From Taming Toxic People (David Gillespie, 2017) pp209-10
Psychopaths love environments without rules. Structure and accountability is the enemy of a parasitic personality that thrives on deceit, risk and grandiosity. If the people around you have known you since birth, it is very hard to pretend you are something you are not. If you are valued by how much you add to your community rather than your individual marvels, it is hard to fake achievement. If honesty and fair dealing is valued above all else, it is hard to be a lying cheat.
But modern western societies have slowly and surely destroyed all the ties which hold a psychopath in check. We now value the individual more than the group. We now value the look of success over the reality of achievement. And we have slowly but surely removed the societal rules and structures which provided roadblocks to the psychopath. We can no longer point to a community whose values we share and with which we are happy to comply. We are no longer a community; we are individuals who happen to live in the same place. The result is we no longer trust in authority because it is not earned through a life of unimpeachable honesty. We no longer trust in experts because they are often for sale to the highest bidder. We no longer trust the media because it chases clicks rather than truth. Instead, we invest our faith in anyone who tells us they have simple answers to our problems and who looks and talks like us. It is a perfect set-up for any psychopath. All they need to do is reflect our concerns, tell us whatever they know we want to hear and then sit back and accept our loyalty. The end of this story will not be pretty. When companies let psychopaths into the top job, they rarely recover. When countries let it happen, the consequences for all of us are even more dire.
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