Sebastian Zimmermann

@GrantHBrennerMD Since when is asking for help bad? Since when is needing help bad? Sometimes, questions have no good answer, but trigger more questions. If that’s the worst thing that can happen, we’re all good

Which is worse? Asking for help, or needing help?

@SMTaylorauthor @PsychToday The moral of the story is that the inevitable bond between a large swath of uninformed, misled and well meaning people and the relatively small minority of psychopathic leaders must be broken. And that can only happen through education and steering clear of misinformation.

@SMTaylorauthor @PsychToday And Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian and resistance fighter, wrote this incisive essay before being executed days before the end of the war: goodreads.com/quotes/8616320…

Why do some people take pleasure in death and destruction? Why do human beings keep waging war? New article from my @PsychToday blog, partly based on my book DisConnected. psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/out-of…

@SMTaylorauthor @PsychToday The scope of the problem becomes clear when one considers that about 1/3 of the human population seem to be almost automatically identifying with the ideas of authoriarians (see Milgram experiment) their empowering slogans and the seductive charm of these spellbinders

@SMTaylorauthor @PsychToday Thank you for this incisive article, Dr Taylor. While no one would dispute the existence of the Dark Triad or of necrophilic character traits, the aformentioned individuals are thankfully a minority - between 1-3% - which is the prevalence of antisocial personality disorder

@SMTaylorauthor @RachelD1892 Agreed. Please leave the diagnosis of narcissists to trained clinicians

@RachelD1892 I'm a psychologist and think you've picked completely the wrong example. There are far more obvious examples in the ranks of Reform and the Tories. Reform is basically a collective of narcissists and psychopaths.

Spotting a narcissist: Patterns of self-importance, lack of empathy, high need for admiration. Red flags include constant bragging, manipulation, entitlement, and inability to handle criticism. They often shift blame, refusing to take accountability. Here's a visual clue ...

@RealTimers @billmaher @ezraklein This argument is flawed because it’s simplistic. Its not autocracy vs burocracy. There are plenty autocratic governments that have/had huge burocracy! Take “communist China” or the former Soviet Union. An autocratic government does not automatically mean less burocracy

"If the places you govern are not advertisements for your governance, you are going to lose." Watch #Abundance co-author @EzraKlein get real about why people are fleeing blue states on #RealTime:

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities". Voltaire

4/4 The weapons were provided by Biden who Trump called a very stupid man. In the end, Trump made it clear that the US was holding all the cards. Nothing was signed. These are facts, but it seems unreal. Am I missing something? #Zelensky #Ukraine #Vance #Ovaloffice #Gaslighting

3/4 In exchange, Trump was going to broker a ceasefire with Putin. But Zelensky argued that Putin could not be trusted and asked for future security guarantees from the US. Vance accused Zelensky of not being thankful for the US military aid given during the past three years

2/4 The next day, the New York Post showed a picture of Vladimir Putin on the cover with the caption, “Mr President, this is a dictator!” The "deal" to be signed today was for war torn Ukraine to turn over a good chunk of their mineral resources to the US.

1/4 What transpired in the Oval Office today was very disheartening. Here are some facts on the ground: In the run up to the meeting, Trump had called Zelensky a dictator who allowed Russia to invade Ukraine.

The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness — Abraham Maslw

@GrantHBrennerMD 3/3 This is called "secondary ponerization." In the end, the union succumbs to a moral degeneration. The original group’s primary values provide cover for the psychopaths now running it. Outwardly, the names and symbols are retained as the spellbinder repackages the message.

A colleague @Seb_Zim mentioned this book to me years ago. Chilling and spot-on. “[I]f an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create an epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially, psychopathic.” ― Andrzej Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

@GrantHBrennerMD 2/3 According to AL, a political organization, previously made up of relatively normal people, is gradually infiltrated by a network of psychopaths without moral scruples. The normal people, repulsed by a "strange, new ideology" resign, are fired and replaced by more sycophants

@GrantHBrennerMD 1/3 Indeed, @GrantHBrenner Andrzej Lobaczewski's "Political Ponerology" is a dense read. "Poneros" is the greek word for "wicked." Ponerization is akin to an infection of a body or a whole society by diseased thought content (moral warping) initially spread by a "spellbinder."

@gtconway3d 3/3

@gtconway3d 2/2

@gtconway3d 1/1 The term #pathocracy which you mentioned in your last podcast was coined by Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczweski in his important book Political #Ponerology published by Red Pill Press 2022, page 179