Time or Understanding

Marlene,
(taken from a LinkedIn discussion on the White House group http://lnkd.in/9qvnNj )

How many ways has this been said? And by how many people? Is the answer simply reflection? Or is it some structural change?

Your post refers to the Moral Molecule, psychopaths and sociopaths. The references discuss all of those topics along with narcissism.
The problem is two fold:
 ♦ The words psychopath, sociopath and narcissist are meaningless buzzwords to most people.
 The terms are understood to be negative, somehow, but what do they really mean? Or do they all mean the same thing? Do the terms describe different aspects of the same mental disorder? -- Because most people cannot answer these questions, the terms drift into cognitive dissonance.
 ♦ Is there enough time to make the changes that seem necessary?

Over 35 years ago, I submitted an essay to my teachers relating the fact that people think in dichotomies and models. I was just a high school student in a small California high school.

Essentially, the paper said people's perceptions are not one-sided. For every Yes, there's a No; for every black, a white. I argued that language tended to describe only one side of a discussion without becoming bogged down, overwhelmed by volume, and was inadequate to describe the whole meaning of an issue as the author or speaker perceived it.
I put forward the idea that the real meaning of any words required some statement about the perspective and experience relating to the development of the topics and ideas discussed in order to understand the dichotomies involved.

The most controversial idea in the essay was the people do say what they mean. In fact, because there is always a dichotomy involved, the apparent meaning has both meanings: affirmation and the opposite.

Therefore, people often say one thing and do another, but it's unfair to expect anything different.
I went on to say that people form models from these dichotomies that are applied to other issues. In order to understand a person's words, it was necessary to understand the models they had formed.

You can imagine how my high school literature teacher, who was teaching from Shakespeare's plays, reacted.

What I didn't realize is I was talking about aspects of pathological thinking; that the models became ideologies which serve to allow the person to place any sense of conscience into mental bins of denial or cognitive dissonance. In effect, the person is training themselves into mental illness.
We call that training personality.

We admire those who walk the talk because it is rare.
Most people say one thing, or many things, charming and evocatively, but will do something anathema to their words. It's not just individuals. It's groups and parties and nations that do the same thing.
It's human nature.

 Game theory offers an interesting insight. (from a link off the pages you refer to)
 ◄In short, in this game, the government always does better by not being ethical and we can predict the government's choice of strategy because there is a single strategy - no ethics - that is better for the government no matter what choice the public makes. This is a "strictly dominant strategy," or a strategy that is the best choice for the player no matter what choices are made by the other player.

What is even worse is the fact that the public is PENALIZED for behaving ethically. Since we know that the government, in the above regime, will never behave ethically because it is the dominant strategy, we find that ethical behavior on the part of the public actually costs MORE than unethical behavior.◄
Official Culture - A Natural State of Psychopathy?
 by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
 http://bit.ly/rQmYce

 The concepts are not new. They go back to the beginnings of civilization.
◄(T)he warnings of Innanni (Ishtar) from ancient Suma, 5500 years ago.
 ====
 (T)he goddess Innanna brought the arts of civilization from the god of wisdom, Enku Eridu, like a Pandora's box
 Here were the delights of society exquisite craftsmanship, beautiful clothes, the arts of sex and music, But civilization has a darker side. said Enki, which has to be accepted along with the good. There is the art of being mighty; the art of being kind; the art of straightforwardness; the art of deceit; the art of kingship, justice, and the enduring crown; the resounding note of a musical instrument; the rejoicing of the harp; the kindling of strife; the plundering of cities; the setting off of lamentations.

Fear, pity, terror - all this is civilization, said the god of wisdom. All this I give you. And you must take it all with no argument. And once taken, you cannot give it back. ◄

 This is from TechRepublic today.
 ◄That’s why the premise of The Sociopath Next Door, a book by Martha Stout, gives me the major creeps. Stout claims that as many as 4% of the population are conscienceless sociopaths who have no empathy or affectionate feelings for humans or animals. Sociopaths (or the more politically correct term, someone with antisocial personality disorder) show a lack of regret in their actions, with a common trait being the violation of the rights of others.

This book was brought to my attention by a friend of mine in response to my telling her about one of my son’s friends being bullied at work by her boss. I don’t know if Stout’s 4% metric is accurate but I know that I hear an awful lot from readers of this blog who are dealing with bosses that I believe could be characterized as sociopaths.◄
Your boss could be a sociopath. No, really.
 TechRepublic
 http://tek.io/uGQvGi

 ♦Evil Genes 
It's not just the 4% who have the sociopath gene that's the real problem. It's the fact that people have learned the advantages of this model of behavior, and train themselves to it.

We call these people 'leaders', 'visionaries', and 'professionals'. Subject the concept of professional to the merest scrutiny and you can see the concept is sociopathic. In fact, narcissistic.

In short, we reward and admire most in our society that learn to lie best: lawyers, actors, and salespeople. 

Based on the reception my essay got and the 5500-year old warning from Ishtar, is it realistic to assume there is time to make the changes you propose?