To White Collar Psychopaths, Stealing and Backstabbing Come Easy
24th August 2012
The notion of a colleague betraying you is at least as old as the tale of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, who famously uttered the phrase “et tu” as Brutus plunged a knife into his back.
And if you’ve ever encountered a co-worker who will do anything to get ahead — even if that means ruining your good name in the process — you know how calculating and callous such people can be.
But did you realize that such a person could also have psychopathic tendencies?
Oh, ya think?
We often think of a psychopath as being a serial killer. Yet according to former criminal profiler Gregg McCrary, psychopathy runs on a continuum — with white collar criminals falling in the middle.
Perhaps that’s why such people appear to be attracted to ‘public service’. Few professions offer such opportunities for stealing and backstabbing as government employment.
August 24th, 2012 at 09:51
“And if you’ve ever encountered a co-worker who will do anything to get ahead — even if that means ruining your good name in the process — you know how calculating and callous such people can be.” Substitute ‘competitor’ for ‘co-worker’, and you have the capitalist dream in a nutshell.
As Vince Lombardi was once purported to have said, “Winning isn’t the most important thing, it’s the only thing.”