OnlySubs Episode 5: Psychopathy and Social Media is now available exclusively for New Discourses contributors on the following platforms:
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One of the things I think about societies in general is that they evolve sets of norms over time to manage the kinds of reliable problems that arise in societies. When there are major changes to the fundamental operations of a society, then, you can reliably expect not only disruption, but specifically the kind of disruption that follows from one or more of these civilization-scale social problems going from being generally managed to unmanageable, at least for a while. One of those problems that returns perennially in all societies is the problem of psychopathy (or, sociopathy, if you prefer).
In this episode of James Lindsay, OnlySubs, I dive into the question of “Why Woke? Why now?” through this lens to provide at least some partial answer. Social media, I contend, skews toward a completely different social environment (younger, more introverted, more schizoid, more socially anxious, even more depressed), and it also creates an entirely new opening for psychopathic behavior. Since the problem of totalitarianism hinges significantly on mismanaging psychopathy (and its tendency to create self-suited pseudo-realities), totalitarian ideologies can be expected to bloom when a huge new opportunity like social media arrives on the scene. Join me for a few minutes’ discussion on this line of thought in this subscribers’-only short podcast.
Previous episodes of OnlySubs can be found here.
