Category: Politics & Opinion

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Psychopath class

When you say the word “psychopath” images of an axe wielding homicidal maniacs come to mind. Norman Bates dragging a knife into Marion Crane’s shower. Mark Lewis skewering women so he can capture their fear with his father’s cine-camera. The mythical psychopaths who inhabit our imagination, and manifest in the films of “Psycho” or “Peeping Tom”.

The truth is considerably less histrionic, a whole lot more mundane, and come in the form of the compulsive liars who always get what they want. The social butterflies able to evade responsibility for the whirlwind of destruction they leave in their wake, and the “intraspecies predators” who control others to satisfy their own selfish needs.

While researching on my first screenplay I came across Dr. Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist. The checklist is the psycho-diagnostic tool most commonly used to assess psychopaths. It is a clinical rating scale of twenty items. Each item is scored between “0” and “2”. A value of “0” is given to any item that does not apply. A value of “1” is given to any item that applies somewhat. A value of “2” is assigned to any item that applies fully. The twenty items are.

  • Glibness/superficial charm
  • Grandiose sense of self-worth
  • Pathological lying
  • Cunning/manipulative
  • Lack of remorse or guilt
  • Shallow affect
  • Callous/lack of empathy
  • Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
  • Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
  • Parasitic lifestyle
  • Poor behavioural control
  • Promiscuous sexual behaviour
  • Lack of realistic long-term goals
  • Impulsivity
  • Irresponsibility
  • Juvenile delinquency
  • Early behaviour problems
  • Revocation of conditional release
  • Many short-term marital relationships
  • Criminal versatility

When properly completed by a qualified professional the test subject is scored anywhere between “0” and “40”. The prototypical psychopath would score the maximum “40”. While someone who has no psychopathic tendencies would score the minimum “0”. A score above “30” diagnoses the subject as psychopathic.

I am not a qualified professional, but I know at least two individuals who would score above “30” on Dr. Hare’s Checklist. More worryingly I look around and see it manifest in an entire class of people, whose actions, attitudes, and behaviour, if taken as a whole, would score “30” or more. I know I’m throwing boulders into the water, but I am pointing a finger, and saying it, the Middle Classes are psychopaths.

I’m not the first to look at an entire institution and conclude if it were an individual it would be diagnosed as a psychopath. Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar’s 2003 documentary The Corporation did exactly that. They applied Dr. Hare’s Checklist to the corporation, and concluded that if it were an individual, it would be a clinically-diagnosed psychopath.

The individual members of the Middle Class may not be psychopathic on their own, but as a whole, with a set of clearly defined values, they score “30” or above. Take that core member of the middle class, bankers, I’d score their personality and case history as follows.

  • Glibness/superficial charm (2)
  • Grandiose sense of self-worth (2)
  • Pathological lying (2)
  • Cunning/manipulative (2)
  • Lack of remorse or guilt (2)
  • Shallow affect (2)
  • Callous/lack of empathy (2)
  • Failure to accept responsibility for own actions (2)
  • Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom (2)
  • Parasitic lifestyle (2)
  • Poor behavioural control (2)
  • Promiscuous sexual behaviour (2)
  • Lack of realistic long-term goals (2)
  • Impulsivity (2)
  • Irresponsibility (2)
  • Juvenile delinquency (1)
  • Early behaviour problems (1)
  • Revocation of conditional release (2)
  • Many short-term marital relationships (0)
  • Criminal versatility (2)

By my gorilla maths that gives them a Checklist score of “36”. They should be on a psychiatric hold, receiving treatment, a danger to themselves and others, but they’re not. They go about their business, in the name of the free market, and a profit.

I have absolutely no idea how to deal with it in any meaningful way, but the next time you see some banker on television failing to accept responsibility for their action by asserting their right to a bonus, or some well dressed politician demonstrating a callous lack of empathy by admonishing the long term unemployed, or you see the grandiose sense of self-worth innate in parents who set up a school for their children, take a look at the checklist, and see how they score. When I do it, they are always Middle Class, and they always score “30” or above.

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All that glitters is not gold

I heard yesterday, the average age of a first time buyer, not supported by the bank of mum and dad, is thirty-seven. Thirty-seven years old before you have enough financial history to leap the hurdle of deposit and get a mortgage. Mid-life before you can start to buy a house of your own. And things are only going to get worse.

As the ramifications of the recent financial collapse continue to unfold. It is not inconceivable that the average age of a first time buyer will push beyond forty. This delayed ability to join the fraternity of home owners will have a devastating effect on any buyer’s ability to repay a mortgage before retirement. That’s a lot of people who will never be able to get a mortgage. Never be able to buy a house.

Some might look at the current situation and argue we are going through a “natural” period of correction. Reduced numbers of first time buyers will force down the inflated price of housing. Thus allowing more first time buyer’s to enter the market. Perhaps that is true. What is more likely is that those who already have equity will be able buy up cheap property and build their portfolio. Fuelling the ever increasing rise in prices. Pushing the average age of first time buyer’s up even higher. The truth is. A lot of people will never be able to buy. And will be forced to rent for their entire life.

The usual argument against renting is that it is a waste of money. You give away all that money. And have nothing to show for it. But renting is only an issue if you look at your life as the accumulation of wealth. If you look at rent as the cost of living. It becomes less of an issue.

So why are we so obsessed with owning property in this country? Margaret Thatcher made it the cornerstone of her monetarist agenda by selling off our stock of council housing in the eighties. She sold the family silver to socially engineer the reduction of the welfare state. She made property a pension. Ask yourself. What happens to all this house wealth in the end? It is rarely passed on to the next generation. More often than not. It is levied to pay for the home owner’s retirement. Or worse still. Sold to pay the cost of residential care.

So what’s going to happen to the increasing number of people who will never be able to buy? They won’t have the cash-cow of a property to fund their retirement. What does the future hold for them? Will they have to continue working well beyond the statutory age of retirement? Or will they be abandoned, forced to live in abject poverty? That won’t happen. The state will step in and help. What state? The current government stated aim is the reduction of the state. Less state. Less help. So private companies will come to the rescue and fill the gap. What sort of care will those who don’t have property to levy actually get? The answer. Not very good care. The state will pay them? I don’t think so. Charity then? Charity will step in to help the venerable. How very progressive. It’s that kind of thinking that consolidated the need for the labour movement in the nineteenth century.

Perhaps that’s where the future lies. The rise of a genuine labour movement in this country. Will people’s inability to buy actually change people’s understanding of the world? Perhaps the coming privations will galvanise enough of us to finally force real and lasting social change for the better. Perhaps it will reawaken left-wing politics in this country.

The sceptic in me doubts it. I would love to be wrong. But I think the vast majority of us have been blinded by the glitter of wealth for it’s own sake. We’re in love with the big screen televisions that stream advertisement for the cult of celebrity like “The X Factor” and the soon to be gone “Big Brother”. We’ve had these bright lights for too long. Perhaps so long. The glare has blinded us. Made it hard to see. All that glitters is not gold.

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Class on my shoulder

I bumped into someone yesterday who damaged me both personally and professionally. I hadn’t seen him in almost ten years, and met him quite by chance in a confined situation. My gut reaction was to vent, punch him in the face, make him pay for the things he’d done, but I didn’t. I put my hands in my pockets, bit my tongue, and let him walk.

My father, in his youth, would’ve punched his lights out. At least one of my cousins would’ve taken a baseball bat to his shins. I put my hands in my pockets, bit my tongue, and let him walk away.

My lack of visceral action no doubt leaves me on the moral high ground, but there is still a part of me that thinks, I should have taken him outside, and damaged him, physically. That’s what you’re supposed to do where I come from, stand up for yourself, physically.

This kind of behaviour is portrayed in the media as a symptom of social decline, a disease with no cure. The subtext to all that hyperbole is fear, fear of the countless people who fall out of the pub on a Friday night, and respond to an insult with physical action.

Put simply, it’s fear of the working class.

It’s the working class who respond to insults with physical action, often it’s all they have. The thing is, the thing I have come to realise, the person I am talking about. His behaviour was no less violent, no less damaging than the fist thrown in a street brawl, but he did it in the name of a profit, with a smile, and a sense of entitlement you only ever come across in the middle class. The thing I’m struggling to articulate is this. The middle class façade of polite behaviour, is just that, a façade.

I have had something of an education, not as much as I would like, but enough to move in middle class circles, and survive, almost. I say almost because no amount of education will ever make me one of them. I will always be on the outside looking in. I lack the ruthless sensibility that is innate in these people. The cold selfishness that is their birth right. I come from, dare I say it, more honest stock. They might punch you in the face when you cross them, but they would never betray you for thirty pieces of silver.

Fortunately there will always be a part of me that remains working class, a part of me that still lives on a council estate in the North East of England, a part of me that wants to take duplicitous scum outside, and damage them, physically. It’s the part that keeps me honest. I suppose that’s why they say, you can take the boy out of the council estate, but you can’t take the council estate out of the boy.