The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us - Martha Stout - Google Books
I'm guessing it would take the kind of person who almost totally lacks the ability to feel any sort of responsibility for others to do many of things that are passed off as "normal" in todays world.
We know for a fact that the executives in charge of the major tobacco companies acted in such a way as to addict generations of smokers, many at an early age, then to work hard to deny the science linking their products and serious health risks such as cancer, heart disease and stroke. Prominent scientists like Fred Seitz were richly rewarded for distorting the facts that if they had been honestly represented would have saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. In Seitz's case in the 1980s he was in charge of a project that dispersed over 45 million dollars US into funding research into cancer links of all sorts of products
except tobacco. We spent the 1980s being afraid of all sorts of stuff instead of focusing on the real killer. Fred Singer was also active in this campaign of lives for dollars as academics who should have known better showed little or no evidence of a conscience.
Guess who has been very prominent in climate change denial?
We know there's socipaths out there, we know that in the past they've been very effective in pushing products that have serious negative consequences for the common good and we know who's helped them. We know many of the same techniques and personnel have been involved in protecting the oil and coal sector from the consequences of responsible legislation that would benefit us all in mitigating serious climate change.
When people post here what a joke climate change is and how we don't need to be concerned about our future and it's all about jobs and comfort, they're carrying on in the tradition of sociopaths from the past who've already done great damage to the overall community. We can avoid dealing with the unpleasant reality of having rogues in power both politically and economically, but that doesn't prevent the great damage they can do if left unrestrained. Sociopaths have certain advantages in business and politics as they don't have the same inhibitions as the rest of us...sound familiar. For instance while many respect election laws because they preserve a democratic system that benefits us all in the long term, a sociopath would say, "I want power, I'm going to take it, and let someone else suffer the negative consequences of my actions". I think that description fits our current PM and his "government" well. The same on environmental issues that are treated openly with ridicule by the Conservatives in this country. While it's important to have jobs and economic health, if the people don't have clean water, air and soil then we all suffer while the few who benefit the most from unregulated development suffer little or not at all. If we push the global climate into a warmer state too fast for most species to adjust we could end human civilization altogether, a sociopaths dream.
Sociopaths are great at playing games, they use cleverness to first disguise the fact they're incapable of genuine emotion and make up for their emotional emptiness with material wealth. Most people who feel genuine emotions simply don't need massive amounts of assets to feel secure. So if we actually do want a future we need to reject people who obviously are incapable of caring about anything but themselves and even that in a very limited material sense. Anyone who talks of comfort and wealth over a future for us as people is probably lacking the very ability to care about what matters most...people.