Thursday, August 23, 2012

Productive Psychopaths

Lately, I've had some time to watch some of the shows that I've accumulated on my DVR. The other day, I watched a show called Are You Good or Evil? (The link takes you to YouTube with the doc broken down into 4 parts. It's interesting, but I don't expect you to actually devote an hour to watching the whole thing.) It was on The Science Channel, but it doesn't look like it's on the schedule in the near future.

Because I am who I am, I immediately connected this show to two other things. The first was a doc called The Corporation. The link takes you to a synopsis which kind of goes over where I'm going with this. And the second thing I thought about was this recent article from io9.

There are all sorts of thoughts swirling around me about all this. But it's Thursday. And my goal is to boil this down to a thought-provoking question. Which one should I choose? (I can save the others for other weeks.)

What if we had no corporations? What sort of world would we live in then? Where would the psychopaths end up?

3 comments:

  1. Hmmm. I missed the thing on the science channel. I have no idea how to answer your questions as I have no frame of reference.

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  2. What if we had no corporations? Interesting idea. I think for there not to be any in the first place, that type-A win-at-all-costs personality couldn't exist at all. They'd want to much not to just make it, but make it bigger than anyone could imagine (hello, Wall Street banks).

    I think things would be quieter, slower. Maybe even not as advanced without the superdriven to prod us along by constantly pushing the envelope. I suppose the productive psychopaths have their uses.

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  3. That psychopaths picture is crazy! I'll have to read the article when I have more time.

    It makes me wonder about our ever-changing idea of "sane" and "normal". During the years leading to a big surge in prophets (one of them being Jesus, if you're a Jew and don't see him as the son of God), people said God was talking to them. From the scant evidence, a few might have well behaved like modern-day schizophrenics, but were taken seriously at the time.

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I respond to comments* via email, unless your profile email is not enabled. Then, I'll reply in the comment thread. Eventually. Probably.

*Exception: I do not respond to "what if?" comments, but I do read them all. Those questions are open to your interpretation, and I don't wish to limit your imagination by what I thought the question was supposed to be.