the sociopathic types - they prey on the
elderly like there they're barely people
oh yeah well this is a big problem now
with computers I mean close ties I know
that frauds yes - my grandma yeah she
calls me up out of the blue she's like I
just got a call from you in Mexico
saying that you were stranded there
needed me to say like what yeah exactly
yeah well that's a sociopath
they're sociopaths to do that or they're
just like opportunistic people or what's
the difference are you going to be the
real psychopathic types they they have
no conscience like you're there to be
plucked
you're a npc in a video game yes it's
been described yeah exactly and and
they're relatively rare and they do have
to move around and you know they can be
successful in extraordinarily corrupt
environments for short periods of time
but it's just not a stable solution I
can give you an example
well I'm cured what do you think about
like the high ranking officers in the
Nazi Party were these Psychopaths that
were thriving in an unstable corrupt
situation or these otherwise decent
people that just got twisted up and the
and well some of them while they were
there little of column a and little of
column B you know like there is
certainly openings in the Nazi
hierarchies for people who were
compassionless and cruel and vengeful
and and on all of that the SS is a good
example of that but there's a great book
that I would recommend to your to your
listeners to your viewers called
ordinary men by Christopher browning and
so it's a great book and it tracks the
development of so when the Nazis moved
through Poland they left policemen
behind to maintain order let's say but
it was still under wartime and browning
tracked the behavior of this one unit of
policemen they're all middle-aged guys
just typical middle class you know
burgeois guys they'd grown up really
before Hitler so they weren't thoroughly
indoctrinated like the Nazi youth say
and and they were sent to to Poland and
their commander said look you guys it's
wartime and you know there are traitors
everywhere and you're gonna have to do
some pretty horrible things here but if
you you don't have to you can go home if
you think that's just too much and none
of them did and you think well why not
they had the opportunity but the reason
was well they were comrades let's say in
arms you know so they had that esprit de
corps thing going and they were all
thinking well I'm not gonna like run
away and leave my colleagues to do all
the dirty work it's a war and duty they
have a duty yeah ok so fine so you know
they started by rounding up all the Jews
who were between 18 and 65 the men and
like shipping them away and and they
ended off by this is rough it's a rough
book they ended up you know taking naked
pregnant women out into the middle of
fields and shooting them in the back of
the head and so you think well how does
a man transform in that manner and
browning shows you like it's not
pleasant they went through psychological
hell each step of the way but they went
you know so lots of times it was
ordinary men who went down the bad path
one step at a time and sometimes it was
like people who were rotten to the core
like their minister of propaganda or
Magali that doctor i mean you know he
was a sadistic psychopath of the highest
order is a is there a mastermind at this
it seems so complicated to to to
transform an ordinary man as the book
says until just someone who's willing to
execute a pregnant innocent woman is
there a mastermind that plots the course
of that or is it just circle like it
just happened naturally as the along
with the objectives of the like how did
it how do they orchestrate something so
complicated like that well i mean that
the germans were an organized are and
organized people were and organize
people and hitler really didn't give out
directives precisely he sort of hinted
at what he might want and then his
minions would get together and you know
lay out policies in accordance with what
they thought were his wishes and i mean
there's a book another book I would
recommend called Eichmann in Jerusalem
and Eichmann was really the architect of
the final solution in many ways and it's
a characterological analysis of Eichmann
and Eichmann was in no way a psychopath
you know he was perfectly capable of I
think think this is actually a true
story I might have it confused with
another story but it
doesn't matter really it's it's it's the
same idea he won there's a story about
him driving home after work one day and
running over a cat and having like a
terrible emotional reaction to it you
know and it's not like his kids didn't
love him and you know but and he wasn't
out there actually killing people he was
just making the plans he was the
bureaucrat behind the scenes and he was
the sort of guy who had his mom do his
laundry when he went off to the army you
know he was uh he was a faceless
bureaucrat and he would have worked in
any bureaucracy he was worried about his
next promotion he wasn't thinking about
the larger consequences and so and
that's Hannah Arendt and she that's a
very classic book Eichmann in Jerusalem
and that's that's very much worth
reading if you're interested in this
sort of thing one of the interesting
things I always heard about the Nazis
that he really humanizes them in a way
is that they were and you could I might
be wrong about this but they were
passing out alcohol to all the soldiers
especially those in the concentration
camps to keep them intoxicated all the
time so that they could cannot confront
the horrible things they were doing you
know they had all sorts of they learned
how to do it across time right I mean
you know it so Hitler started one of the
things Hitler started it's a very
strange story in many ways because
Hitler was obsessed with order and
cleanliness he was a very orderly person
and he was very sensitive to disgust you
know because you think well the Nazis
were afraid of the Jews you know because
they were other and that's not right
what what's more accurate is that the
especially Hitler he was he was very
sensitive to disgust that's what it
looks like and if you're disgusted by
something then you want to eradicate it
right if you're afraid of something you
want to run away from it if you're
disgusted by it you want to burn it to
the damn ground you want to get rid of
it and his writings like I read a book
called Hitler's table talk which was his
spontaneous discussions during dinner
time from 1939 to 1940 - it's really
another amazing book and we had been
doing some work and inspired a bit by
Jonathan Hite who's done a lot of work
on disgust and the relationship between
trait personality and I was reading this
book at the same time and it was
just unbelievable how often Hitler
referred to the people he was
eradicating you know the Slavs and the
gypsies and the Jews and all the people
he went after as parasites and as rats
and his insects and all of that so they
were kind of put into that category so
and here's a horrifying part of that
story like when Hitler first came to
power he put in a lot of public health
initiatives including master book
tuberculosis screening which actually
turned out to be a good thing and at the
same time he went on a beautify the
factories campaign and so he convinced
that German factory owners and so forth
to to increase the levels of hygiene in
the factories to get rid of the rats and
the mice to plant flowers out front you
know to make everything look neat and
orderly and the insecticide they used
was Zyklon well Zyklon too so to
eradicate the routes and the insects
Zyklon a slightly different formulation
was the gas that was used in the
concentration camps and so Hitler went
from cleaning up the rats and the mice
and the factories and the insects and
then he went into the mental hospitals
and started cleaning up in there and
then I could just went mmm broader and
broader again sort of one step at a time
you know when the Germans had plenty of
reason to be resentful and and hateful
because I mean think about what they
went through we can't even imagine it
first of all there was World War one and
so there was many men like Hitler
himself who served in the trenches and
there's one story about Hitler he he had
won a medal for heroism in World War one
and he was sitting around with a group
of his buddies and went off to do
something god only knows what and when
he came back they were all dead because
a mine and not a mine I don't remember
what's kind of some kind of shell it
landed in the middle and killed them all
it's like that changes you yeah you know
and then afterwards there was all these
brutalized men who'd come out of the
trenches I mean you just can't imagine
what it must have been like in the
trenches you know especially if you're
there for like a couple of years you
weren't the same person get out of there
you're unemployed you're countries in
ruins then the hyperinflation hits and
every single person in Germany who ever
saved any money at all his flat bloody
broke and then there's a communist
revolution brewing in Russia and it's
like it's hell and
Nazis came along and said well not only
are we gonna restore order and greatness
but we're gonna bloody well tell you
whose fault this is yeah that's like and
Hitler I've studied him a lot trying to
understand what happened and Hitler was
Carl Jung called him the mouthpiece of
the collective unconscious of the German
people so you imagine there's all this
resentment and hatred brewing underneath
the surface and all this this chaos is
there and the desire for order is like
clamoring in everyone's minds and Hitler
comes along and he's he's a very
powerful emotional orator and he's
watching the crowd and he listens and
when he says thing eh nothing happens
when he says thing B everybody roars and
so he takes note of that and it's he had
not even conscious exactly right because
he's being molded by the crowd and so
they roar and so he think so that's a
reinforcement that's a reward and so
then he goes down that line a little bit
farther and they roar some more and then
he tries something else and it's silent
it's not what they want you bet exactly
that man he acts out the dark desire of
the mob so he becomes the embodiment of
the dark desire of the mob and that's
partly that's partly why he had the
charisma it's right because there's this
unconscious fantasy brewing in the back
of everyone's minds you see that to some
degree now with an taifa for example and
and their proclivity towards violence
you know it you ask what just exactly
what's going on there well Hitler came
to embody the desire of the German
people for order and revenge and he he
embodied that fully you know and you
could say so what happened was a
collaboration between him and the people
it wasn't Hitler turned everyone into
Nazis it's like no that's not how it
worked I'm sure there was a lot of good
people still left over who got just
overrun by the mania - well we're
disgusted well the other the other thing
too is that you know people are not that
brave hmm and everybody thinks this is
one of the things I teach in my maps of
meeting class you know it's like okay
you you look at Nazi Germany in the 30s
and you think well I'd be one of the
heroes who rescued the Jews it's like
statistically that's very improbable
right and one of the things I've learned
in the last year with all this strange
political what would you say this
strange situation that I've been in is
how unlikely it is for people to speak
up
they just won't even tenured professors
who are tenured they're protected it's
like the probability they'll pop their
head up and say something that might
make them identifiable is very very low
so it's scary yeah I guess you're right
well in that time and you know Nazi
Germany the stakes were as high as it
could get they didn't tolerate it that's
right that's exactly right but even when
the stakes are low people won't
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