Evil wants an evil response

One of my mantras for the past year or so is evil wants an evil response (see here). But let me back up. One thing that has always bothered me about having my particular brain wiring is that despite craving power and control, it has traditionally been so easy to push me over the edge, lose my temper, make me angry. I get caught up in power struggles sometimes and make a bigger deal out of things than they warrant because I get ego hurt or my mind just seems to crave that particular stimulus.

But in the past couple of years of trying to find a better balance in my psychological and emotional life, the mantra helps me to understand that in having that reaction of anger against something that rankles me, I am at worst playing into my opponent's hands and at best losing control and perspective. There's actually a sort of suggestion in Mormon theology that enmity is its own sort of currency -- that you can stir up and use enmity to do plenty of momentous things that not even mountains of gold would do (think French Revolution or Hitler). And so our enmity often makes us pawns as well, and in fighting people that are filled with enmity, we're often just fighting pawns. (For some of you nerdier types, it's like when I tried to explain to my little relatives that Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars was leading both sides of the clone wars, but they couldn't understand how a war (every war?) could really just be fought completely by pawns against pawns, and of the same man.)

Martin Luther King Jr. (happy MLK Jr Day U.S.!) put it this way:

"The attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is the evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by the evil. If he is opposing racial injustice, the nonviolent resister has the vision to see that the basic tension is not between the races… The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness…. We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust."

Or Marcus Aurelius:

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but of the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions."

Presidential psychopathy

From a reader:

Interesting video of James Fallon speaking about how most beloved American Presidents score highest on the psychopathy checklist. 

Other interesting points he makes it that Hitler's not a sociopath, neither are any of the other Nazi leaders. Neither are mafiosos typically sociopathic. That's why Hannah Arend calls it the banality of evil, not the evil of psychopaths. 

Sociopath quote: Calculating machine

"Bear in mind that my brain works like a calculating machine. Each person who makes a presesntation to me introduces into this calculating machine a small wheel of information. There forms a certain picture, or a number on each wheel. I press a button and there flashes into my mind the sum of all this information."

--Adolf Hitler

Perspectives on power

An "uber empath" friend writes:

I have been reading your sociopath blog and read the recent entry on power. I have a couple of thoughts.

When I was reading it, it made me think of a scene in Lords of the Rings. It's where Frodo and Sam end up "visiting" the wood elves. There is a scene with Galadriel, the queen of the wood elves. She is tested when Frodo offers to place the One Ring (the Ring of Power) in her keeping. In response to his offer, she presents an image of herself corrupted by the ring declaring; "And now it comes to it at last. You will give me the One Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night. Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain...all shall love me and despair!" But then, after appearing to Frodo both beautiful and terrible to behold, she fades and once again becomes Galadriel. Recalling the ambitions that had once brought her to Middle-earth, she declares, "I pass the test," and refuses the Ring, accepting her fate of diminishing (as the time of the dominion of men had come) and returning at last to Valinor (the Elf version of Valhalla).
You called me a super-empath once, but if I had power, this is kind of how I would envision myself. A seemingly benevolent but somewhat dark queen, who would demand that everyone love and be kind to one another (or else, of course, off with their heads!!).

With regard to your comments about power and communism/facism, I say this. The history of the world is essentially that of "the People," "the Fuhrer" and "the Poet." The People are the sheep. In order to function, they need to have the Fuhrer in place to direct them and tell them how to live their lives. Dictators and sociopaths achieve power because the People give it to them. They NEED the Fuhrer, for they secretly suspect they are incapable of living without him/her. Occasionally in history, a Poet figure comes along (Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth, etc. etc.). The Poet presents the People with the possibility of human freedom. He or she is initially greeted with enthusiasm and some of the People may even begin to embrace their freedom. But eventually, always, the People panic and reject the possibility of freedom. Then they turn on the Poet and destroy him/her, or turn the Poet over to the Fuhrer to imprison/destroy.
What do you think?