowling
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by themselves