Life in the Fifth Epoch: The Extinction of Psychopaths

Another welcome change

Frans de Waal’s Chimpanzee Politics is a classic in the field. All political maneuvering has its roots in humanity’s evolutionary journey in a world of scarcity and fear. Chimps are hundreds of times more aggressive and violent than the most violent human societies, many male chimps could certainly be called psychopaths, and nearly half of all male chimps die violently.

Christopher Boehm hypothesized that hunter-gatherer bands could not afford to have alpha males, that psychopathic men were either banished or killed, and psychopathic genes were gradually eliminated from the human genome. During humanity’s conquest of Earth, men were “hyper-masculine” and highly violent, and about 25% of those men died violently. It seems that once Earth was conquered, men became further domesticated by women. Some early farming societies became matrilocal or multilocal, which broke up gangs of related males, and those were the most peaceful preindustrial societies.

I have studied the rising and falling agrarian empires of the Fertile Crescent and vicinity at some length. Warfare was nearly a constant for millennia. Sons regularly murdered fathers and brothers to seize the thrones. The Old Testament presents a story of one genocide after another, often cheered on or required by the Judaic god. My previous Substack post was about how societies have become more humane over the human journey’s Epochs, and one reader, Peter Meyer, who began reading my work over 20 years ago, asked if the Fifth Epoch would lead to the extinction of psychopaths. My reply was that it might.

Psychopaths were regularly sicced on my companies during my days with Dennis Lee, and when a psychopath unmasked himself to me during my day on the witness stand, it was my life’s turning point. Watching psychopaths at work can be quite an education. Psychopaths have long run the world, and their fear of losing power is at the root of their organized-suppression activities, which is the pinnacle of organized crime. Psychopaths feel empty inside, so they seek power from others.

Peter noted that psychopathy was a combination of nature and nurture, as most human pathologies are. Eliminate childhood adversity, and psychopathy should largely disappear, if not entirely, in perhaps a generation or two. There will be few opportunities for psychopaths, and they will be easily recognized. Will some need to be sequestered from society? Probably, especially early in the Fifth Epoch, but in places of healing, not punishment.

During my journey, there has been quite a schism to witness on the issue of the global elite. The so-called left denies that they exist, while the “right” obsessively focuses on them and has a tribal desire to confront, defeat, and punish them, even though they do not even know where to look for them. Both are lopsided perspectives that are rooted in a victim mentality. Only a creator’s perspective solves the riddle, and creators create with love. The combined positive intention that Brian O’Leary wrote about is the only way out that I can see. Grappling with the psychopaths will get us nowhere.

So yes, the Fifth Epoch may well herald the extinction of psychopaths, and I doubt that anybody will mourn their extinction, even the psychopaths.