“Asura” also implies “deva”, but like discussions of strategy, I got a small group I discuss religion and spirituality with too. I’ve talked with a couple of my friends, one of them mentioned your Abacus post. The Gervais stuff really resonated with me, explains to me why I have little patience with trying to maintain social status long-term.

Amusing story one of my friends mentioned to me a while back. In middle school, he fell in with an … alliance that set out to manage the administration and gain extra perks. They got enough people to each manage one person on the staff. He mentioned the qualities the not-group looked for: the intelligent lone-wolf. He didn’t have your lexicon to fully describe it.

Hey, is it too late to beta test your upcoming book?

Hmm, “asura” is an interesting suggestion.

I’m looking forward to Part V.

I am very reluctant to do so. The ideas look temptingly generalizable, but there are enough serious differences when you shift to these other contexts that you need to rethink things from scratch. I have some notes with some rethinking of this variety, but am nowhere near ready to share.

One question though, I can answer with definitively:

“Or can a cataclysmic event or other major shift in circumstances push us into a new classification?”

A definitive Yes.

I have personally experienced shifts through all 3 stages, and know plenty of others who have. In fact, Eric Cartman aside, I would wager that there is no such thing as a born sociopath in my sense of the term. You can only grow into one, and you can easily regress. And I believe your hunch, that it takes a cataclysmic event to cause a shift, is also correct. All examples I know of have been cataclysmic. The math guy in me expects that, since being in any of those 3 modes of thought is a ‘local optimum’ of sorts, and those typically require discontinuous jumps to break out of. Or to put it less geekily, whether you are in a rut (C/L) or a groove (S), you need to be jolted out of it. By definition you cannot get out smoothly. In the latest season of the Office, we see David Wallace in his jolted-out-of-his-groove state, having fallen from sociopathy into cluelessness.

Relationships: I am very reluctant to speculate here, since sex and gender differences (for heterosexual couples), always complicate things a lot. But I will say, without comment or opinion, that I’ve encountered examples of all 18 possible types of mathematically feasible relationships (count ‘em) that seem to have endured long enough to say that none of them is “impossible.” Are some likely more unstable than the others? I would imagine so. But I don’t want to speculate wildly since I fumble as much as anybody in this realm, and make no claim to greater insight.

Venkat

This question, however, is of a more non-work variety. With regard to an individual’s “business” classification (S/C/L), what are the projected results on a personal level with those types?

For example (with regard to work), if I recognize myself as a Sociopath, but my spouse/partner is a Loser, what are the relationship odds? Can anything be extrapolated on this level? Are such parallels impossible to derive?

What if I used to be a Loser but have changed over time? Can a Sociopath and a Clueless ever find true happiness? Maybe it depends on how much/how little one tends to “bring work home with them.”

I guess I am tacking on another question- Is true S/C/L change/progression/(descent?) even possible, or are we all inherently one or the other (and only manage to mask the reality before it bites us in the ass)? Or can a cataclysmic event or other major shift in circumstances push us into a new classification?

We’ll see how much trouble this gets us into

So perhaps it’s better to define sociopath as an extreme of many of the qualities you admire, in such a way that you accept and contextualise many of the criticisms people have, but show how when mitigated slightly they are actually parts of something very good.

In my understanding of the sociopath, mixing advantages with failings, the sociopath is someone who looks at things rather than listening to people. This can be a great strength, creating new views of a situation rather than just sticking with what other people say, but taking on board what people say can also be very useful, because you can benefit from their experience, even as you risk being limited by their own cognitive limits.

So I take sociopathic behaviour to be an orientation towards the world, (one particularly selected for in classic organisations) and being morally creative and reflective is not necessarily tied to it exclusively. Now I could go into moral creativity that is based predominantly on listening to people, but I won’t unless you want me to ’cause it’s a side issue, I’d rather explain how I feel that self-reflection and sociopathy can be unrelated:

If someone creates their own morality in response to their experience of the world, there is no guarantee that they will do it again, just as people can become dogmatic about what they internalise from others, they can be dogmatic about their own ideas, but as long as they get kicked out when their ideals (and associated strategies) prove untenable to the whole organisation, it can continue. In other words a company (or similarly constructed society) doesn’t need to have creative/reflective sociopaths to operate, it just needs a steady stream of sociopaths who have generated different views, but in a way that makes them compatible with the structure of the org.

As to the other moralities you suggest, I’d say that only the clueless really have a moral state directly relating to their place in the organisation, because for them the organisation itself is a moral good, a present ideal, and participation in it a sense of self-worth.

Hang on, does that mean that other people can’t consider their work morally good? No, but only the clueless considers their position itself to be a moral good, anyone else will be able to see past “my awesome job” to see what they are actually doing for/to people.

In other words I think clueless are very well defined by this organisational model, because where they stand in the organisation is such a huge part of their life. I don’t think the same is true for the other two categories, where being reflective, dogmatic, guilt-motivated, empathic/compassion-motivated, aesthetic/ideal-motivated, aversion/fear-motivated and whatever else can all occur in varying amounts.

So where does that leave the moral justification for these posts? Is a reflective compassionate sociopath at a tactical advantage compared to the sociopath that isn’t? If so then you can advocate it with good conscience to everyone, if not, then the bull headed and cruel will just take your tricks and use them and not be swayed by any moral component, and you may be helping them do damage. Fortunately I suspect the former is largely true, just because of it’s flexibility and capacity to form lasting and fruitful alliances. So carry on! Just insure that you always can see a compassionate application of the stuff you’re talking about.

And yes, I’ve read Weber (basic… only the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism). Too long ago to connect the dots though, so thanks for highlighting potential connections.

“Clever close reading”…The Office will sustain at least 1 more part, but beyond that, it depends on what raw material interests me enough to be worth this level of scrutiny.

To the topic at hand, I ask whether you’ve ever read Max Weber. He’s made most of the points you’re making here, including the comparison between the evil demagogue and the morally upright revolutionary. Weber’s observations on the styles of authority (his “charismatic” roughly corresponds to your “sociopathic”) and their consequent hardening into institutions is worth reading.

What little dealings I’ve had with the power structure of religious organizations (and it makes me shudder just thinking about it) is definitely just like corporations. But then again, my experience is limited to one particular Protestant denomination. Your mileage may vary considerably in looking at the Catholic church, Judaism, Islam, etc.

And on a personal note: I can’t tell you how reassuring it is to hear someone else lamenting the fact that the vast majority of the populace will do anything to have their own lives be “not my fault.”