The Star Trek Myth.

It began with the reply I received from my MP on the subject of the Syrian refugees. It didn’t hold water. It used the time-honoured technique taught in judo and salesmanship classes: first give, then throw. It used evasion, artifice and hyperbole. It was pretty much what you’d expect from a senior politician (my MP is also a government minister.)

That was what started me trawling the internet archives for pieces on the high incidence of psychopathic tendencies among leaders of the various institutions which control our lives. It has been shown to be particularly high in the fields of politics, the military and the corporate world. Whilst it would be too broad a generalisation to say that our world is entirely ruled by psychopaths, it seems it wouldn’t be very far from the truth.

Coming to understand this is troubling, but what can you do? Write letters? Contribute to causes? Sign petitions? Shrug and switch off? I made my dinner and switched the TV on while I ate it.

There was an old episode of Star Trek playing, and I was suddenly struck by a simple truth I hadn’t really noticed before. In dramas of that sort, it’s only the enemy’s leaders who are psychopaths. Our leaders are good, upright, honourable men with a conscience and a wholesome view of the greater good. (Even Mr Spock, deficient though he is in the faculty of emotional response, is an honest and honourable man, two characteristics notably lacking in the psychopath.) But while that holds true for populist drama, it doesn’t seem to be the case in the real world. Out here, even our guys are the bad guys.