Our Maddest Edges

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame (Sonnet 129)
by William Shakespeare

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight:
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
     All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
     To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. 

This video below illustrates why the rational expectations model of efficient markets is a dangerously misinformed theory, and perhaps a deadly rationalization for plunder. The theory, like so many flawed economic models, discards the outliers of the norm, who in the real world are in sufficient number to have a statistically significant effect on the outcome and the shape of the market.

And this is why self-regulation without objective oversight, the rule of law, and justice for all in equal measures is a path to self-destruction.

Power attracts certain personality types, and organizations that value power, or ruthless determination to achieve results at any cost, often end up being run by people with the mentality of predators. And the predatory environment can become self-reinforcing and self-sustaining given time.

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. 

For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. 

A murderer is less to fear.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero

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Also consider the words of Jon Ronson, "Don't define people by their maddest edges."

[Jon Ronson] describes becoming a certified “psychopath-spotter.” And he tells us that, given that 1 in 100 regular people is a psychopath, 15 of those in this very room must be psychopaths. Actually, “that figure rises to 4% of CEOs and business leaders, so there’s a good chance there’s about 30 or 40 psychopaths in this room,” he jokes. “It could be carnage by the end of the night.”

But then, Ronson makes us stop and reconsider. It turns out, becoming a psychopath-spotter turned him a little psychopathic himself. When interviewing people for his book, The Psychopath Test, he fell into the trap of  looking to define people by their maddest edges. This, he realized is what journalists do all too often: they focus on people’s extremes and stitch together a caricature while they “leave the normal stuff on the floor.” And at that point, he resolved not to define people by their maddest edges in future. And he thought anew about some of his characters. Tony the Prisoner Madman, for instance, wasn’t a psychopath, more a “semi” psychopath. “He’s a grey area in a world that doesn’t like grey areas,” says Ronson. “Yet that’s where you find the complexity, the humanity, the truth.” Wonderful.

THE PSYCHOPATH TEST by Jon Ronson

(TED talk with Jon Ronson here)

Faking your brain going wrong can qualify as evidence of your brain going wrong. And avoid wearing pinstriped suits too.