The co-manager debacle shows that Jim is the good natured sociopath, as he didn’t want Michael replaced, but rather bumped up with him. Every sociopath move Jim makes is good natured, though there is one sence of flare up when he leaves Ryan the voice mail before Ryan is arrested – where Jim declares he will do what it takes to get rid of Ryan. Of course, Jim had just started his journey to become a sociopath at that point, so it wasn’t really an option and turned out to be not necessary.

At the end of season 5 when Charles says “look who woke up” to Jim, I think it means he is calling him a sociopath, followed by “I’ve been awake for a while” – telling Jim directly that he can’t best Charles in the sociopath department.

In season 6 when Jim steps down as co-manager back to salesman, people hail this as a “return to regular Jim” (e.g. pre-sociopath perhaps), but I view this as highly sociopath. The Sabre playbook has a clear quick-path up and that is salesman without caps. Jim has never really tried at sales, and I think we all know why now – there was never a reason to. The overperforming salesman at Dunder Miflin was a loser because they didn’t get anymore money – not true at Sabre.

I’m hoping the Sabre arc will show us an interesting sociopath battle – good sociopath vs evil sociopath vis a vis Jim vs Ryan. Now that senior management is gone, Ryan can make another play back up to the top. Meanwhile Jim has already made the first move to the rapid-upward funnel in terms of cranking out sales.

Examples:

When people cite the Michael Scott Paper Company buy out and how MS leverages a win over Wallace using the share holder meeting. The camera cuts to Ryan smiling and nodding, which indicated to me Michael was playing Ryan’s script at Wallace – i.e. Ryan gave Michael a little bit of sociopath powertalk to use if he needed it.

He does show some glimmer, when he bluffs the value of his company is nothing, because he is using the only table stakes he has – his salesman skills as a competitive threat that woudl reoccur if he were not part of Dunder Miflin.

Finally, even though Scranton is the best branch, Michael fails to leverage that position in any meaningful way – e.g. when Wallace asks him what he is doing right. You may read that as Michael feigning stupidity to protect himself, but if he really wanted to run the company or do things better for the company, he would have leveraged that (i.e. wagered his table stakes) to his advantage. Instead it results in Wallace viewing him as a clueless child and a little bit of babytalk “ok you finish up [the pasta].”

Love,
–Sociopaths

http://fugitive.quadrantcrossing.org/?p=305

Your analysis fits nicely a scene from the UK Office that I have longed to understand: Clear sociopath Neil and loser Tim share a moment of straight talk when Neil offers Tim the interim branch manager job and Tim straightforwardly turns him down, but then delivers a stream of powertalk nominating clueless Gareth for the job, displaying his facility with the language while also rubbing Neil’s face in the fact that Tim chooses not to be a sociopath in the Wernam Hogg organizational structure, but rather a minimum-effort loser.

Thanks for that.

Outside-directed posturetalk… that’s Part III.

Outside directed posturetalk? That’s just about how we are better than them, or how they need us. It’s posturing that everyone present can get involved with.

Anyway, I love the powertalk stuff, reminds me of why I like watching/reading crime fiction; the conversation is complex in a layered heuristic manner. It’s packed with feel.

Thank you!

It’s not often you find something like that, so thank you and definitely keep theorizing!

I am a loser who is in danger of becoming a clueless and this has been a real eye-opener.

I wonder who works the longest hours? Surely the clueless?

Keep it coming!

I think the most interesting interactions are at interfaces like this. How are department heads different? Obviously they are not as hard for sociopaths to communicate with, though I often see considerable friction when political reality collides with the practical realities.

I have been trying to figure out where I am in this scheme, and the only role that seems to fit is tourist. I need to give this more thought.

Picking up on how Conrad characterizes it, I think this “damping” is a function of their relative perceptions of time.

Sociopaths who are usually pretty far along in the human race for socioeconomic status-seeking place a high opportunity cost on their time, and find interactions with Losers both both pointless and painful. Sociopaths cannot actually count on a self-professed loser to assist their own future status-seeking endeavours through favors and trades. Losers are also not schooled in (or perhaps even open to) the kind of pragmatism and powertalk that a Sociopath finds to be the most profitable investment of time.

Clueless layers (also called “middle management”?) not only break spans in organizations (allowing a small number of sociopaths to orchestrate a vast pool of losers) but also provide this kind of cushioning and translation. Perhaps the fundamental difference between a sociopath and a clueless is the relative self-estimated opportunity cost of time.

The clueless are more willing to take harsh soundbites and rapid-fire powertalk from the Sociopaths, and then have enough empathy to translate this for losers and spend time motivating them to accomplish the bidding of the sociopath. It’d be interesting to see a sociological dissection of how the Clueless layer is generated. If
(a) Harvard Business School (and the MBA education programs in general) are a sort of “leadership factory” evolved within industrial society to supplement the ranks of the children of ubercapitalists in helping bring scientific management to their enterprises, and
(b) This leadership factory primarily feeds on the status-anxiety of upper-bourgeoise (doctor, lawyer etc.) families’ kids that want to climb up into being captains of industry (but may not uniformly be blessed genetically with the rapacity and sagacity of a sociopath, required to truly break through, not to mention luck), then the clueless layers of middle management will largely be such upper-bourgeoise – empathetic, and striving, but too soft to actually engage in powertalk.

I find the comments from TonyS, and Stacy very interesting in this regard. Most Sociopaths have a couple of “effective, specific role losers” assigned to their private entourage (whom they engage with one-on-one for requests of staff work not necessarily cascaded down via clueless minions).

I like to think that this is because I’m not cut out for this, and will start my own company once I have the capital together.