Moral rot and another kind of ‘one percenters’
Joe Biden was forced out of his campaign at the last moment, revealing a systemic issue. We live in a hyper-partisan world with tens of thousands of would-be thought leaders (like me) with the moral certitude that they know best. Of course, everybody can’t be right! Some, or likely most, ideas you hear are wrong. Many are smart, but too many ignore the need for a logical predicate for their ideas.
Today, we’ll share why most fail because they lack the right starting point. That starting point must include the reality that some of us aren’t playing for the same team while wearing our team’s uniform.
Critical necessities, like balancing budgets, term limits, securing borders, civil society, a speedy and fair judiciary, electing officials that genuinely are public servants, and more frequently don’t get to where they are going because two crucial ingredients are missing:
• Morality – high standards and virtuous and energetic actions by our leaders;
• Understanding the essential nature of the 80-20-1 rule.
The first ingredient is much more understood and accepted. However, the second key ingredient is rarely understood and is connected to those who believe in Equity. While most understand that living a moral life and dealing in good faith with others is essential, that does not necessarily translate into elevating individuals who possess actual empathy.
Enter the 80-20-1 rule, and I think you will better understand today’s piece and how often it is overlooked when we try to make sense of our current situation. You’ve heard about the 80-20 rule (also known as the “Pareto Principle”).
From Wikipedia: “The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the ‘vital few’).”
Everyone’s heard this truism, whether used in sales, the percentage of smart people, or the reality of leaders and followers. Few will disagree that a small subset of us does much of the heavy lifting and thinking. Not everyone is willing to be a hero, work until that breakthrough is made, or chart an independent path that sees them in opposition to the herd. It’s always been the 20 percenters that carried everybody else along.
So, what’s this business with the one percenters?
Not the top one percent of wealth; that’s different. This grouping of one percent of us can and frequently do defeat the other 99%. One percent of us are not just anti-social; they are sociopaths. According to Psychology Today: “Sociopathy refers to a pattern of anti-social behaviors and attitudes, including manipulation, deceit, aggression, and a lack of empathy for others. Sociopaths may or may not break the law, but by exploiting and manipulating others, they violate the trust that the human enterprise runs on.”
More than a few of our politicians are likely sociopaths, as are some people in business, education, and elsewhere. Some parents abuse their children in a manner and kind that doesn’t make any sense viewed any other way. Children who shoot other children in school are sociopaths, and those who abuse their partners are likely sociopaths. One percent of us meet this definition, and we have ignored it for too long.
I’ve talked to many who agree that there has been a profound change in what we call civil society in the last 50 to 60 years. Tolerance, one of the keystone constructs of Equity, requires you to ignore those among us who exhibit signs of sociopathy. We should view these one-percenters as a cancer within our society. But instead of looking to irradicate it, we tolerate it, rewarding people who are a danger to society in a manifestly dangerous way. There must be a band of conformity in any society. We can’t all go off in different directions and expect society as a whole to advance, can we?
We always had these one-percenters; society ostracized them (sometimes jailed or institutionalized them), allowing only a few exceptions or circumstances allowing them to rise to power. Hitler was an excellent example of that. Victorious Western Powers squeezed Germany to the point that allowed someone like Hitler. We had Senator Huey Long in Louisiana, likely a psychopath. King Leopold II of Belgium killed well over five million Congolese. Most, if not all, serial killers are psychopaths. Most psychopaths are highly functional members of society, yet still dangerous.
According to Big Think, psychopaths make up about (you guessed it) one percent of our citizens. Top avocations:
• CEOs
• Lawyers
• Politicians
While we’ve always had these dangerous and manipulative individuals in our midst, we were more successful in calling them out in the past and isolating them from the rest of us.
Today, odd behavior is considered “diversity.” We must carefully preserve individual rights and freedoms while balancing against likely harms. After every tragedy, from Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine to Thomas Crooks in Pennsylvania, all were ascertainable risks before their heinous acts. I would say much the same for some in Congress like Squad Members or so-called public servants like Tiffany Henyard, an Illinois mayor who is certifiable!
There are likely thousands of individuals with public and private personas that people know are psychopaths but do nothing about. Moral and psychological rot can and has occurred at the top of the election ticket; Biden and now Harris may be our latest examples.
Psychopaths are frequently the smartest people in the room; that’s their entre into higher office or why we tolerate them in the first place. We desperately need a national policy to ensure the safety of our children, economy, and especially our government from the one percent of us who are an existential threat to the other 99 percent. But will we? Our record is not good. God Bless America.
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