There Is No Peace With a Tyrant ➶

Pieter Hintjens:

To live or work with a psychopath is to live in occupied lands. It is dismal, gray, with the constant threat of violence, and the total loss of freedom.

I’ve found, over the last years as I wrote this book and internalized its lessons, that confronting bad actors also made me generally happier in life. I’m pretty sure that psychopathy is an all-or-nothing strategy. We are all bad actors at times in our lives. Yet most of us work hard to self-correct. We’re obsessive about it. It’s enough to tell most people: “not cool!,” show them an alternative, and they will stop. Psychopaths don’t self-correct. Instead they get better at not getting caught.

So understanding these two paths of human nature, one can speak to people according to what path they are on. To the good actors, one gives order and structure, power, freedom, and protection from the bad actors. To bad actors, one gives the stick.

✶ Wednesday, 3 August 2022


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