the manipulator during the epidemic
I wrote an article I have not yet published that explains how good guys underestimate the amount of bad guys. And that bad people reveal themselves a lot more in times of crisis. I thought about wars or revolutions. But the current crisis is also accurate.
My estimation, based on books, observation, logic, history and, dare I confess, clairvoyance, is that there are around 35% of negative people in most democracies, the countries where we are less traumatized and thus, not pushed into survival mode.
In non-democratic countries, where this survival instinct has been activated, it has also the side effect to have people put the best of humanity aside, compassion and love, and it's my belief that in Russia and China, for example, the positive citizens are a minority. And it must be hell for a person with empathy, I feel, to live there.
Among this negative people, there are roughly 30% of selfish persons, who do not manipulate and can still have some conscience wake-up calls, 40% of narcissists who are manipulators without conscience but less Machiavellian cleverness than the other 30% of psychopaths or sociopaths. And this is to bring back to the total. In any given democracy, it means there would be roughly 10% of psychopaths.
And in peace time, this little world of egotistical people is more or less hiding behind the social norm of our "modern" times. But when there is a crisis, they clearly enjoy being themselves.
It could have been arrogance or it could have been a tough childhood that had the manipulator cut himself form a good part of his emotions. Notably the best part: at the bottom of his Pandora box, there is only pleasure left.
And with this spectrum of emotions which has him feel more like a stone than a human, it will be so much easier for him to adapt to social distancing - doesn't know anguish, nor depression - and to boast, from this "moral" point of view, that it's very easy to cope with the stuff, that you "just" have to lounge on a couch, or "just" have to watch TV.
And when, on Instagram, some people expect followers to admire their example, telling them that you "just" have to push on your internal happiness switch, as if we were all just clocks, I would bet a lot, that they are manipulators. And more so when this advice is written under a selfie.
The manipulator doesn't fear much but he fears being discovered, getting old, getting sick and death.
Not for those he loves, of course, he loves nobody but himself. Or yes, sometimes, those he sees as a projection of himself. His survival is essential to him, it may have been the reason he chose to cut himself from emotions. I do not mean here, that we, positive people, have reached a Buddhist detachment but that we are able to take risks for others and believe in something or someone more important than we are. For the manipulator, his own end is the end of the world. And the spectre of this Coronavirus has him lash out; anger is one of the emotions he has left. I'm not surprised, then, when I read that conjugal violence is rising. As do divorces. And racial crimes.
Some negative people, in France, will harass medical staff, putting messages in mailboxes, asking nurses to think about their health - the nerve! - and move. Some owners will even put an end to rental contracts without notice. And I dare say it's not even legal.
Without a spouse or a scapegoat, you can always lash out on Twitter or from a window. Lynching and stoning is a group pleasure no negative person could refuse. And social media, in our “civilized” times is quite as good as the real thing. "Stay home" will he shout without bothering to know what the purpose of the walk is. The good old mask of virtue and common good allows some to express anger and hate with impunity.
The solitary walk in a forest is, it would seem, after the masturbation, the least dangerous activity in these dangerous times and it has been, within limits, authorized in France. And this hasn't prevented some, there, on Twitter, to clutch their pearls and threaten to shoot the walker. I even saw a picture of a tarpaulin under which the would-be-murderer claimed he wished to put his future victims. Murdering someone or talking about it, in the name of an hypothetical common good, in general, is a good indication of hypocrisy or manipulation. Torquemada comes to mind, who, in his own time, would have had the reputation of a saint, taking care of others’ souls, while enjoying the legal torture. Or Robespierre, claiming that in the name or purity and the good of a whole country, he was ready to behead half of it. And would have done so if he hadn't succumbed to his own tool first.
And it will be the same profile, and even the same person, who will walk his dog ten times a day or rent one, still clothed with the same respectability cloak, because in this case, you use the basis of the law, if not the spirit.
There is also some anger that can at least express itself in some French regions when they slash tires or damage the paint of cars that seem to come from other counties, worst of all... from Paris! They can at last show what they really think about the loathsome Parisian. And certainly, some people who have run to their secondary house when travelling was forbidden and they knew the consequences on the local community, may have been negative people. But it was not necessarily the case of those who had this reflex at the beginning of everything when they had no apparent symptoms. If I had been living in a flat at the time, in the absence of rules and thorough information on the matter, honestly, I don't know what I would have done. And the good people who indiscriminately damage others' cars (one local doctor whom it happened to, had a borrowed car with a "foreign" license plate ) should think that they should take care of their reputation. Because it would have an impact on tourism and their future prosperity.
When, in front of the crisis, and in the absence of any possible panic attack, so many citizens are hoarding toilet paper or disinfectant, hurting others who will have none, this lack of solidarity, this selfishness can also be the sign of someone being negative. Some go farther still, selling this stock at higher price: taking advantage of chaos and others is so manipulator 101.
In the united States, we have the selfishness and narcissism of young people who don't want to skip Spring Break and party on the beach before coming home and redistributing generously the virus among their families. The youngest among us are also those with the less symptoms and I hope they'll think twice before kissing their grand-mother. As, in a recent post, I spoke about this possible tendency, for older persons, to worry more and feel bitterness, I can as well have all generations hate me, telling that there are negative people of all ages.
And freedom, this right this country holds dear shouldn't be a right to be selfish.
Because those of us with a conscience know that our freedom stops where the others' begins.
We witness also, in the same country, the most extraordinary protests of negative people: a collective of Trump fans who protest in compact groups during a pandemic, against the closing of shops and stay at home orders. In the name of extreme individual freedom, the one that has no respect whatsoever for others' and is just selfishness in disguise. What I find interesting is that what I've seen written the most on their placards, is a demand to go to the hairdresser, which is plain shameless narcissism. The faces are scary masks of hatred and anger, the talk without any empathy, nor ambiguity: "these people will die anyway". No matter the number of deaths among others, as long as I can have my my my haircut. A speedy class on the sense of priority of negative people.
The most odious is when these people harass or insult medical staff that work day and night to save others, risking their mental and physical health. So, of course, there are also negative people among the medical staff, - I've been raised among them, I should know - but I can't imagine the anguish and sadness for the positive ones among them who work to save others. The horror.
The manipulator, the negative one, reveals himself in time of crisis.
And I think about my fellow good people who take risks to help others, without judging or condemning those who wouldn't be as exceptional. For example, this doctors who will maybe have to cure some of these protesters with nice haircuts who spit on them the previous day.
I think about my fellow empaths who, as well as having to fight against their own stress and fear, will be enclosed with a negative person focused on draining their energy. Who will suck them, and unload on them and generally show the whole range of his toxicity off.
The only good side of this is to have to toxic ones reveal themselves. Also their values and influence on a world and a destructive economy.
And when the worst will have gone, they will have learned nothing and won't have changed.
We will have to be the ones to learn from it and fix the mess.