The American physician Hervey Cleckley draws a clear picture of the psychopathic type in his book “The Mask of Sanity” published in 1941: “The psychopath is an intelligent person characterized by lack of emotion, lack of shame, lack of fear, immunity to punishment, unpredictability, irresponsibility, and manipulative behavior and superficial charm. He is unfamiliar with the primary facts or dates of what we might call personal values and is utterly incapable of understanding such things. He is unable to evoke even the slightest interest in the tragedy, joy, or aspiration of mankind as portrayed in serious literature or art. In real life, too, he shows indifference to these things. Beauty and ugliness, good and evil, love, horror and humor have – except in a very superficial sense – no meaning to him and no power to touch him. Furthermore, he lacks the ability to recognize that others are touched. It’s as if, despite his keen intellect, he is blind to this aspect of human existence. You can’t explain it to him because there’s nothing in his realm of consciousness that can be used to compare to bridge that gap. He can repeat the words and say lightly that he understands, and it is impossible for him to realize that he does not understand.”
This is much the same picture that 21st century clinicians have of this personality disorder. Psychopaths are capable of committing the greatest atrocities without a twinkle in their eye, and the victims’ reaction leaves them completely indifferent. For many people in leadership positions (who are not sadistic by nature) this widespread disposition may be an advantage, they always keep a cool head even in stressful situations in order to achieve their goals. But if state leaders with exuberant fantasies of omnipotence display this disposition, it can only mean disaster for their fellow human beings in the long run.
For many years, Putin’s system of disinformation, obfuscation, unpredictability, manipulation, and sudden, brutal violence that has already claimed so many lives has worked, and he could probably have gone on like this for a small eternity. But starting the war against Ukraine was really stupid. Because this war will bring about everything that Putin actually wanted to prevent: the West is moving closer together, the ranks that previously stood undecidedly open are closing. His oligarch cronies’ accounts are frozen (sick enough that all that stolen blood money is safe to rest in Switzerland). But above all: the Western dependencies on Russian raw materials, which made that brutal system possible, will be solved. Putin has indeed initiated his own end.
Vladimir Sorokin, one of Russia’s most important contemporary writers, writes in the SZ: “Who is to blame? We, the Russians, are to blame. We will have to bear this guilt until the collapse of the Putin regime. That collapse will come. The attack on free Ukraine is the beginning of the end. Putinism is doomed because it is the enemy of freedom, it is the enemy of democracy. People finally understand that. He invaded a free, democratic country because it is free and democratic. He’s screwed because the world of freedom and democracy is bigger than his gloomy, sullen slob. Delivered because he is after a new Middle Ages, corruption, lies, disregard for human freedom. Because he is – in the past. And we should now do everything we can to make this monster a thing of the past once and for all.”
But what will mankind do in the future with these psychos who keep appearing?
I am for the minimally invasive solution: every leader of a large nation (or company) gets a chip implanted with a mini dose of TNT for his leadership time. If he mutates into a danger to mankind (the Gollum Effect gradually appears in men after about 6 to 8 years), he will be blown up after deliberation and decision by a three-quarters majority of the 15 members of the World Security Council. This would save us all the fuss, the expense, the military and armaments, the propaganda, the environmental disasters, the arguments and fighting, and all the human lives. Human voters are often blinded by the mists of power (propaganda), allowing themselves to be deceived and helping insane freaks into positions where their madness can flourish. Since these effects must also affect most other world inhabitants in a globalized world, all those affected may vote on the fate of the ursupator:
The one who drives the world to the abyss must go!
Author photo by Kerstin Behrendt