While reading a great article on Psychopathy...

[Javaman]

PSYCHOPATHS AMONG US
http://www.hare.org/links/saturday.html
(read it when you get the chance, it's a great article)

I came across this passage from the article that I thought was very timely (also stating the obvious)...

>snip<

The most startling finding to emerge from Hare's work is that the popular image of the psychopath as a remorseless, smiling killer -- Paul Bernardo, Clifford Olson, John Wayne Gacy -- while not wrong, is incomplete. Yes, almost all serial killers, and most of Canada's dangerous offenders, are psychopaths, but violent criminals are just a tiny fraction of the psychopaths around us. Hare estimates that 1 percent of the population -- 300,000 people in Canada -- are psychopaths.

He calls them "subclinical" psychopaths. They're the charming predators who, unable to form real emotional bonds, find and use vulnerable women for sex and money (and inevitably abandon them). They're the con men like Christophe Rocancourt, and they're the stockbrokers and promoters who caused Forbes magazine to call the Vancouver Stock Exchange (now part of the Canadian Venture Exchange) the scam capital of the world. (Hare has said that if he couldn't study psychopaths in prisons, the Vancouver Stock Exchange would have been his second choice.) A significant proportion of persistent wife beaters, and people who have unprotected sex despite carrying the AIDS virus, are psychopaths. Psychopaths can be found in legislatures, hospitals, and used-car lots. They're your neighbour, your boss, and your blind date. Because they have no conscience, they're natural predators. If you didn't have a conscience, you'd be one too.

>snip<

"A lot of white-collar criminals are psychopaths," says Bob Hare. "But they flourish because the characteristics that define the disorder are actually valued. When they get caught, what happens? A slap on the wrist, a six-month ban from trading, and don't give us the $100 million back. I've always looked at white-collar crime as being as bad or worse than some of the physically violent crimes that are committed."

[lunatica]

1. It's time for this to be known

We've all experienced psychopaths in our lives. By extension corporations which are built on psychopathic foundations are psychopathic institutions.

[vanlassie]

2. GWB.

Now we can start having people look at how psychopaths are made- in the first three years of life. I learned this from Elliot Barker and Ken Magid.

[CrispyQ]

4. Yes. We need a national discussion on why our culture cultivates so many of these types.

So many harmful traditions in our culture that we don't even question.

[Motown_Johnny]

3. the 1%

[alfredo]

5. That explains Mitch McConnell

[Odin2005]

6. K&R