Alienation is a useful psychological precursor to cultivating a lack of empathy and devaluation, dehumanization and demonization of intended categories of victims. Adolf Hitler’s earliest recorded anti-semitic diatribe comes in a letter written in 1919, giving the future Fuhrer two decades to steel himself before taking concrete steps to enact ” the Final Solution”. The doctoral dissertations of Pol Pot’s collaborators, Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan, laid out the basis of Khmer Rouge policy way back in 1955. It may be that such long term “mental rehearsals” are required to desensitize or justify the execution of systemic violence and that we would see such a pattern in the lives of superempowered individuals.
What Can Be Done?:
In terms of defense against superempowered individuals, the best option is engineering resilience and redundancy into all our critical systems and platforms, physical as well as social and political. We must with determination, lower our societal vulnerability to catastrophic attack so that back-up systems and third order contingencies ” short-circuit” the attack of a superempowered individual on our power, economic, communication and governmental networks. Tom Barnett, John Robb and most of all Steve DeAngelis , have all been preaching the gospel of resilience but the Federal government has yet to make this a priority .
Secondly, (and frankly, I’m not certain how this should be best implemented) we need to address reconnecting mildly disturbed but very talented ( and thus, potentially, exceptionally dangerous) people to wider social support and mental health networks before they wander irrevocably into the isolated realm of delusional violence. Rarely, if ever, do people just “snap” and commit heinous atrocities out of the blue. Instead, there is a prior pattern of drifting away, of eccentric and increasingly belligerent behavior over time until the individual, in isolated rage, mounts toward a crisis and lashes out at the world.
Unfortunately, a superempowered individual will do more than simply barricade himself in his house or shoot up a work place. Instead, he will try to take a good chunk of society with him and will have the capability to do so. We have a window of opportunity now to create strategies to deal with these eventualities and it should not be wasted.
Footnotes:
1. Barnett, Thomas P.M. and Cebrowski, Arthur K. ” The American Way of War“, Transformation Trends, January 2003.
2. Time.com Community Transcript “ The Unabomber Trial” November 12 1997
3. Johnson, Sally C. “Psychological Evaluation of Theodore Kaczynski“
4. Simonton, Dean Keith “Are Genius and Madness Related? Contemporary Answers to an Ancient Question“, Psychiatric Times. June 2005 Vol. XXII Issue 7
ADDITIONAL LINKS:
Tom Barnett:
John Robb:
“Lots of discussion of what 5GW is“
Shlok Vaidya:
“What Should Superempowered Individuals Do?”
tdaxp:
Zenpundit:
“THE SUPER EMPOWERED INDIVIDUAL“
“REVIEWING THE DELETED SCENE ON SYSTEM PERTURBATION – PART II. “
Glittering Eye:
“Zenpundit on the Super-Empowered Individual“
Dreaming 5GW :
Page 3 of 4 | Previous page | Next page