Can the faulty psyche be curbed?

Let us begin by understanding the “Dark Triad”. Three human traits from which we can see that humanity has a problem.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder in which the function of conscience, which develops in infancy and toddlerhood, lags in development or is not established at all. Psychopaths lack respect for social and moral norms because they are unaffected by feelings such as guilt, remorse and sometimes fear. They have little to no ability to feel empathy and remorse.

Machiavellianism is a personality trait characterized by a willingness to use manipulation and deception to serve isolated self-interest and is accompanied by a cynical worldview. A Machiavellian lacks empathy, is indifferent to morality and has little guilt or remorse.

Narcissism is behavior characterized by an excessive focus on one’s own person and image, selfishness, fantasies of influence and power, a non-realistic self-image and a lack of genuine empathy. A narcissist feels elevated above others, constantly seeks admiration and recognition and wants it confirmed. In addition, a narcissist has an overly colorful self-image and an unstable base characterized by distrust and an inability to form lasting equal relationships.

The Faulty Psyche

I’m sure you can point to some people who fit the above descriptions. But what if I argue that all people still suffer to some degree from these issues? Now what if I also attribute this to countries, cultures and religions?

I need not go back in history and merely name an example of our present time. Israel’s genocide of Gaza is a very good example of our collective faulty psyche. You cannot attribute this purely to Netanyahu and Trump. Only a few million people actively resist compared to eight billion people who remain silent.

There are unfortunately many examples. What intrigues me is the question of how we can heal our psyche. Can humanity escape from the vicious cycle in which we have so far corrupted time and again?

The cycle of civilization

There are, of course, many who have already pondered the issues of life. Is every civilization doomed to perish? So far this is the case and I wonder if we can do something about it and if so, what can we do.

In the video below, you can see that humanity has already tried different models of civilization, but keeps falling back. Just as the West is now falling back to tyranny. The collective West suffers from psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism.

The ‘funny’ thing about this video is that it was made from a Western perspective. That shows how limited the West thinks, let alone acts. Excessive focus on one’s own person, one’s own culture, one’s own religion, one’s own form of government, it’s all pure narcissism. Western philosophers, Western medicine and so on is the very best according to the West.

But anyway, I want to look beyond the West. Now the problem is the West, but of course we have gone through this cycle many times as humanity. It goes wrong every time. In the good times there is trade and mutual respect, but because of our faulty psyche we still lapse back into decadence and exploitation.

Can we make the system foolproof?

Great thinkers devised democracy and the trias politica to make the system more robust and less prone to corruption. This does not appear to be working, and of course we can spend a long time trying to create a system that can rein in our flawed psyche as much as possible.

I don’t think it will work that way. I don’t think any system can withstand a faulty psyche. Any system can work fine when there is a leader and a people with few “Dark Triad”, but so far it has always proven to be only temporarily so. We will not find a ‘solution’ in a ‘better’ system.

Evolution

When things go badly, more people cry out for revolution, but they fail to understand that every revolution is only a temporary ‘solution’. When man does not evolve, we are forced to keep repeating our misery. Thousands of years of history are proof of this.

Our faulty psyche must be healed in our evolution. Our brain functions must be improved so that the “Dark Triad” can disappear from our system. It is not about our leaders, but about ourselves. We have to become massively conscious and consciously choose different thoughts, behaviors and actions.

Can we consciously direct this or should we leave this to God? For suppose God is an observer, a cameraman who records what we actually do. That although we are judged after our lives, all humanity itself is subject to self-governance. That God is waiting for the moment when we are finally ready for our next phase.

So is our self-awareness the key to our next step in our evolution? Is it precisely that which sets us apart from the animals and can make us human? That we must begin to see exactly this. Massively. That we have a problem. Ourselves. And that we MUST DO SOMETHING. No, not outside ourselves, but inside ourselves. Becoming aware. Turn on the light.

Don’t assume that anything will change in the world then. It certainly will, but you won’t notice it. The world will remain just as ‘hard’. The change in yourself will be tremendous. And exactly that is the key. That is what is needed.

In conclusion, I want to point out that we are indeed on the move. In fact, evolution goes only one way and that is always forward. We come from God and grow toward God. That too is a cycle, the greatest cycle. The world has already become smaller, everyone pretty much knows each other. So things are moving forward, but more is needed. God is waiting for us. We will have to do it. Not those others, but you. Until we see and understand this, we can wait forever. That’s why I ask you to turn on the light, within yourself. Just visualize it. See what happens.

By Nico Cost for GlobalSouth.co