The interview is of the famed and beloved late iconoclastic author and social critic Kurt Vonnegut, who skewered many aspects of our society in classics like Slaughterhouse-Five and somewhat lesser known, but also brilliant, works like Player Piano. It was originally published in the January 27, 2003 issue of In These Times, amidst an atmosphere rife with apprehension about the imminent United States invasion of Iraq.

I was quite struck by these lines of Vonnegut’s from the interview:

“…those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka ‘Christians,’ and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or ‘PPs.’

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t.”

Consider all of the things Vonnegut got across there in less than four full paragraphs. He explained, to some extent:

• That psychopathy is a real condition about which we have a meaningful scientific understanding
• What psychopaths are like, including their fundamental inability to experience conscience or compassion
• That enormous suffering arises when those with psychopathic personalities infiltrate governments
• That enormous suffering also arises when those with psychopathic personalities infiltrate powerful corporate positions
• That psychopaths – like a microcosm of our infinite-growth-based, unsustainable culture as a whole – have a particular tendency to recklessly go to extremes with little concern for the costs, especially to others
• That psychopaths, engaging in just such reckless risk-taking, may have been involved in the disastrous downfalls of Enron, WorldCom and other corrupt corporations
• That psychopaths who do attain powerful positions are rarely recognized as pathological, but rather admired as leaders
• That the extraordinary (and often misguided) level of certainty that psychopaths bring to their actions is central to their ability to climb modern hierarchies

There it is. In less than four paragraphs, over ten years ago, Vonnegut laid out much of the framework for what I only began to seriously suspect almost ten years later when I finally focused on and ended up writing about it at great length in pages about psychopathy and ponerology.

Vonnegut even emphatically recommends a specific book, The Mask of Sanity by Hervey Cleckley. I ended up discovering this book a couple years ago and now recommend it in many of my writings, as well as in the resources section of this site.

Whenever I come across work by social critics like Vonnegut, I always wonder if they have considered the ponerologic factors that may underlie the dysfunctional symptoms on which they focus. This interview makes clear that, at least toward the end of his life, even though he may not have known about the actual word or field of ponerology, Vonnegut had done just that.

Whatever your view of Vonnegut’s particular politics, it’s hard to deny that he was a singular character with a deep insight into some of the innermost workings of our social systems and a passionate concern for the welfare of humanity. And it’s quite interesting to know that his life experience had brought him to such a level of consciousness about the role psychopathy might play in our culture’s unhealthy and unsustainable state. I believe that if he were alive today and made aware of it, he would be an outspoken advocate for more solidly establishing and promoting the discipline of ponerology.

One of the bonuses of running and promoting this site is that, in the course of doing so, a lot of relevant ideas and people come to my attention. And, once in a while, another whole field of study, related to ponerology, that also brings together many disparate threads, becomes known to me.

This happened recently.

Several weeks ago, I wrote about a study led by criminal justice professor Volkan Topalli. After publishing that piece, I found and followed Dr. Topalli on Twitter. Soon after that, Dr. Topalli retweeted a tweet by the criminology division of the publisher Routledge about a new book, the Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology.

Green Criminology?

The term intrigued me and I was motivated to do a little more research on it. I’ll share with you some of what I found shortly. But first I’d like to provide some context regarding how this topic relates with the wide-ranging audience interested in ponerology.

I know that, among those drawn to ponerology by a desire to understand the roots of what they consider “evil” behavior, there are those of all political stripes holding every possible view on environmental issues.

There are those who believe that:

• Evil is embodied in corrupt corporations and their possibly pathological leaders who rape and pillage natural resources for profit without concern for sustainability
• Stronger government regulation is needed to restrain these out-of-control, environmentally-damaging companies

There are some who:

• Share concern about environmental sustainability
• Believe that governments, expressing themselves through directly destructive activity related to natural resources, crooked politically-motivated subsidies and establishment and enforcement of the very legal structures that prop up corrupt corporations in the first place, are the real seats of “evil” responsible for environmental damage
• Advocate for less government and a laissez-faire, free-market policy that maximizes privatization as the strategy most likely to move us toward sustainability

Others believe that

• We are in no actual danger of running up against natural resource limits or threatening environmental sustainability
• Those claiming we are in such danger are, in reality, either evil people promoting self-serving political agendas or hoaxes or alarmists scared into their views by them
• We should ignore these malicious or misguided voices and continue, unrestrained, an aggressive policy of industrialization without concern for limits

And there are many who hold some combination of these views on the subject or still other views entirely.

In my case, concern about ecological sustainability was very instrumental in propelling me along the path that brought me to ponerology. The work of Daniel Quinn and Derrick Jensen, in particular, influenced me to focus, at a relatively young age, on the damage engendered on many levels by a cultural mindset, sanctioning infinite growth in spite of finite natural resources, that has become the basis for our economic system and both shaped and been shaped by deeply unhealthy psychological attitudes and belief systems – and, quite possibly, by those with pathological conditions.

During the many years spent following up on the ideas Quinn and Jensen helped introduce to me, I explored, from every angle I could, the environmental debates and the many subjects they involve. Over time, I’ve come to a deeper understanding of people who approach environmentalism from a variety of different perspectives.

The epiphany that I experienced upon discovering ponerology sprung in part from the fact that it clarified a mindset regarding questions about the emergence of harm that were woven through myriad areas that concerned me and to which I was having great difficulty formulating an approach. It embodied the idea that our starting point should be to learn all that we can about the scientific facts relating to these questions. While conceding that we will never know everything we need to know to make perfect decisions, it argues that maximizing our systematic, objective knowledge will provide us the firmest basis on which to make them.

When I saw Topalli’s retweet about the Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology, that term – green criminology – provoked in me another similar epiphany.

We may not, in the near future, all come to agree on either what is really happening environmentally or what we should do about it. But hopefully many of us can at least agree that we should establish, to the best of our ability, the facts regarding any egregiously reckless malicious or negligent behavior implicated in ecosystem damage and the people involved in it. Green criminology sounded to me like a field devoted to doing just that from a scientific perspective.

So I did some searching to learn about what green criminology is and what resources are available for people that want to know more or get involved.

One of the first resources I found is the GreenCriminology.org website. This site is run by the International Green Criminology Working Group (IGCWG), which is “a group of academic professionals, students, and others that practice Green Criminology and collaborate on projects and discussions” and was crowdfunded through a Kickstarter campaign that featured the video below.

• “What crimes or harms are inflicted on the environment, and how?”
• “Who commits crime against the environment, and why?”
• “Who suffers as a result of environmental damage, and how?”
• “What are the social, economic and political conditions that lead to environmental crimes?”
• “Which types of harms should be considered as ‘crimes’ and therefore within the remit of a green criminology?”

I then found that University of Colorado Denver, through their School of Public Affairs, supports a research working group on green criminology.

Of course, the Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology, which was where I first came across the term, looks like a thorough overview of the subject.

And Amazon also features some other books when I do a search for "green criminology". Some of the ones that look interesting include:

It’s somewhat surprising to me that, despite all the investigation I’ve done of pathological conditions and environmental issues, as well as their overlap, I’d never even heard the term “green criminology” before.

Derrick Jensen has explicitly linked our culture’s high level of environmental damage to the influence of psychopathy and has written thousands and thousands of pages and done countless talks on these issues. Yet even in all of his work that I’ve read, seen and heard, I don’t recall him using the term “green criminology.”

I’m thankful that, through promoting this site, I came across people who were able to finally bring it to my attention.

I hope to have more experiences like that in the future. And I am looking forward to learning more about green criminology.

I realize that not everyone interested in ponerology will be similarly interested in this angle on it. Some may even disagree with green criminology’s basic premises for various reasons (though I think, if they take a closer look at some of the writing on GreenCriminology.org, they may find some of their concerns are addressed more openly than they would have expected). And that’s fine. The goal of this site is simply to bring information related to ponerology to people’s attention. From there, they can do with that information what they wish.

But I believe green criminology is a discipline that anyone who cares about ponerology should at least be aware of.  It shines a light on what has often been a blind spot in the consideration of evil. Those who commit “evil” in which the damage is externalized to the broader environment, even if it then indirectly harms a large number of people, have been able, relatively, to escape notice as compared with those who do damage directly to even a small number of others. A tighter integration with green criminology may help correct this imbalance within ponerology’s perspective.

At the same time, I think those interested in green criminology should be aware of ponerology because the information it helps reveal can potentially inspire a more profound level of understanding about why the harmful events that field studies come to pass.

It’s always exciting for me to see connections and relationships develop amongst people with overlapping interests of great depth that pertain to improving health and sustainability. I hope this article will help catalyze some new connections and relationships between the emerging green criminology and ponerology communities. Not everyone in those communities will see eye to eye on every topic. But, surely, there are many within them who will find common ground and can share with each other a good deal of meaningful dialogue and support.

I was heartened to see one indication of a protestor that knew of and took seriously the possible role of psychopathy in bringing about the protestors’ grievances.

But, as heartened as I was, I was more dismayed that this was pretty much the only sign I saw of any awareness of ponerology among them.

Well it’s better late than never.

Recently, I came across this video. It is an interview with a very articulate OWS protestor who came to the protests specifically to educate people about ponerology.
 

In the interview, he mentions or alludes to many important topics that I covered in my own writings about psychopathy and ponerology including:

• Some of the traits seen in different varieties of psychopaths and how they differ fundamentally from other human beings
• The profound work described in Political Ponerology by Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Snakes in Suits by Robert Hare and Paul Babiak and The Mask of Sanity by Hervey Cleckley

• How the pathological use pseudologic (which Lobaczewski actually calls paralogisms) and propaganda to attract support from the many people eager to find someone to follow and believe in
• How the pathological can hijack and distort the original purpose of integral political, economic, corporate and religious institutions, creating a culture in which even normal people are influenced so as to act in antisocial ways
• How the cultural obsession with vampires may reflect a certain subtle level of identification of psychopaths in our midst

Different people have very different feelings about Occupy Wall Street and its particular agenda. But regardless of one’s view of the “right vs. left” types of conflicts it raised, the issue of pathological influence in our systems should transcend those differences and interest anyone that cares about responsibility and ethics in our public policy.

This particular interviewee exhibits some possible partisan bias in two ways:

• He focuses on examples of pathological hijacking within the Republican party without mentioning any such corresponding examples in the Democratic or other parties.
• He states, perhaps without ample evidence – although one psychiatrist comes close to backing him up – that George W. Bush is a psychopath.

However, Lobaczewski points out in his work – and hopefully even this protestor knows – that pathological coopting and infiltration can and does happen within many parties and ideologies.

Also, in raising the possibility of concentration camps arising in the United States, he brushes up against the fine line that separates responsible education and conspiracy theory – something that is always a risk when discussing ponerology.

But if you can overlook those couple partisan statements and one perhaps extreme comment, the vast majority of the interview is extremely well-spoken and conveys information that has much backing in the research and should be of deep concern to us all – and especially to activists of all stripes seeking a better world, whether through Occupy Wall Street-type protests or otherwise.