Yesterday a girlfriend mentioned the possibility of Mitch McConnell gaining control of Congress after the mid-term elections. Made me think of this essay by Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig:
"We can consider aggression as a quantum, something which some individuals possess more of from the time of earliest childhood. And we all know aggressive persons who compensate with a highly differentiated moral code. Put somewhat simplistically, aggression serves these individuals to move from desiring good to living and asserting what is good.
"Psychopaths or compensated psychopaths employ aggression to achieve their own, egoistic goals. A compensated psychopath with a great deal of aggression dominates his classmates, family, or business associates with his harsh and unyielding morality.
"There are certain advantages to being a psychopath or compensated psychopath. Many of them have a relatively easy time adapting to society, unencumbered as they are by moral or neurotic scruples. They replace the lack of love or of true relationship with a love of power, something they can achieve without too much difficulty owing to the absence of moral or Eros-related restraints. Even an compensated psychopath can find room for a justification of unrestrained power-seeking within his rigid morality.
"It is little wonder that psychopaths occupy so many of the top positions in society and rather astonishing that there are not more in such positions.
"Let me put it somewhat differently. One of the major problems of any society, or of any political or large organization in general, is that of preventing unscrupulous, socially adapted psychopaths from gradually taking over the helm."
Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig, Meeting the Shadow. Tarcher, Los Angeles. Page 225.
Amen.
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