Then you are not necessarily distorted. You are a completely normal human being! There is nothing wrong with wanting what triggers pleasure chemicals in your brain and gives you positive emotions. It is neither strange that once you get the taste of it, you want more of the same, or maybe something that gives an even stronger light experience. Yes, the feeling of having a happy life. Nevertheless, this pursuit of “the enjoyable life” raises an important question that is particularly interesting from a psychological point of view.

How far are you willing to go?

Yes, how far are you willing to go to obtain such “goods” as money, sex, drugs, fame, and power?

Another question that arises in this context is: How happy will you be hunting precisely for this bunch of qualities? This last issue will be discussed in another article. (I have at «Psychological Universe», already discussed the relationship between one of the above factors, – «MONEY and HAPPINESS» in the article. with the same name) Money and Happiness

But first, you can ask yourself the question: What would you put at the top of your own priority list? What is most important for you to achieve in life? Here you are free to add other goals and features than those mentioned above.

“The ‘dark’ and the ‘light’ mind.”

As you answer the question above, we can look at how our attitudes toward other people, our surroundings, and ourselves, affect the way we seek to achieve our desires and goals. For the sake of simplicity, I want to distinguish between achieving one’s goals in a CONSIDERATE way, as opposed to achieving them RUTHLESSLY.

However, I am not so enthusiastic about oversimplified personality psychology, where people are put in boots. Nevertheless, some of what Paulhus & Williams (2002) describe as “The Dark Triad” can shed light on a recognizable pattern of achievement in some people. Here the authors operate with a bunch of characteristics that they call

1. Machiavellianism, 2. Psychopathy or Sociopathy, and 3. Narcissism.

The ruthless

1. Highly calculting and cunning people:

If you fall into this category and want money, influence, power, and sex, it always happens in a calculated, cunningly, dominant, and often threatening way. Under this so-called Machiavellian category, you are also enormously cunning and self-absorbed. (cf. the Italian political strategist Machiavelli),

2. People with obvious psychopathic traits:

If you are in this category, you lack compassion for others, are cynical and unscrupulous in your pursuit of what you want. Others are used only as an object for your needs or instruments to get what you are looking for. You often resort to threats against others, both mentally and physically. It also means that you use violence, possibly ultimately murder to achieve what you want. In other words, crime is no stranger to you. Because you too can have a very seductive and flattering demeanor, you can trick many into believing that you want them well. At the same time, it may seem that you basically like to hurt others.

3. Narcissists:

Your misunderstood and shallow self-love makes you feel entitled to everything you do, no matter what the consequences for others. Since your vain self-love gives you notions of greatness, you are also easily offended, and this can lead to a vendetta against those who prick beneath your surface.

Sex, Power, and Money.

In 2013, psychologist Ki Beom Lee and colleagues at the University of Calgary investigated the correspondence between the hypothesis of people who were believed to fall into the “Dark Triad” and their subsequent behavior. They looked at the tendency to sexually exploit others (“Sex”) and to dominate and exploit others (“Power”), as well as the preoccupation with material goods and ostentatious wealth (“Money”)

The condiderate.

To find answers to this, they had to use many different tests and questionnaires. They also had methodological problems along the way. But in the end, they came up with a dialectical opposite to the so-called “Dark Triad”, which they called the “Honesty and Humility” dimension. (Lee & Ashton 2014) (This is one of the six dimensions of the personality trait system “HEXAGO”, which is the result of a multinational collaboration around clusters of traits related to specific personality types.)

It turned out that those who cut low on this “Honesty and Humility” dimension, also turned out to act largely on the basis of “The Dark Triad”. Nevertheless, the above-mentioned survey shows to be unrepresentative of the entire population as 70% of the subjects were women.

“The Light Triad”.

The Light Triad Barry Kaufmann and colleagues (2019) found that people with personalities who fell under the “Dark Triad” were usually also younger people, most often men, who did not have close ties to others, and in addition were unscrupulous. These men used a so-called immature psychological defense to push away the realities of what they were doing (most often denial, ie they had less displacement defense, which is a more nuanced form of defense).

Barry Kaufmann and co-workers were annoyed that it is most often the atrocities that get the most attention in the media and research. Thus, they took hold of Ki Beom Lee’s work, and nuanced the content. They set up a direct counterpart to “The Dark Triad”, in what they called “The Light Triad”. This cluster of traits consists of three important personality traits with a broad common denominator. That you can see the best in your fellow human beings and can enjoy the success of others. In addition, you assume that other people are good-natured, so you do not have to protect yourself all the time.

Having Trust in other people:

The ingredients of the Light Triad are:

1. Humanism.

Here defined as the respect for the inviolable dignity of every human being.

2. Kantianism.

The ability to consider every human being as a goal in itself, not just as an object of your needs. And last but not least:

3. Having faith in other people.

Here we are talking about individuals who have a relatively good basic self-esteem, not only because they do something great but by virtue of their mere existence.

Other characteristics that coincided with a high score on the Light Triad were a positive curiosity and interest in the surroundings. A vibrant vitality, a broader perspective on life, great love and willingness to cooperate, as well as the ability to forgive others and show gratitude.

(All these characteristics turned out to coincide with the HEXAGO – system, where H = Honesty-Humility, E = Emotionality, H = Extroversion, A = Agreeableness, C = Conscientiousness, O = Openness to Experiences.)

Every person is unique in themselves:

As a clinical psychologist, I do not frequently use such categories, but consider every person as unique and original. I find that each individual is considerably more complex when it comes to the way they organize their personality when adapting themselves to the world. Consequently, this complex pattern does not fall into such gross categories.

However, I have a feeling that some researchers look for patterns that give a kind of recognition in the population, and can predict different forms of reactions and behavior. The way we organize our psyche, I think is psychologically interwoven with the relationships that we evolve from.

In my opinion, it is a co-evolution of properties and later maintenance of this relational thinking and action pattern. The maintenance takes place by seeking new conditions that confirm and represent the old behavioral patterns as well as self-esteem.

Despite this urge to repeat, many people still break with the old and develop towards higher awareness and responsible presence in life. Often such positive changes must be encouraged through life crises and other dramatic breaks with the usual.

When it comes to destructive personalities, however, it is my experience that the more ruthless and psychopathically organized a person is, the more repetitive, clichéd, and caricatured he becomes in his way of feeling, thinking, and behaving. When I have patients with spouses, cohabitants, or friends with severe psychopathic traits, it is very easy to predict their next reaction, action, and strategy in different contexts. It’s just like the way of feeling and thinking, yes the whole way of being has become too cramped. There is no or very little openness, as we see in people characterized by sincerity and humility.

The joys are very short-lived, and materially conditioned or linked to constant new conquests of positions or market shares. (In that sense, the Norwegian NRK series “Exit” is a very good example of a business environment, where the male characters will definitely belong to The Dark Triad).

Then I also know from both research and experience that these people have once been both confirmation-seeking, open, and friendly children. Unfortunately, they have been raised and treated by a disturbed parent or adult, which has ruined their sensitivity.

Unfortunately, their later victims often feel very sorry for the psychopathic person they live with. True, it was once a pity for them as children. But as adults, in my opinion, there is no pity for them at all. It is the people and the victims who largely suffer both by and for them.

Not very many ruthless among us, but the few really know how to make the world unsecure.

As we see below from the figure of B. Kaufman and co, there are many more considerate people out there than ruthless ones. There are also some at the border. This will be more in line with a nuanced view of human characteristics and adaptation patterns that I called for above.

Consequences.

I do not want to spend time pushing in political positions here. But it is only for the reader to look at the world around him during the age of globalization, and the emergence of the prevailing neo-liberal way of organizing the world.

What, for example, does the Q-Anon movement and the looting of Congress in the United States say about the ability of the few ruthless leaders to create conflict and crises and bring many into this wave of hatred.

Take the rotten hedge fund acquisitions of US mortgage debt that eventually led to the worldwide financial crisis in 2008. What does this say about the relatively few ruthless speculators’ impact on the world community? See movies like: (Wall Street Money Never Sleeps, 2010, The Big Short. 2015) And what does that say about extremism and terror?

I rather leave it to the readers and use their own experiences and imagination to think about this.