"We are a society of altruists governed by psychopaths.
This is the message of George Monbiot, distinguished writer and activist, on today’s episode. George’s Guardian columns are read all over the world, lauded for their big picture scope on issues of climate, justice and politics. A fervent anti-capitalist and environmental campaigner, George joins me to discuss political, economic and legal corruption, the link between colonialism and strong welfare states, social tipping points, and movement-building.
This is a wide-ranging and thorough discussion covering violence, sabotage, language and system dynamics: You cannot control a complex system from the centre—we are fighting against those who want to do just that at the expense of everything else.
Listen to the full conversation on Planet: Critical now and choose a paid subscription to support the project: https://www.planetcritical.com/p/its-them-vs-us-george-monbiot"
Where psychopaths may have had an evolutionary niche in small sub-Dunbar tribes of protohumans, if the natural distribution is around 1% to 4% https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.661044/full then the world now contains over 80 million psychopaths.
Indigenous tribes had cultural responses to such destabilization: https://github.com/xstos/consilience/blob/main/sociopathy.md
Nurture can also mitigate nature: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/how-i-discovered-i-have-the-brain-of-a-psychopath
There is also experimental evidence for harmony when those anomalies are accidentally purged: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/science/no-time-for-bullies-baboons-retool-their-culture.html
This problem is colossal in scale and quite daunting. Plausible as one of the main drivers of the metacrisis and humanity's exceedingly bloody warlike history.
And on the part at the end where Monbiot mentions a beautiful ecological civilization, this came to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh7qvXfGQho