“Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths: From Alexander to Hitler to the Corporation”
by Joseph N. Abraham
(from the publisher)
“Conquest is murder & theft. Conquerors are vicious criminals. Vicious criminals become kings. Kings designed civilization. We are the products of civilization.
Right wing movements are of increasing concern around the globe, but the attention is misdirected. The real problem is not the authoritarian leader, but the blinkered supporters who unquestioningly follow him. Without them, the despot is irrelevant.
Why do we attach ourselves to demagogues & mountebanks? Why do we defend even their most obvious hypocrisies & lies? The answer lies in the roots of civilization. Despite our romantic traditions, monarchs were never wise, just, nor generous. Without exception, history shows that kings were the most vicious psychopaths, narcissists, & sadists who ever lived.
And the only path for survival required unquestioningly obeying— & blindly believing— anything the king said.”
(from the Psychiatric Times review)
“…This book is unique, delving deeply into the worst horrors and most brutal leaders in history, at least from the perspective of those ruled by or critical of such rulers. His answer suggests a new interdisciplinary specialty, psychiatric archeology, for studying genocidal leaders and organizations. One contribution to this specialty could come from emergency medicine. Being an emergency physician lends itself to a “certain dark paranoia” of trying not to miss anything really important when evaluating patients. That translates into trying to think about the worse things that could be happening. Second, Abraham also feels that his evolutionary biology background makes a great contribution. Any evolutionary biologist encounters constant and enormous death and horror—such is the natural results of our human nature and the survival of the fittest. Most living things die early.
Abraham rightly recognizes that the dangerous leader nowadays may be corporations as much as individuals, although the 2 can work together synergistically. We know that there are many more sociopaths outside of jails and prisons than in them. He also comes up with the insight that there may be moral Psychopaths, whose psychopathy can be channeled into good. The main example here is the neuropsychiatrist, James Fallon, PhD. Though Fallon’s wife once compared him to the film character Hannibal (“The Cannibal”) Lecter, and his colleagues suggested he might be a psychopath, he is generous to individuals, and finds them interesting. Fallon is a demonstration of how the field of medicine has been taken over by for-profit corporations, which are responsible for the epidemic rate of physician burnout. Business ethics need to supplement healthcare ethics, not take them over.
“Because when all of the other checks and balances begin to fail, then we must be the final check. Only we can restore balance. We are the last feedback in the system,” said Abraham.
