DYSFUNCTIONAL PERSONALITIES

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.DF., Ph.D. (6/24/10)

Watching tobacco company executives, oil company executives, Wall Street executives on television has been a survey of dysfunctional personalities, specifically their inappropriate facial expressions and their stupidity.

Their ability to lie and express grief without facial affect indicates that they can lie without a twinge of guilt and that, as true sociopaths, they are incapable of sadness or empathy with anyone else’s misfortune. Generally, people like this are housed in maximum security prisons. They are genuinely frightening personalites with about as much charm as oysters. Even more frightening is their power. They are without conscience which makes them sociopaths.

They are also stupid like most of the criminals in prisons. Most criminals are lazy and want to make a fast buck without working for it. These executives aren’t lazy. They put in long hours in the pursuit of greed, mistakenly called profit, and it is this greed that makes them stupid. They are unable to foresee danger or catastrophes so consumed are they by their greed. They’re incapable of thinking contingency. They’re willing to ruin the people’s health, cut corners on safety, pollute the atmosphere, devastate beautiful landscapes, sell shoddy goods, and market poisonous toys all for the sake of greed, all the marks of a sociopath.

I wouldn’t want my granddaughter to marry into the family of one of these corporate executives any more than I’d want her to marry into a Mafia family; however, she’s too smart for that.