this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Does being rich cause neurological changes, or do those with those neurological traits by and large try to become wealthy?
Just curious the actual science there. I agree to be that rich shows a lack of empathy one way or another.
It's easier to believe that the evil want power and that is also true, but the science says that power makes you evil.
https://www.npr.org/2013/08/10/210686255/a-sense-of-power-can-do-a-number-on-your-brain
https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/how-power-erodes-empathy-and-steps-we-can-take-rebuild-it
https://hbr.org/2015/04/becoming-powerful-makes-you-less-empathetic
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-empathy/201909/power-blocks-empathy
https://www.livescience.com/1128-mere-thought-money-people-selfish.html
https://blog.ted.com/6-studies-of-money-and-the-mind/
Libertarian Socialists have been saying this for a century now.
I don't get much into doctrinal differences, but I feel like this is pretty core to a lot of anarchist thought. I vaguely recall a quote from engels, something about anarchists believing you need to abolish heirarchy in order to abolish injustice, vs socialists believing vice versa. I think neuroscience shows that power differentials will always create human misery.
Thanks for taking the time to list links!
Of course!
I've though about this a lot. I suspect evolution tilts a little towards psycopathy when wealthy.
Hard to say if theres a mechanism for that encoded in DNA, but if there is, Im betting it would get naturally selected for.
If an individual is in a position of power, then being a self-entitled asshole rapist will reduce competition and increase the spread of genes... Especially if the individual is a male
Assuming this has a negative effect of society, cultural evolution would hopefully respond with counters to this... Which I think is what we see time and again all over the world.
Society gets living situations relatively reliable. Assholes rise making things worse, society either crumbles into weakness or rejects new situation and removes assholes, encodes new ethics into societal norms and works towards gettingliiving situations reliable, repeat.
When more people are fed abd housed, theres more resources to devote towards economic and war engines, so I think this makes asshole removal naturally selected for on a cultural level.
This loop seems to be getting more frequent and I'd love if we could skip the parts where folks are miserable and dying.
I think it's the whole capitalist system that enables and rewards people with sociopathic traits. Which is why they are more successful in this system.