Space missions are complex and take decades to develop. However, there are ideas for missions that we dismiss in hours. Engineers can quickly determine if an idea breaks one of Newton’s three laws, and then go to lunch. I often wonder if there are some equivalent principles for human society. Although there are things that I read in the news that I have long since forgotten, there are a few that I’ve found that might identify underlying human behavior:
About five years ago, I read an article that included a psychiatric analysis of Wall Street. The human population is 1% clinical psychopath (that is, lack of interest and empathy for others and unparalleled capacity for lying, cheating and manipulation). Wall Street, however, is 10% clinical psychopath. The study was done for Wall Street, but I see the same dynamic in government. Clinical psychopaths gravitate to positions of power. My conclusion…empathy doesn’t scale. Government or Industry will never care for us; rather, only people and communities will care for each other. Anything done on a regional or global scale, whether it is capitalism or socialism, will be infiltrated by gangsters or exploited by fraudsters. That’s not to say we shouldn’t vote or write our congressperson. Empathy may not scale, but oppression and greed definitely do, and we need to keep industry and government in check. We also need to adjust our expectations for government. To paraphrase Harry Truman, efficient government is a dictatorship. If we expect industry to carry the day by weakening government, be prepared for a slave economy and a barren earth. Free markets left unchecked degrade into monopolies and cartels, and will deplete our resources.
There is a term that psychiatrists use to describe the emptiness we experience from buying more stuff—the hedonistic treadmill. Quite simply, any new thing or experience eventually becomes commonplace, and we have to “upgrade” the item/experience to recover that excitement. Furthermore, looking at the converse, I read an article about Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust. He observed that Holocaust prisoners who had some reason to live were more likely to survive. Working in the Space Industry, I definitely see this dynamic when my older colleagues retire and get killed by the television not long afterwards. I would expect that concepts like the Universal Basic Income (robots do all the work and we get an allowance) would make for a very depressed society. Yes, we need to remove barriers and provide a safety net, but we need solutions that engage everyone. The economy is here for us, not the other way around. This dynamic of having a purpose also means that if a person doesn’t feel like they are part of the day-to-day drama that makes society work, then they will be part of a drama that either dismantles or changes society.
The last item has to do with a study of social connections. It demonstrated that a minority opinion that was unwavering would quickly become the majority opinion once the minority opinion reached 10%. The underlying dynamic was that the majority of people make decisions based on being part of the crowd. Although a 10% minority is not large, the fact that the minority was unwavering created an effect that made people feel it was larger than it was. 10% was the tipping point where people started accepting it as the majority opinion, thus it became so. As such, those of us that care about an inclusive community need to make the effort to agree on “the how” and “the what”, and maybe even stand down on divisive issues to achieve a multiplicative effect of consistency of message, especially since humans have innate tribal instincts that make greed and protectionist concepts inherently coordinated and don’t require any overt effort to achieve consistency. Furthermore, marketing and media outlets systematically exploit our survival instincts to capture our attention and sell it to the highest bidder with little regard to the by-product of reinforcing the divisions in our society.
Joe Criscione, President