21

Documentary: I am fishhead – are corporate leaders egotistical psychopaths?

This documentary raises some interesting questions, but ultimately does not go far enough in exploring how society’s current structures tend to reward social irresponsibility and encourage the placement of non-empathetic, ruthless and emotionally impaired people in positions of authority, not simply in the business and banking world but in government. Still well worth watching for Peter Coyote’s masterly opening piece to camera, even if nothing else hits quite as hard as it should.


SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN

If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.

For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.

Categories: documentaries, latest
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

21 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
vexarb
vexarb
Jan 16, 2018 5:07 AM

@Harry & nomad, re success of psychopaths in corporations. “There are no more Tories in England, there are only Liberals and corporate fascists”. — George Orwell

nomad
nomad
Jan 14, 2018 4:26 PM

“They walk among us. On the outside. they’re just like you and me, but on the inside they are unfeeling automatons who care only for themselves. They are the psychopaths, and they are in control of our governments, our corporations, our military and all of the positions of power.
via Our Leaders Are Psychopaths — The Corbett Report
https://www.corbettreport.com/our-leaders-are-psychopaths/

Schlüter
Schlüter
Jan 13, 2018 9:14 PM

The Power Elite is mostly consisting of “Fishheads”. And their CIA programs proove it!
“Mkultra Alive? An Alarm Call”: https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/mkultra-alive-an-alarm-call-mkultra-lebt-ein-alarmruf/
Weekend regards

Harry Stotle
Harry Stotle
Jan 13, 2018 6:31 PM

Here is the link to Babiek, et als, paper (20i0) – ‘Corporate Psychopathy: Talking the Walk’ https://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/babiak2010.pdf These researchers conclude, ‘results provide evidence that a high level of psychopathic traits does not necessarily impede progress and advancement in corporate organizations (cf., Babiak & Hare, 2006). Most of the participants with high psychopathy scores held high-ranking executive positions, and their companies had invited them to participate in management development programs. This was in spite of negative performance reviews and other 360 data that were in the hands of corporate decision makers.’ The study sample was taken from 7 companies, ranging in size from 150 to over 40,000 people worldwide. Four of the companies were global, but only their U.S. branches were included. The companies were scattered across the U.S.; four located along the eastern seaboard, one in the south, and two in locations across the country. The participants consisted of 203… Read more »

vexarb
vexarb
Jan 13, 2018 11:28 AM

Ivan Ilyin on Contemplative Love. Just now discovered him via the Saker. I cannot read Russian and know only fragments of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekov, Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn; nevertheless I would place him up there with them — and with the great Russion theorist of cooperative evolution Kropotkin. Their common theme is the creative power of love which is strongest when it works through weak and fallible creatures. One headline on a search engine calls him Putin’s Philoosopher. This I can well believe, having long ago concluded that Putin is one of the tiny handful of world leaders who are not running a psychopathologically criminal regime.
http://thesaker.is/ivan-ilyin-on-contemplative-love/

BigB
BigB
Jan 13, 2018 2:53 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Vexarb: How horrible is the life of a man who has been separated from this gift [love]! What a void, what depravity his life turns into! Yes, there is not much love in people. They have excluded it from their cultural behaviour, from science, from faith, from art, from ethics, from politics, and from education. And, as a result, modern humanity has entered a spiritual crisis, unheard of in its depth and scope. Much as I was trying to say below, only more eloquent. Thanks for the link. Since I read E F Schumacher way back when: I’ve long thought that love capital (or empathy capital: much the same thing …as empathy engenders love) is the only real viable unit of currency for our economy and ecology. That would truly be worth valorising and the profits of love being “owned” (as a common resource) and distributed socially? Meanwhile, back in… Read more »

Brian Steere
Brian Steere
Jan 13, 2018 10:03 AM

Personality fragments re-enact a hated, feared and denied past, and operate as a diversionary covering over where the problem belongs and where – only where – it can be resolved, rather than repackaged. Rationalisations are not aligned with Reason of a true sanity. They are defences against feelings that cannot yet be faced. And so insane ‘rationalisations’ protect the system of order imposed upon feared or hated life. A death system that operates the sacrifice of a true life while seeming to empower and protect a slave. This substitution for life learns survival in growing the mask that hides. The smile, the sympathy, the concern, the outrage, all operate within the mask. If the mask is threatened with exposure, a facet of the masking will be sacrificed to protect the whole. And so some forms of lovelessness are targeted with special attention while others remain socially approved or endorsed… for… Read more »

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Jan 13, 2018 12:32 AM

We are not born with a personality (persona meaning mask). We develop one through our interactions with those around us. If those around us are struggling with their masks, we can catch their dis-ease.
Psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists live entirely behind their masks, they have no ‘character’, only persona. The masks they wear deflects/repels any love that comes their way. People with character can feel Love.
Those who are not consumed by their masks are looking for Truth and purpose.
Thus we have religion, capitalism, communism, hedonism and even atheism.
Connectedness is a psychologists way of saying Love.
We can be sure that a high percentage of those amongst the One Per Cent live entirely behind their masks.
Building a fortune leaves no time for Love.

Brian Steere
Brian Steere
Jan 13, 2018 10:31 AM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

Indeed we cannot enter the human experience without living through separation trauma, and growing, inheriting, imbibing and identifying in the mask of defence that enables ‘survival’ within the framing of loveless power. The entanglement of separation drama – ie: in the triangle of victim, perpetrator and saviour, plays out as ‘power struggle’. But also as rage fed vengeance, cold hearted refusal and rejection, of a set mind. The mask is many layered. One of the masking strategies (for survival of the mask) is of seeing everyone else sinful or weak in their masking AS IF free of one’s own and AS IF we hold the answer of what should be, or the narrative meanings that account for what is asserted to be real. The following is the first part of my morning reading. It addresses what I need to hear – to be free of the mask – though in… Read more »

nomad
nomad
Jan 13, 2018 2:55 PM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

“We are not born with a personality (persona meaning mask). We develop one through our interactions with those around us.”
While that may be true, personality is a different issue from whether or not one is a psychopath. Psychopaths are fundamentally different from the rest of us, psychologically speaking. They are not like us. They are in effect mutants. They have no empathy, just like the institutional edifices they have built for us. That lack of empathy gives them a great advantage over us and makes their ruthlessness boundless and completely indifferent to the harm they cause others. That is their super power. They are X-men.

nomad
nomad
Jan 13, 2018 4:21 PM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

The moral standards of the psychopath (which is none) is applied throughout our culture and social institutions, which is why things like this happen:
http://theantimedia.org/hospital-dumping-woman-into-freezing-cold/

Big B
Big B
Jan 12, 2018 10:26 PM

Capitalism itself is nothing more or less than the systematic engineering of egocentricity: so is it any surprise that the most proficient narcissistic egotists (sociopaths; psychopaths) rise (or capture) the heights of control; the elite and most influential positions of power? From whence they seek to consolidate and pseudo-immortalise their position and legacy, through dynasty and epoch-making? Pretty soon, you’ve got a kakistocracy: rule by the worst – or by the best-suited and most adapted to adapting the system to their own ends …through monopolising wealth and its creation; monopolising the power to create money (as interest bearing debt); monopolising private property rights (landowning; asset owning; patent and copyright owning; resource owning; rent seeking; etc); monopolising government; culture; judiciary; etc …and imposing order through the monopoly of implicit and explicit state sanctioned violence. The system is rigged by and for the worst: by rewarding and amplifying the worst of their… Read more »

vexarb
vexarb
Jan 13, 2018 7:28 AM
Reply to  Big B

@BigB: “unencumbered, market forces will be guided by an Invisible Hand that will ensure that the greatest common good will materialise – as if by magic? ”
Echoed by Darwin, who was influenced by Laissez-faire Capitalist doctrine to replace Divine Providence, and substitute the more realistic notion of Random Mutation with Emergence of the Best Adapted. I quote from memory the end of the Origin of the Species: “How blind, blundering, wasteful and unutterably cruel are the workings of Nature…. and yet, from famine, from struggle, from death in all its hideous forms, emerge Beings most Wonderful.” As if by magic?

BigB
BigB
Jan 13, 2018 9:14 AM
Reply to  vexarb

Vexarb: exactly …in modern parlance competitive game theory produces the best result for all if they act in their own best interest (Nash Equilibrium) Perfect, if you want your outcome to be species extinction! Cooperative game theory (socialism) produces far better results: and emancipates humanity from competitive social-Darwinism. I just checked the headlines to see if capitalist imperialism had produced a peaceful egalitarian world overnight – as if by magic? Nope! Perhaps tomorrow …after one more round of austerity, more imperialism, neo-colonialism, alienation, exploitation …etc.

rtj1211
rtj1211
Jan 13, 2018 1:59 PM
Reply to  BigB

Capitalist imperialism will produce a peace composed of queen bees and drones….

rtj1211
rtj1211
Jan 12, 2018 7:09 PM

The biggest is not actually the psychopaths but the weaklings who follow them for a quiet life. There are not so many psychopaths that they cannot be overcome, but when they coopt weaklings against those who stand up for decency, then they can win.
So really the issue is how to stop sufficient numbers of the easily led falling into the hands of psychopaths……

nomad
nomad
Jan 13, 2018 2:36 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

except that its not just psychopathic individuals. its a system that indoctrinates, rewards and promotes psychopathy. and it is deeply entrenched and supported by numerous institutions, the msm and political think tanks.

nomad
nomad
Jan 14, 2018 5:38 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

“So really the issue is how to stop sufficient numbers of the easily led falling into the hands of psychopaths……”
Good idea! Here are three psychopaths. Why dont you start by standing up to them? And you can only do that by getting your elected officials to stand up to them. How you gone do that?
“For God’s sake, don’t elevate the likes of former CIA directors Michael Hayden and John Brennan and the former director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, to the position of “senior statesmen.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48588.htm

nomad
nomad
Jan 12, 2018 4:33 PM

hey hey hey. i didnt watch it. but it seems to express my recent epiphany. we live in a psychopathocracy. some call it an oligarchy. thats true. some, i think erroneously, call it a dictatorship. but the most salient feature of our warmongering, people oppressing leadership is its psychopathology.

Nick Quinn
Nick Quinn
Jan 13, 2018 1:53 AM
Reply to  nomad

Watch it, please

nomad
nomad
Jan 14, 2018 4:24 PM
Reply to  Nick Quinn

no thanks