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adamcrowe + power   90

YouTube -- Freedomain Radio: The Latest Science of Nature Versus Nurture
'The latest research on the effects of environment and genetics on personality...'
*  parenting  attachment  psychology  psychobiology  epigenetics  trauma  stress  control  cortisol  addiction  dopamine  power  levelling  status  StefanMolyneux 
23 hours ago by adamcrowe
Telegraph -- Like baboons, our elected leaders are literally addicted to power
'Submissiveness and dominance have their effects on the same reward circuits of the brain as power and cocaine. Baboons low down in the dominance hierarchy have lower levels of dopamine in key brain areas, but if they get ‘promoted’ to a higher position, then dopamine rises accordingly. This makes them more aggressive and sexually active, and in humans similar changes happen when people are given power. What’s more, power also makes people smarter, because dopamine improves the functioning of the brain’s frontal lobes. Conversely, demotion in a hierarchy decreases dopamine levels, increases stress and reduces cognitive function. But too much power – and hence too much dopamine – can disrupt normal cognition and emotion, leading to gross errors of judgment and imperviousness to risk, not to mention huge egocentricity and lack of empathy for others.' -- Political power is the dizziness of loss aversion.
dopamine  addiction  psychology  psychopathology  sociopathy  power  politics 
23 hours ago by adamcrowe
ScienceDaily -- Winning makes people more aggressive toward the defeated
'"It seems that people have a tendency to stomp down on those they have defeated, to really rub it in," said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University. "People were more aggressive when they were better off than when they were worse off than others," Bushman said.' -- Now with something to lose.
psychology  status  power 
5 weeks ago by adamcrowe
Psychology Articles -- Things Narcissistic Mothers and Narcissist’s Say
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
psychology  narcissism  power  passiveaggression  women  parenting 
7 weeks ago by adamcrowe
Mises Daily -- Tales of Titans and Hobbits by Juliusz Jablecki
'Since Tolkien considered himself a conservative anarchist, it should come as no surprise that while trying to answer his publisher's questions regarding the symbolism hidden in his magnum opus, he suggested to "...make the Ring into an allegory of our own time… an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power." One day a great magician, Gandalf the Grey, pays a visit to the village. He is concerned by the fact that one of the hobbits, a certain Mr. Bilbo Baggins, keeps there hidden a precious artifact – a mysterious ring. Forged many years ago by Sauron, the Lord of Darkness, the Ring of Power is one of many rings of power, the one, however, that controls all the others. Only someone so mediocre, so weak, inept, and created seemingly for the sole purpose of minding his own merry business like Frodo Baggins – Bilbo's heir – could, at least to some extent, resist the evil power.'
mythology  monomyth  family  power  corruption  orphan  individuation  heroes 
january 2012 by adamcrowe
Be Slightly Evil -- Why Does Power Corrupt?
'"A CEO's job is to interpret external realities for a company." I have met many people who've gained power and authority due to this particular trait, and it might conceivably be part of the explanation why power turns people into jerks. ...the "interpret external reality" job is a delicate balancing act on the leader's part: you need to keep your people connected enough to reality to be effective, but not so connected that they are demotivated and demoralized. ...the "interpreting reality" part of leadership is rather like parenthood. Call it "information parenthood." You have to sustain a happy bubble for others. At the same time, as a leader, your own parent is reality itself, and it isn't a very nurturing one. You yourself become the reservoir of harsh reality information that is yours alone to handle. Reserves of empathy can get drained, resentment of the demanding children can turn into sadism and justification for abuse. ...you decide to take your turn at being the "child."'
emotionalintelligence  power  leadership 
april 2011 by adamcrowe
Freedomain Radio -- #1793 Sunday Show 21 November 2010 [Pathocracy] (MP3)
"The true purpose of power is to have huge vats of the population that you can vomit your own poison into rather than deal with it yourself."
mysterybabylon  psychohistory  childhood  abuse  trauma  projectiveidentification  power  politics  statism  pathocracy  StefanMolyneux  projection  selfattack  regression  poisoncontainer  from delicious
december 2010 by adamcrowe
Gamasutra -- The Designer's Notebook: Selling Hate and Humiliation
'The most successful F2P games (monetization-wise) in China all give their paying customers HUGE advantages. Rich people lead poor people to fight with other rich people via clans. It is much better than rich people killing poor people all the time. Creates a highly dynamic social system with better balancing. Maybe this is popular in China. Apparently people there will pay money for it. Perhaps when they want to escape from their day-to-day lives in an oppressive centralized regime, that's what they fantasize about: being peasants forced to fight for a brutal overlord, in an oppressive decentralized regime. As if all this weren't depressing enough, Mr. Ye explains how game designers can make money out of hate and humiliation in social environments: Conflicts are good. Conflicts make the game world more energetic and live. More importantly, conflicts trigger emotions. When people are emotionally unstable, they are more likely to make purchases. Is this what game design has come to?'
thegamingofeverydaylife  gaming  socialgaming  mmorpg  simulation  feudalism  china  escapism  fantasy  status  hierarchy  power  sadism  functionalitems  virtualgoods  ludocapitalism  ethics 
april 2010 by adamcrowe
fugitive philosophy -- managing language (with extreme prejudice)
'The Careless Losers – the carefree, perhaps – have something else going on in their lives and see work for what it is: a distraction from what counts. In this sense, the Losers, as the biggest group that constitutes most of us, are composed of that “silent majority” that upholds a good deal of old fashioned anarchist sensibility: act as if the State/Corp doesn’t exist. In the indication of a blindspot within an organisation’s powergame environment, Venkat’s analysis suggests that other systems of power might lie elsewhere. This elsewhere keeps those with an ear to the outside constantly seeking an alternative means to living without working, and as Virno suggests, means that exodus (or the politics of disappearance) constitutes the general strategy of the (Loser) workforce.'
psychology  communication  information  language  signalling  hierarchy  status  masks  power  thegervaisprinciple  transactionalanalysis 
january 2010 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- Kurt Vonnegut on Psychopaths and the Pathocracy (Interview)
"...those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or "PPs." PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next."
psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  pathocracy  politics  power 
december 2009 by adamcrowe
Ribbonfarm -- The Gervais Principle II: Posturetalk, Powertalk, Babytalk and Gametalk
'What distinguishes Powertalk is that with every word uttered, the power equation between the two speakers shifts just a little. Sometimes both gain slightly, at the expense of some poor schmuck. Sometimes one yields ground to the other. When the clueless or losers talk, on the other hand, nothing moves. Relative positions remain the same all around. Shifts happen only by accident. Even in the rare cases where exploitable information is exchanged, its value is not recognized or reflected in the exchange. Posturetalk, Babytalk and Gametalk leave power relations basically unchanged. Posturetalk and Babytalk leave things unchanged because they are, to quote Shakespeare, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Gametalk leaves power relations unchanged because its entire purpose is to help losers put themselves and each other into safe pigeonholes that validate do-nothing life scripts. -- The only Powertalk you can speak with no [actual power] is “silence.”'
*  psychology  communication  information  language  signalling  hierarchy  status  masks  sociopathy  power  thegervaisprinciple  transactionalanalysis  gametalk 
november 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- In Memoriam: Andrzej M. Łobaczewski (Political Ponerology)
Łobaczewski: "...psychopaths have this dream that they would like to govern. ...the dream of power occurs among psychopaths in groups, since they recognize each other in the crowd perfectly. A group is formed and within that group the dream of power appears as a rule, almost ...the leader is not necessarily an essential psychopath. Instead, he represents some other combination. But behind him there is a group of psychopaths, and this group governs the rest of slightly characteropathic individuals. This is the structure of such groups. I think that modern law is ignorant in regard to this reality and therefore has low effectiveness. The law was created by the normal people, principally, who did not understand psychopaths. It interprets the condition in the moralistic way, not in the biological one. ...a law should have been introduced that only normal people govern and such a law should have been passed by the UN, so, there is something that can be done in this respect."
psychology  ponerology  evil  sociopathy  psychopathy  pathocracy  power  interviews 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Google Video -- Political Ponerology: Harrison Koehli interviewed by Dustin Sunflower
'Red Pill Press editor Harrison Koehli discusses the book Political Ponerology by Andrew Lobacewski. It is an audio file with descriptive titles added.' -- Watched 'Dexter'? Now you understand.
psychology  ponerology  evil  sociopathy  psychopathy  pathocracy  power  books 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Political Ponerology by Andrew Lobaczewski
'Political Ponerology is a study of the founders and supporters of oppressive political regimes. Lobaczewski’s approach analyzes the common factors that lead to the propagation of man’s inhumanity to man. Morality and humanism cannot long withstand the predations of this evil. Knowledge of its nature – and its insidious effect on both individuals and groups - is the only antidote.' -- Free PDF of the book here: http://static.nettby.no/users/s/o/l/sole1/files/Andrew_M._Lobaczewski__Laura_Knight-Jadczyk__-_Political_Ponerology.pdf
psychology  ponerology  evil  sociopathy  psychopathy  pathocracy  power  books 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Clusterfuck Nation -- Marching Toward Zombieland (Comment)
Comment: Cosmos: "Things descend into violence because *all* sides believe they are right. It's only in fiction that the arch-villain goes bwahahahaha and names his organization the Evil Guys Doing Evil. The other problem that makes otherwise decent people perform acts that harm their fellow citizens is the compartmentalization inherent in bureaucracy. No one knew this principle better than the Nazis (had to bring them in, everyone does). So if you have a nasty job you want done, break it down into dozens of smaller jobs. For example, one soldier reads a list, another soldier herds people onto a train, another person fuels the train, another drives it, yet another sets the destination, etc., and pretty soon a bunch of innocent people are in a concentration camp. And yet in actuality there were really only a few psychopaths at the top setting policy."
bureaucracy  compartmentalization  incrementalism  psychopathy  pathocracy  power 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Ribbonfarm -- The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office” (2)
Comment: Dan G: "There is more room for happiness and satisfaction in being a believer (’clueless’) than a player (’sociopath’). Life for those who find value in what they are doing and get satisfaction out of it can be happy, fulfilled and peaceful. All they need to do is find their true interest and vocation — their true belief, not a delusion. The life of the player-sociopath is bound to be a constant war; and because it is a competition, satisfaction and success are not under their own self-control. It is contingent on the failure of the other player-sociopaths with whom they need to compete. It is ultimately foolish to make your own hapiness contingent on the payoff of a zero-sum game. -- From the point of view of society as a whole, praising sociopathy is a disaster. A society of believers will always thrive and progress; it will be the Utopia. A society of players will stagnate and self-distruct; it will be a Mad-Max style, pre-Hobbesian Dystopia." -- *nodding*
life  career  sociology  psychology  groups  work  business  management  sociopathy  power  narrativefallacy  falseconsciousness  delusion  thegervaisprinciple  transactionalanalysis  status  communication 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Ribbonfarm -- The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office” (1)
'#The Organization as Psychic Prison: ...it divides people into those who get how the world really works (the sociopaths and the self-aware slacker losers) and those who don’t (the over-performer losers and the clueless in the middle). This is where Gervais has broken new ground, primarily because as an artist, he is interested in the subjective experience of being clueless. ...the ultimate explanation of Michael Scott’s (and David Brent’s) careers: they are put into a position of having to explain their own apparent, unexpected and unexamined success. Remember, they are promoted primarily as passive pawns to either allow the sociopaths to escape the risks of their actions, or to make way for the sociopaths to move up faster. They are presented with an interesting bit of cognitive dissonance: being nominally given greater power, but in reality being safely shunted away from the pathways of power. They must choose to either construct false narratives or decline apparent opportunities.'
storytelling  psychology  groups  work  business  management  sociopathy  power  narrativefallacy  falseconsciousness  delusion  thegervaisprinciple  transactionalanalysis  status  communication  gametalk 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Cracked.com -- 5 Psychological Experiments That Prove Humanity is Doomed
In nutshell... People conform to the consenus. People are hypocrits who confuse words for deeds. People shirk personal responsibility and initiative when amongst a group of strangers. People will seek positions of power when available or of victimhood when not. People will blindly follow orders issued by authority figures believing they are absolved of all personal responsibility for their subsequent actions.
psychology  doublethink  bellyfeel  consensus  conformity  responsibility  hypocrisy  authority  upsub  power  victimhood  people 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
YouTube -- True News 55: Obama, Vanity, Grandiosity
Psychopathy, Sociopathy, Narcissism, Sadism, Statism
psychopathy  sociopathy  narcissism  sadism  statism  government  usefulidiot  power  philosophy 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (14)
'People are not aware that there exist a category of people, people we sometimes call 'almost human', who look like us, who work with us, who are found in every race, every culture, speaking every language, but who are lacking conscience... -- What separates us from the psychopath is our conscience, and our conscience must become the voice of truth. We need to learn how to say no to the manipulations. That means we need to learn the ways we are manipulated and refuse to do the dance. ...the psychopathic manipulations are designed to make psychopaths of us all. ...true empathy, true ethics, true conscience, dictates using prophylactic therapy against psychopaths. ...identifying the psychopath, ceasing our interaction with them, cutting them off from our society, making ourselves unavailable to them as "food" or objects to be conned and used, is the single most effective strategy that we can play.'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power  morality 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (13)
'Mankind has a natural predator, the psychopath, and this predator is invisible because there are no easily discernible markings that set him apart. Moreover, throughout history we have been divided into groups on the basis of physical, cultural, religious, or whatever other easily recognizable distinctions psychopaths can point out to us, while our real enemy has remained masked. There are deviants who become psychologists or psychiatrists and who try to rewrite psychology from the viewpoint of the pathological! -- As long as there is some idea of compromise, the people of conscience will always lose. These psychological deviants have to be removed from any position of power over people of conscience, period. People must be made aware that such individuals exist and must learn how to spot them and their manipulations. The hard part is that one must also struggle against those tendencies to mercy and kindness in oneself in order not to become prey.'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power  activism  amputation 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (12)
'Once the system is in place, those who are morally weak will rally to defend it in exchange for personal privileges. Their self-interest makes them open to contagion. Therefore it is not necessary for every individual to be one of the many types listed by Łobaczewski. There are thousands of morally corrupt and weak individuals willing to do the bidding of those in power if it means fame and fortune or even just a decent living and being left alone. -- ...it takes someone with a strong character to stand for what he or she knows is right in the face of widespread social opposition. We also have the tendency to give others the benefit of the doubt because we project our own ways of thinking and behaving on them. Only when those who are psychologically normal come to understand that we have a natural predator, a group of people who view us as 'a para-specific variety', will they be open to learning about this human-like race.'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power  cronyism 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (11)
'If every single normal person simply sat down and refused to lift a hand to further one single aim of the psychopathic agenda, en masse, if people refused to pay taxes, if soldiers refused to fight, if government workers and corporate drones refused to go to work, if doctors refused to treat psychopathic elites and their families, the whole system would grind to a screeching halt. But that can only happen if the masses of people KNOW about psychopathy in all its horrible details. Only if they know that they are dealing with creatures that really aren't human can they have the understanding of what they must do. And only when they get miserable enough that the misery that the psychopath will inflict on them in the beginning of their resistance pales in comparison, will they have the will to do this. That, or the understanding of the world the psychopaths are creating for their children in which case love for the future of humanity will motivate them to resist.'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  oligarchy  power 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (10)
'The psychopath with his/her infantile internal structure cannot comprehend that anything else exists on its own separate from them. It is only their acknowledgement that makes it real, and they only acknowledge what is significant to them in terms of what they want, what will make them feel good. When a normal human demands that the declarations of the psychopath should be evaluated, the psychopath will declare that the one making such a demand has no integrity which really means that their position - the psychopath's declaration - is not being supported! From the psychopathic point of view, the world is like a holodeck. They "declare" things into being. Everything is a hologram. They program the holograms. They interact with them in any way they choose. They have them under total control. When they decide to cancel a hologram, it vanishes. A hologram is not supposed to think for itself. Most importantly, a hologram is not supposed to critique its master.'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  oligarchy  power  solipsism  infantilism 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (9)
'Psychopathic lying is not mere deception, it is "creating reality" so that it conforms to the psychopath's wants. Psychopaths demonstrate an extremely distorted understanding of what we call facts. Normal humans really have difficulty conceiving of this because to us, facts are a basic part of our lives. We live by them, base our assessments and decisions on them. We establish facts, and then test things and establish more facts. When we debate, we start with facts and show how we derive our conclusions from those facts. When we perform such operations, we place value on those "facts" being true. Psychopaths do not do that. Being devoid of real emotional depth, they have no attachment to the idea of "truth". But, because people project their own internal structure onto the psychopath, most do not understand this. -- A psychopath becomes an expert at creating "facts" that cause normal people to form beliefs that benefit the psychopath.'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power  reality  realityprogramming  mindcontrol 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (8)
'Lying is a very successful strategy because very few people think that there are hardcore liars in society who lie as a matter of course. Think of a divorce or some other case before a judge and jury. Most of us will go into the proceedings with the idea that the truth is somewhere in the middle. But what happens when one of the people is a liar and the other is a person telling the truth? The liar is at an advantage because the judge or jury will still expect that the truth is somewhere in the middle. So someone who is the victim of a liar and manipulator cannot come out ahead. Telling the truth cannot get that person 100% of the justice he or she deserves, while lying will always get the perpetrator something. Daily life is like that trial. We are always going to give others the benefit of the doubt, if you are a moral person. The liar and manipulator will never do that and will use the good will of the person of conscience against him.
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power  gametheory 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (7)
'...in a ponerized society, many people become infected with the disease. They see what others are doing, and not being strong enough themselves to follow their own moral code, if that code differs from that of their neighbours, they follow the herd. These people are the support base for the status quo. They may not be psychopaths themselves, but they support and defend it. -- Also keep in mind the 12% of individuals who are susceptible to the influence and thinking style of the psychopaths. In the end, you have a total of 18% or more of any given population that seeks to subdue and control the rest. If you then consider that remainder, the 82%, and keep in mind the bell curve, at least 80% of the remainder will follow whoever is in charge. And since psychopaths have no limitations on what they can or will do to get to the top, the ones in charge are generally pathological. It is not power that corrupts, it is that corrupt individuals seek power.
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power  herd  usefulidiot  falseconsciousness 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (6)
'Recognizing their fundamental difference from the rest of humanity, their allegiance would be to others of their kind, that is, to other psychopaths. ... in any society in this world, psychopathic individuals often create an active network of common collusion, estranged from the community of normal people to some extent. They are aware of being different. Their world is forever divided into "us and them"; their world with its own laws and customs and that other "foreign world" of normal people that they consider to be full of presumptuous ideas and customs about truth and honor and decency in light of which they know they are condemned morally. Their own twisted sense of honor compels them to cheat and revile non-psychopaths and their values. Not only do they covet possessions and power and feel they have the right to them just because they exist and can take them, but they gain special pleasure in usurping and taking from others...'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power  cults 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (5)
'In the world today where information is controlled by a small number of media outlets, and those media outlets have much in common with the pathological governments, greater numbers of people can be influenced and infected with pathological thinking. An example of this is the famous remark made by Madeleine Albright back in 1996 when she was asked about the 500,000 deaths in Iraq, mostly of children, due to the embargo. She responded that she thought 'It was worth it', that is, those deaths were the necessary price to pay to bring down Saddam. That is unquestionably pathological logic, and yet how many Americans would have heard that response and thought nothing of it? Anyone who, on hearing that statement, was not outraged has been infected with pathological thinking, they have been ponerized. Their thinking has become distorted by the pathological infection. -- When the rules are set up to make a society "adaptive" to psychopathy, it makes psychopaths of everyone. '
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power  propaganda  propagation 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (4)
'One cannot really designate the issues that confront us today as "political", using the ordinary names of political ideologies because pathological deviants operate behind a complete mask, by deception and other psychological tricks which they practice with great cunning. If we think or believe that any political group that has such and such a name is heterogeneous with regard to its true nature, we will not be able to identify the causes and properties of the disease. Any ideology will be used to cloak the pathological qualities from the minds of both experts and ordinary people. So, trying to refer to this or that as "left" or "right" or "center" or "socialist", "democratic," "communist," "democrat" or "republican," and so on, will never help us to understand the pathological self-reproduction and its expansionist external influences. No movement will ever succeed that does not factor psychopathy and ponerology into its considerations'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power  ideology 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (3)
'...approximately 18% of any given population is active in the creation and imposition of a Pathocracy. The 6% group constitute the Pathocratic nobility and the 12% group forms the new bourgeoisie, whose economic situation is the most advantageous. -- Once set up, the elitist psychopathic system corrodes the entire social organism, wasting its skills and power. Once a Pathocracy has been established, it follows a certain course and has certain "attractive" powers. In a Pathocracy, the socioeconomic system arises from the social structure which is created by the system of political power, which is a product of the particular elitist world view of pathological deviants. Thus it is that a Pathocracy is more a macrosocial disease process created by human pathogens, and it can come to affect an entire nation... It is impossible to comprehend such a pathological phenomenon using the methods of "normal" people which do not take into account the deviant thought processes of human pathogens.'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power  oligarchy  hegemony 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (2)
'When psychopaths are the policy makers in government and the CEOs of big business, the way they think and reason - their 'morality' - becomes the common culture and 'morality' of the population over which they preside. When this happens, the mind of the population is infected in the way a pathogen infects a physical body. The only way to protect ourselves against this pathological thinking is to inoculate ourselves against it, and that is done by learning as much as possible about the nature of psychopathy and its influence on us. Essentially, this particular 'disease' thrives in an environment where its very existence is denied, and this denial is planned and deliberate. -- The system that is in place is a pathological system that is at odds in a very profound way with the being or nature of most people. People of conscience are being ruled by people with no conscience. This fact is the primary injustice and is the basis for the other ills of society.'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power  oligarchy  corporatism  cronyism  mercantilism 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
Signs of the Times News -- The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others (1)
'...the influence of psychopaths and other deviants isn't just one of many influences working on society, but, under the appropriate circumstances, can be the primary influence that shapes the way we live, what we think, and how we judge what is going on around us. When you understand the true nature of that influence, that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, you are horrified, but at the same time everything suddenly begins to makes sense. Our society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the example are soulless - they literally have no conscience. -- When you come to understand that the reins of political and economic power are in the hands of people who have no conscience, who have no capacity for empathy, it opens up a completely new way of looking at what we call "evil". Evil is no longer only a moral issue; it can now be analyzed and understood scientifically.'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
The Canadian National Newspaper -- Twilight of the Psychopaths
'The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out. Psychopaths go through life knowing that they are completely different from other people. They quickly learn to hide their lack of empathy, while carefully studying others’ emotions so as to mimic normalcy while cold-bloodedly manipulating the normals. Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization of, by and for the normal human being—a civilization without war, a civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power. We already have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and keep them out of power. We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish... We simply need to disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely as possible.'
*  psychology  psychopathy  sociopathy  ponerology  evil  parasitism  sociology  pathocracy  power 
october 2009 by adamcrowe
The Atlantic -- How the World Works (1993)
'In the German view, economics is not a matter of right or wrong, or cheating or playing fair. It is merely a matter of strong or weak. The gods of trade will help those who help themselves. No code of honor will defend the weak, as today's Latin Americans and Africans can attest. If a nation decides to help itself—by protecting its own industries, by discriminating against foreign products—then that is a decision, not a sin. -- ...from Germany to Thailand to Korea to Japan all certainly believe in competition. But it would be very hard to find a businessman or an official in these countries who would say, with a straight face, that these industries grew "automatically" or in a "natural" way. -- Two years ago another Wall Street Journal item, this one a review of a book on trade, said, "[The author] puts it well: 'The benefits of unilaterally adopting free trade now are greater than the benefits of multilateral adoption of free trade ten or fifteen years from now.'"'
economics  trade  protectionism  mercantilism  globalization  geopolitics  power 
september 2009 by adamcrowe
Telegraph -- Humour is an 'act of aggression'
'Humour is an act of agression and telling jokes is a method of reinforcing a social hierarchy, according to a German study. "Those 'on top' are freer to make others laugh. They are also freer to be more aggressive and a lot of what is funny is making jokes at someone else's expense. Displaying humour means taking control of the situation from those higher up the hierarchy and this is risky for people of lower status..." ...humour, including teasing, was a mix of 'bonding and biting' and women often use humour to form social bonds with their friends while men often use humour to vent frustration. But both sexes use comedy as a means of controlling others. ...when someone initiates a joke they tend to be ignored if they are in the presence of someone of a higher status.'
psychology  humor  status  power  signalling 
august 2009 by adamcrowe
Esquire -- The Invisible Grip
'Maintaining eye contact feels awkward, even creepy. At first. Then it just feels powerful. -- With my eyes, I calmed them, slowed them down, and did so without knocking them over or humiliating them. I used my eyes to upset the speed and indifference of their routines and simply register my presence by asking them to do a double take. It worked every time. They didn't know me, but then, suddenly, it seemed they did. I thought of it as a kind of dominance, holding them in the kind of invisible grip... It's the law of dominance, I think, that the more dominant you become, the more you want to stay dominant. I found I liked backing people down. I began to look at them long enough that I began to sense when they were about to look away. The truth is, instead of them seeing me, it ended up that I could really see them. They were just like I was, a little afraid of eye contact, a little leery of connection. I meant well, so I pressed on.'
psychology  communication  empathy  power  status  acting  persuasion  bodylanguage  eyes 
august 2009 by adamcrowe
Max Keiser -- [1054] The Truth About... Bald Men at Goldman Sachs
'...about Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, neo-feudalism, fraudulent accounting and more.' -- plus suicide bankers, how dictators come to power, and how history repeats. *sigh*
economics  america  feudalism  fascism  power  podcasts 
august 2009 by adamcrowe
The Communications Room -- The top 5 ways to enjoy Twitter and avoid the Twitter cult
'Now is it just me, or is there this weird group of fanatics growing that think they are influencing the whole of mankind in 140 characters? Seriously, it’s like a cult with chapters and stuff. Yes it’s important, rapidly growing, but let’s get some perspective and just a touch of rigour around some of the claims being made... #MJ was officially dead only when the cult said so #The cult has even delivered democracy to Iran through turning their avatars green' -- On self-regarding sensationalists... 'They title things in really sensational ways, even if it’s not related to the point they are actually trying to make. Why? They know that the cult will see it in their RSS reader, take in the first 4 words, then incorrectly Tweet about it claiming another victory for social media over evil...' -- The self-importance of such people never ceases to amaze.
psychology  twitter  socialmedia  puppetry  narcissism  power  delusion  groupthink  herd  conformity  cults 
august 2009 by adamcrowe
Technology Review -- How to Stage a Revolution
'... two new qualities of leadership: #The first is the ability to distribute a leader's influence to as many followers within a given time. #The second is the ability to be sufficiently persuasive to change and hold the allegiance of followers who they can influence. When these factors come into play, the balance of power depends on the distribution of leaders. ...the key to seizing power, or at least gaining a significant foothold, is the effective distribution of a small number of leaders within a larger group. "A better distribution pattern has larger influential region and greater clustering factor, which can equip the leaders with the capability of influencing more followers in a given period and strengthening the persuasion power on the followers as well."' -- In the linked paper: '...the mechanism underlying such an apparent “following the minority” in the whole group is due to the scheme of “following the majority” locally.'
business  marketing  competition  groups  behaviours  herd  influence  persuasion  power  swarming  patterns  spread  propagation  seeding  tactics  strategy  leadership  politics  activism  guerrilla  war  standalonecomplex  countermeasures  * 
july 2009 by adamcrowe
OUPblog -- American War Propaganda Top Ten
'Propaganda sells wars. Emotionally powerful and instantly recognizable, propaganda messages serve to simplify complex international crises for public consumption. A persuasive blend of fact and fiction, they resonate with what Americans want to believe about themselves. Here are the top ten messages used by the U.S. government over the past century to rally public support for war.' -- "RISPEKK MAH AUTHORITAAAH!!1" -- "America, FUCK YEAH! Coming again, to save the mother fucking day..." -- "The American Dream, You Have to Be Asleep to Believe It." etc, etc, etc
america  empire  power  propaganda  war  denial  delusion  doublethink  metanarratives 
july 2009 by adamcrowe
Foreign Policy -- The Death of Macho by Reihan Salam
'...the housing bubble is just the latest in a long string of efforts to prop up macho, the most powerful of which was the New Deal, as historian Gwendolyn Mink has argued. At the height of the Great Depression in 1933, 15 million Americans were unemployed out of a workforce that was roughly 75 percent male. This undermined the male breadwinner model of the family, and there was tremendous pressure to bring it back. The New Deal did just that by focusing on job creation for men. -- ...make no mistake: The axis of global conflict in this century will not be warring ideologies, or competing geopolitics, or clashing civilizations. It won’t be race or ethnicity. It will be gender. We have no precedent for a world after the death of macho. But we can expect the transition to be wrenching, uneven, and possibly very violent.'
economics  sociology  masculinity  status  gender  power  war 
june 2009 by adamcrowe
Guardian -- Charlie Brooker on Adam Curtis' new documentary experience, It Felt Like A Kiss
"I wanted to do a film about what it actually felt like to live through that time...Where you could see the roots of the uncertainties we feel today, the things they did out on the dark fringes of the world that they didn't really notice at the time, which would then come back to haunt us. The way power works in the world is: they tell you stories that make sense of the world. That's what America did after the second world war. It told you wonderful dreamlike stories about the world...And at that same time, you were encouraged to rise up and 'become an individual', which also made the whole idea of America attractive to the rest of the world. But then this very individualism began to corrode it. The uncertainties began in people's minds. Uncertainty about 'what is the point of being an individual?'" -- Forthcoming doc: "the political and cultural ideas that underlie the internet—and the idea that we are all linked in an interconnected web—out of which can come a new form of democracy."
psychology  storytelling  metanarratives  theamericandream  america  empire  power  individualism  theadvertisedlife  documentaries  narrativeenvironments  memory  AdamCurtis 
june 2009 by adamcrowe
BBC -- Adam Curtis: Into the darkness
"It Felt Like a Kiss started life as an experimental film I made for the BBC last year. My aim was to try and find a more involving and emotional way of doing political journalism on TV. I decided to make a film about something that has always fascinated me - how power really works in the world. To show that power is exercised not just through politics and diplomacy - but flows through our feelings and emotions, and shapes the way we think of ourselves and the world." -- Video: "IT FELT LIKE A KISS. When a nation is powerful it tells the world confident stories about the future. The stories can be enchanting or frightening. But they make sense of the world. But when that power begins to ebb, there are no stories any more. You are on your own. And you have no idea what is coming towards you. Now go into the dark."
psychology  storytelling  metanarratives  theamericandream  america  empire  power  individualism  theadvertisedlife  documentaries  narrativeenvironments  memory  AdamCurtis 
june 2009 by adamcrowe
BBC -- Adam Curtis: The introduction to It Felt Like a Kiss
Vid: "The Introduction. In 1945 America's solider fought terrible battles and saw the horror of death camps. In Japan a new weapon killed hundreds of thousands in an instant. The soliders came home and were told they had fought a Good War. They created a new world for their children. Safe from the horrors that humans can do. And protected from their parent's terrifying memories. But as America rose to supreme power in the world, feelings of uncertainty began to break through the fragile surface. The CIA masterminded coups and assassinations across the world to protect America from enemies in the world outside. It was done in secret so the children would never know and get frightened. But as they grew up the children realised it was a dream. It was only a story told to them by those in power. And they would want to break free and just be themselves. They would create their own enchanted world. Only then they would be *alone. And vulnerable to something else. Fear. Now go into the dark."
psychology  storytelling  metanarratives  theamericandream  america  empire  power  individualism  theadvertisedlife  documentaries  narrativeenvironments  memory  AdamCurtis 
june 2009 by adamcrowe
Wikipedia -- The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
Doublethink: "holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind, and accepting both of them." ...a Party member who needs to "revise" his own memories to conform with the Party's latest revision of history will necessarily know that he is playing tricks with reality, "but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Using this technique, the Party can stay in power indefinitely—"for the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes... The prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity." -- Unread.
socialism  oligarchy  feudalism  serfdom  ignorance  manipulation  power  retcon  history  realityprogramming  ideology  doublethink  1984  GeorgeOrwell 
may 2009 by adamcrowe
Global Research -- The Financial New World Order: Towards a Global Currency and World Government
Conclusion: 'Ultimately, what this implies is that the future of the global political economy is one of increasing moves toward a global system of governance, or a world government, with a world central bank and global currency; and that, concurrently, these developments are likely to materialize in the face of and as a result of a decline in democracy around the world, and thus, a rise in authoritarianism. What we are witnessing is the creation of a New World Order, composed of a totalitarian global government structure. It is imperative that the world’s people throw their weight against these “solutions” and usher in a new era of world order, one of the People’s World Order; with the solution lying in local governance and local economies, so that the people have greater roles in determining the future and structure of their own political-economy, and thus, their own society.'
economics  oligarchy  power  freedom  liberty 
may 2009 by adamcrowe
New Statesman -- Caught in the net
"People have always been affected by the taste of those around them, and that susceptibility to influence helps them make up their own minds. The effect discovered by the Columbia University researchers, however, was much bolder and more specific than that. When an electronic feedback loop is called on to make decisions about quality, their work suggests, there arises an effect that throws everything out of kilter and amplifies the decisions of a few early arrivals into a randomly self-reinforcing spiral of continued popularity. Left to fend for ourselves in a sea of online information, with only our online peers for direction, our decisions about quality and taste, it seems, can become snagged in a self-perpetuating feedback loop of follow-the-leader."
criticism  cybernetics  feedback  popularity  socialproof  influence  conformity  groupthink  herd  circumscription  power 
may 2009 by adamcrowe
Robert Paterson -- The Freelance Life. Security and Peace of Mind: Why these cannot exist in a job
'In the sales and trading area of investment banking, I could see every day how I was doing. So could my bosses. There was no fudging the numbers. This was security and this was control. I could leave at any time as I was a known quantity in a big field. Then I made my "mistake". Bored with the short term aspects of winning and losing every day in the markets, I opted to leave the frontline and enter the world of senior management. Over time I discovered what I had feared as a newbie all those years prior. In bureaucracies, results don't really matter. As I came to see what was going on more clearly, I could see what the game was. It was the pursuit of power. Now the message to the "people" is all about the common good, the shareholders, making money, making good products. But don't fool yourself... The reality is that it is all about who has the power. The breakdown of our current economy is starting to make it clear to more and more people - that they are just pawns with no control.'
work  measurement  leverage  bureaucracy  power  via:2mm 
may 2009 by adamcrowe
AlterNet -- What Happens When Angry Citizens Crash the Gates of America's CEO Class?
'Poor Joe Dinkin was put in charge of the seating arrangement -- the minute he stepped off the bus, the reporters nearly tore him limb from limb. He dragged himself away from the bus door and down the street; the reporters clung to him like lions pulling down a struggling wildebeest. Joe tried to impose order as the reporters yelled out their organizations and why they had to be on the bus -- New York Times, CNN, New York Post, NBC. Poor Joe... He quickly lost control, as the reporters turned back to the bus and tried storming it again. Chaos ensued, and eventually the organizers realized that it was between the protesters being on the bus, or the media being on the bus. So one by one, they started pulling protesters off the bus to make room for the media. Eventually we—media types—all got our seats. As we pulled out, one of the reporters shouted, “Where are the protesters on this bus?” The bus erupted in cynical snickering.' -- On power and those who dared to take it.
psychology  status  shame  sociology  economics  america  class  oligarchy  power 
may 2009 by adamcrowe
Telegraph -- European central banks $40bn poorer after decade of gold sales
"Germany and Italy are the only two big European central banks which did not follow the UK, mostly because of domestic disputes about what to do with the proceeds, the report said. The US, the world’s biggest holder of gold ([because they stole it all using their ponzi dollars]), decided not to follow Europe’s move, while central banks outside Europe have become net buyers of gold." -- Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia
economics  gold  manipulation  geopolitics  power 
may 2009 by adamcrowe
The Independent -- American excess: A Wall Street trader tells all
'One of my British friends from the training programme, who later became a currency trader, once told me “I mean Christ, mate, every time they close a factory in Wales the goddamn market goes up. The whole system’s a little fucked, don’t you think?” And of course it was. The question was how to deal with it. The easiest thing was buy into the system, convince ourselves that there was no other way to live. A few semesters worth of economics classes certainly helped; the in-house economics classes taught by the bank helped even more. The financial markets operate on the principle that, at our core, we’re all basically shit: selfish, self-interested creatures. There’s a whole branch of economics devoted to proving that if you help someone, say, run in front of a speeding train to push another person out of the way, you are actually acting out of self-interest, not altruism; that what most of us would consider humankind’s cardinal virtues - love, honor, compassion - do not actually exist.'
economics  parasitism  gluttony  greed  power  ethics  doublethink  denial  guilt 
may 2009 by adamcrowe
Crooked Timber -- The ideology that dare not speak its name
"Unpopular ideas require euphemisms, and these euphemisms wear out over time. From the inside, ideology usually looks like common sense. Hence, politically dominant elites don’t see themselves as acting ideologically and react with hostility when ideological labels are pinned on them. Ideology is only useful for an insurgent group of outsiders, seeking a coherent basis for a claim to displace the existing elite. [Initial] users of [the euphemism] rapidly [drop] it, once they [get] into power.'
metanarratives  philosophy  ideology  language  discourse  simulacra  power  politics  cults 
april 2009 by adamcrowe
The Chronicle of Higher Education -- Is Graduate School a Cult?
BITE Model of cult controls: "#Behavior: major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals; need to ask permission for major decisions; need to report thoughts, feelings, and activities to superiors. - #Information: access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged (keep members so busy they don't have time to think) and extensive use of cult-generated information. - #Thought: need to internalize the group's doctrine as 'Truth' (us vs. them, inside vs. outside) and no critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate. - #Emotional: excessive use of guilt (identity guilt, social guilt, historical guilt); phobia indoctrination (irrational fears of ever leaving the group or questioning the leader's authority; cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group; shunning of leave takers; never a legitimate reason to leave; and from the group's perspective, people who leave are 'weak,' 'undisciplined.'"
cults  mindcontrol  indoctrination  education  professionalization  corporatism  power  predation  idealism  mercantilism 
april 2009 by adamcrowe
People who wait in line overnight to buy shit.
"Sometimes it is hard for me to evaluate what I truly value, and how much I value it. Do I value having new products in my possession? Do I value ’shit like Apple products’/'cell phones’/'the right to say that I was one of the first people to see an adventure action movie that is part of a trilogy’? I saw these bros sitting outside of an urban boutique waiting to purchase the Kanye West sneakers. I wonder ‘what is so important’ about a shoe? Is there some sort of ‘technology’ that will make their lives’ better, or do they just want the right to the experience/right to purchase the shoe for $1000, or the right to sell the shoe on eBay to the ‘highest bidder’? Wonder if I could ‘bond’ with the people who wait in line for new products, since we basically value the same stuff. Feels weird when ‘everything feels like a toy’, but there are still these adults who ‘really want to buy a kewl new toy that will make people think they are kewler.’
HipsterRunoff  consumerism  status  hierarchy  power  commodityfetishism  time  death  lulz  satire 
april 2009 by adamcrowe
New Scientist -- Why money messes with your mind
'Our relationship with money has many facets. Some people seem addicted to accumulating it, while others can't help maxing out their credit cards and find it impossible to save for a rainy day. As we come to understand more about money's effect on us, it is emerging that some people's brains can react to it as they would to a drug, while to others it is like a friend. Some studies even suggest that the desire for money gets cross-wired with our appetite for food. And, of course, because having a pile of money means that you can buy more things, it is virtually synonymous with status - so much so that losing it can lead to depression and even suicide. In these cash-strapped times, perhaps an insight into the psychology of money can improve the way we deal with it.'
economics  psychology  money  status  power  addiction  motivation  rewards  values  value 
april 2009 by adamcrowe
321gold -- G20: US$ Funeral, US Failed Debtor by Jim Willie CB (Apr 2, 2009)
'The crowning blow against the USDollar supremacy will come when Persian Gulf nations install a new hard asset currency. At that time, one quarter of the world will pay for crude oil in a hard asset currency with a gold component. That is a spike in the heart for the USDollar founded in a unipolar world. The G20 Meeting intends to make the statement that the unipolar world is dead on the financial stage. That is their agenda. The US agenda is to preserve the system through reform. If the USGovt does not cooperate with alternative global reserve currency usage, then it will be bypassed, with associated cost. That cost will be lost respect, lost creditor cooperation, and certain economic consequences within the USEconomy. If not careful and cooperative, the US will find itself increasingly isolated, which is precisely my forecast. This direction is consistent with a shove down the staircase into the Third World, where credit shortages and supply shortages and poverty persist.'
economics  debt  uk  america  dollar  reservecurrency  bankruptcy  empire  power  geopolitics  gold 
april 2009 by adamcrowe
Telegraph -- G20 summit: Gordon Brown announces 'new world order'
'The Prime Minister claimed to have struck a "historic" deal to end the global recession as he unveiled plans to plough more than $1 trillion into the world economy. "This is the day that the world came together to fight back against the global recession," he said. "Not with words but with a plan for global recovery and reform." "Today’s decisions, of course, will not immediately solve the crisis. But we have begun the process by which it will be solved," Mr Brown said. "I think a new world order is emerging with the foundation of a new progressive era of international co-operation."' -- I love Big Brother
economics  debt  fraud  IMF  feudalism  socialism  serfdom  power  1984 
april 2009 by adamcrowe
Wikipedia -- Equiveillance
'Equiveillance is a state of equilibrium, or a desire to attain a state of equilibrium, between surveillance and sousveillance. It is sometimes confused with transparency. This balance (equilibrium) allows the individual to construct their own case from evidence they gather themselves, rather than merely having access to surveillance data that could possibly incriminate them. Sousveillance, in addition to transparency, can be used to preserve the contextual integrity of surveillance data. For example, a lifelong capture of personal experience could provide "best evidence" over external surveillance data, to prevent the surveillance-only data from being taken out of context.'
surveillance  sousveillance  equiveillance  disequiveillance  anonequiveillance  data  context  plausibledeniability  privacy  anonymity  liberty  freedom  everyware  panopticon  power  MichelFoucault 
march 2009 by adamcrowe
Marginal Utility -- Foucault’s Facebook
On Twitterification: 'We are expected to be, or become, “omnivorous consumers of momentary trivia.” Not only that, but we are expected to produce that trivia ceaselessly and eagerly. This calls to mind Foucault’s ideas about power exercising itself not as repression—that is, as forbidding us to speak or to act in certain ways—but as permission, as a kind of broad encouragement to speak (albeit through discourses that constitute our identities along certain prescribed lines). Our participation lets power work through us, which we can experience as being exciting—as being part of the action; we are all under surveillance, but we understand that emotionally as “Hey, we’re all celebrities!” Foucault calls it “control by stimulation.” This is why people seem to feel compelled to use Twitter. We want to participate, want to be counted, want to count. -- We are spying on each other and confessing ourselves to everybody else, and mistaking it all for entertainment consumption...'
*  behaviours  socialmedia  socialnetworking  statusupdates  twitter  lifecasting  participation  confession  sousveillance  surveillance  panopticon  power  selfservers  self  availability  identity  theory  MichelFoucault  #ubiquity  #socialization 
march 2009 by adamcrowe
Truthdig -- America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout
'We live in an age of moral nihilism. The capacity for manipulation is what is most highly prized. And our moral collapse is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse. Moral autonomy is what the corporate state, with all its attacks on liberal institutions and “leftist” professors, has really set out to destroy. The corporate state holds up as our ideal what Adorno called “the manipulative character.” The manipulative character has superb organizational skills and the inability to have authentic human experiences. He or she is an emotional cripple and driven by an overvalued realism. “It is especially difficult to fight against it,” warned Adorno, “because those manipulative people, who actually are incapable of true experience, for that very reason manifest an unresponsiveness that associates them with certain mentally ill or psychotic characters, namely schizoids.”' -- Anti-Empathy, Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Sound like anyone you know?
economics  morality  nihilism  narcissism  manipulation  power  evil  psychopathy 
march 2009 by adamcrowe
The Economist -- China and the world: A time for muscle-flexing
'As Western economies flounder, China sees a chance to assert itself—carefully. A recent article in Economic Reference, a journal published by a government think-tank, said the crisis would severely weaken the economic, political, military and diplomatic power of developed countries. This would create an “historic opportunity” for China to strengthen its position. China should export capital to South-East Asian countries to strengthen their economies. By so doing, it would help prevent political turmoil and win strategic influence in the region. In America, the article suggested, China should buy up businesses in order to acquire sophisticated know-how. If the American government balks at this, “the Chinese government absolutely can use its American dollar savings as a bargaining chip to force the American government to agree to China’s acquisitions."'
economics  china  america  geopolitics  power 
march 2009 by adamcrowe
CynicusEconomicus -- Economics and Power: The Loss of US Power
'If we take the activity in aggregate, it looks very much like a plan for China to extract the maximum out of their new found economic power. They will play the US as far as they can, extract as many concessions as possible - use the power to show that they are now the country with the real influence. As soon as the US is finally in a corner and comes out to confront China, they will simply floor the $US. ... as I discussed in my speculative post, they will go on a shopping trip, and pick up all the technologies, all the companies that they need to take their place at the front of the world economy, and as the new economic power in the world.'
economics  dollar  RMB  china  america  geopolitics  power 
march 2009 by adamcrowe
Rolling Stone -- The Big Takeover by Matt Taibbi
"People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations. ... what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers." -- Casino Gulag (Max Keiser). Includes a lucid summary of the AIG/Goldman bailout/extortion scheme and of the Federal Reserve's belligerent autonomy.
*  economics  financialization  derivatives  fraud  AIG  GoldmanSachs  extortion  theft  government  corruption  federalreserve  feudalism  oligarchy  power  empire  MattTaibbi  casinogulag 
march 2009 by adamcrowe
Enterprise 2.0 Blog -- The Unsociable, Radically-Individualist Soul of Social Media
"The sort of extroverted, harmony-seeking, consensus-driven collectivists who think it is all about the group, cutting big-ego prima donnas down to size, and building Brave New Egalitarian Communities that enshrine social justice values. It also explains why thoroughly introverted, unsociable, egoistic and ornery individualists (I am one; among my nicknames in college was “hermit”) take to the medium like ducks to water. This conflation of social with sociable, collectivist and communitarian is extraordinarily tempting. Yes, the medium fosters communication and collaboration, but remember, wolf packs communicate and collaborate rather better than sheep. And they compete viciously for the carcass right after. The true nature of social media, the “message” of this medium, is one of radical, uncompromising individualism, within a brutally competitive, bubblegum-flavored Darwinian virtual environment. The “social” adjective is about something else entirely, not collectivist utopia." ...
*  psychology  evolutionarypsychology  technology  media  themediumisthemessage  socialmedia  socialproduction  groups  conformity  groupthink  behaviours  attention  manipulation  grooming  huntergatherer  diffusion  propagation  parasitism  communities  collectivism  competition  individualism  communication  collaboration  management  crowdsourcing  cathedralbazaar  economics  sharecropping  incentives  motivation  rewards  popularity  power  politics  retribalization  "capitalism" 
march 2009 by adamcrowe
Shirky -- Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
"Prior to recent theoretical work on social networks, the usual explanations [of group inequalities] invoked individual behaviors: some members of the community had sold out, the spirit of the early days was being diluted by the newcomers, et cetera. We now know that these explanations are wrong, or at least beside the point. What matters is this: Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality. In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution."
economics  networks  socialnetworking  socialsoftware  socialobjects  longtail  attention  choice  feedback  popularity  conformity  groupthink  power  success  #diversity  #specialization  ClayShirky  via:neilperkin 
march 2009 by adamcrowe
Sherry Turkle -- Seeing Through Computers: Education in a Culture of Simulation (PDF)
"understanding the assumptions that underlie simulation is a key element of political power. People who understand the distortions imposed by simulations are in a position to call for more direct economic and political feedback, new kinds of representation, more channels of information. They demand greater transparency in their simulations (particularly the ones we use to make real-life decisions) make their underlying models more accessible. We come to written text with centuries-long habits of readership. At the very least, we have learned to begin with the journalist's traditional questions: Who wrote these words, what is their message, why were they written, how are they situated in time and place, politically and socially? A central goal for computer education must now be to teach students to interrogate simulations in much the same spirit. The specific questions may be different but the intent is the same: to develop habits or readership appropriate to a culture of simulation."
criticism  psychology  politics  simulation  education  learning  literacy  interface  transparency  opacity  reality  virtuality  realityprogramming  representation  reflexivity  ideology  hegemony  power  thegamingofeverydaylife  SherryTurkle  pdf 
february 2009 by adamcrowe
Raph’s Website -- The EVE upset
"... what is fun about EVE is the struggle, not the victory condition. The victory condition is boring. Lots of folks lose their livelihoods when an empire falls, and players invested in BoB are likely upset that years of work were lost. But EVE is not a game about the height of the Roman Empire. It’s a game about the sacking of Rome by barbarians, so that they can become the next short-lived top dog. BoB existed to be torn down, and anyone who dreams of permanent glory in a game like that should understand that their destiny is to be taken down by the next upstart, in a dog-eat-dog world."
virtualworlds  mmorpg  gaming  eveonline  socialengineering  hacks  gamemechanics  competition  parasitism  espionage  defection  networks  socialnetworking  socialgraph  sociology  simulation  power  politics  empire  fun 
february 2009 by adamcrowe
Wired -- Clive Thompson on How More Info Leads to Less Knowledge
'What's going on? Normally, we expect society to progress, amassing deeper scientific understanding and basic facts every year. Knowledge only increases, right? Robert Proctor doesn't think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases. He has developed a word inspired by this trend: agnotology. Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is "the study of culturally constructed ignorance." As Proctor argues, when society doesn't know something, it's often because special interests work hard to create confusion. "People always assume that if someone doesn't know something, it's because they haven't paid attention or haven't yet figured it out," Proctor says. "But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what's true and what's not." -- *covers ears*
ignorance  denial  delusion  disinformation  agnotology  newspeak  thoughtcrime  doublethink  fraud  corruption  power  language  control  facts  knowledge  reality  truth  #specialization  CliveThompson 
january 2009 by adamcrowe
Google Video -- Adam Curtis: The Living Dead 3/3: The Attic
'In this episode, the Imperial aspirations of Margaret Thatcher were examined. The way in which Mrs Thatcher used public relations in an attempt to emulate Winston Churchill in harking back to Britain's "glorious past" to fulfil a political or national end.'
uk  empire  power  delusion  denial  history  nostalgia  propaganda  mythology  rhetoric  politics  war  WinstonChurchill  MargaretThatcher  documentaries  AdamCurtis  psychology  psychohistory 
december 2008 by adamcrowe
Telegraph -- Ocean currents can power the world, say scientists
'"This is a totally new method of extracting energy from water flow," said Mr Bernitsas. "Fish curve their bodies to glide between the vortices shed by the bodies of the fish in front of them. Their muscle power alone could not propel them through the water at the speed they go, so they ride in each other's wake. We enhance the vibrations and harness this powerful and destructive force in nature. If we could harness 0.1 per cent of the energy in the ocean, we could support the energy needs of 15 billion people."'
water  energy  power  sustainability  biomimicry  gaia 
november 2008 by adamcrowe
BBC -- New recession fears ahead of G20
"The G20 meeting will bring together both leading industrial powers such as the US, Japan and Germany, and emerging market countries such as China, India and Brazil. The heads of the World Bank and the IMF, the UN secretary-general and the chairman of the Financial Stability Forum have also been invited to attend. The leaders are scheduled to dine at the White House on Friday evening and hold two plenary sessions on Saturday, followed by a statement by President Bush." -- *sigh* We all know what their 'solution' will be.
economics  debt  fraud  power  control  currency  government 
november 2008 by adamcrowe
Cinema.com -- Revolver: Guy Ritchie Q & A
"One of the first rules of business is to protect your investment. I like the idea that we do the same with our personal philosophies. Once we have decided what’s right, irrelevant of whether we are right or wrong, the more energy we will invest to protect that. Which is basically how conmen work. They get you to invest a little bit, then a bit more. They never tell you to buy something, just take a look. Even looking’s an investment. Once you’ve contributed some of your energy to looking - appraising a certain article - then a small investment has been made. From a small investment comes a larger investment, from a larger investment comes a greater investment until eventually you’ve invested so much that you can’t be wrong. Because if you are wrong, it must mean you’re stupid and nobody can admit that they’re stupid."
ignorance  greed  power  ego  truthbias  grifting  fraud  control  life  existentialism  philosophy  #complexity  #specialization 
november 2008 by adamcrowe
The Independent -- Cashless society by 2012, says Visa chief
"Paying for goods with notes and coins could be consigned to history within five years, according to the chief executive of Visa Europe. Peter Ayliffe said that, by 2012, using credit and debit cards should be cheaper and more convenient than cash. Some retailers could soon start surcharging customers if they choose to buy products with cash, because of the greater cost of processing these payments, he warned."
economics  debt  money  power  numbers 
october 2008 by adamcrowe
IDC -- The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe - 2008 Update [PDF]
"cooling costs are escalating rapidly as newer, denser servers come online. Power consumption that was 1kW per server rack in 2000 is now closer to 10kW. Customers building new datacenters are planning for 20kW per rack."
pdf  research  data  storage  digital  information  networks  power  environment  green  sustainability  exponential  growth  designnoir  kipple 
june 2008 by adamcrowe
Biology Futures
"Art to digitized information science to engineering problem." -- "Combinational era focuses on empiricism and simulation." -- "Synthetically developed energy solutions could have a substantial impact on natural resource demand."
biology  syntheticbiology  bioengineering  genetics  genetherapy  design  technology  ethics  medicine  discrimination  surveillance  sousveillance  body  modification  biopunk  hacking  opensource  hackersvsvectoralists  science  literacy  simulation  digital  information  health  food  energy  power  postpetroleum  algae  geopolitics  transhumanism 
may 2008 by adamcrowe
Power Point
"Power Point is designed to make visible the amount of power being consumed by each mains socket in a direct and immediate way."
power  visualization  energy  storytelling  productnarratives  designnoir 
february 2008 by adamcrowe
Whitechapel Art Gallery -- Adam Curtis: The World of the Self/Our World
'Adam Curtis presents an illustrated talk on the ideas behind this unique series and the things that link these episodes together.' -- Adam Curtis: "Ideas have consequences." Indeed. Great talk.
AdamCurtis  events  presentations  documentaries  ideas  politics  journalism  news  metanarratives  power  mapping  ideology  reality  simulacra  self  feedback  freedom 
december 2007 by adamcrowe
Wired - The End of Oil is Upon Us. We Must Move On - Quickly
"China's energy needs will grow 5.1 percent annually through 2015. China also will need an additional 1,300 gigawatts of electricity, an amount equal to what the United States currently produces."
economics  energy  oil  power  sustainability  security  war 
november 2007 by adamcrowe
Digital Rain - Secret Sharing
"In an age where information is more accessible and companies more open than ever before, we are still fascinated by secrecy and its power to connect us to other beings. We have an overwhelming desire to share secrets anonymously with others.”
behaviours  secrecy  sharing  epistolary  alternativerealitygaming  gaming  storytelling  transmedia  transparency  privacy  therapy  power  communities  collectiveintelligence 
september 2007 by adamcrowe
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