Why BP is a textbook psychopath

[highplainsdem]

http://www.grist.org/article/why-bp-is-a-textbook-pyschopath/


Why BP is a textbook psychopath

by Keith Harrington (Maryland/DC Field Organizer for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network)
3 Jun 2010 8:23 AM

-snip-

Of course, regardless of how the investigation pans out, it seems that “criminal” may not end up being the right word to describe BP. That term doesn’t fully or accurately encapsulate the truly frightening nature of this corporation and its behavior. Turning to criminology for a little lexical help, we find a much more accurate term for BP’s behavior: psychopathic.

In the 2003 documentary The Corporation, psychologist and FBI criminal profiler Dr. Robert Hare described how corporate behavior neatly corresponds with a whole checklist of characteristics the World Health Organization uses to define psychopathic personalities. Those characteristics include:

Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
Reckless disregard for the safety of others
Deceitfulness, repeated lying and conning others for profit
Incapacity to experience guilt
Failure to correspond to social norms regarding lawful behavior

Drawing the connections between this list and BPs actions surrounding the deepwater case is just too easy: on the remorselessness and callousness front we have CEO Tony Hayward’s recent remarks about wanting his life back, and BPs repeated finger pointing; for a helping of recklessness and deception, there’s the decision to use a cheaper, substandard casing for the well, and the falsified blowout preventer reports; and it’s difficult to imagine how such dishonesty and recklessness in the name of profit could qualify as lawful.

That’s five for five. Diagnosis: psychopath.

Recognizing that corporations like BP or Massey Coal are dangerous psychopaths is much more than a fun pastime for staunch environmentalists and anti-corporatists; that recognition is critical to empowering our criminal justice and political systems to determine how best to punish BP for its crimes, and more importantly, to how to address the underlying pathology which, if left uncorrected, will only lead to the commission of more crimes in the future.

In other words, fining BP billions of dollars for the Deepwater tragedy won’t be enough to stop it from committing similar crimes down the road because criminality is built into the corporation’s very nature. Protecting our society from this psychopath (and others like it) requires taking measures to directly address and correct the corporate-psychopathic tendencies listed above, measures such as rolling back limited liability, or ending shareholder primacy -- whatever could stem the tendency to put short-term profitability above all else.

-snip-

[annabanana]

1. This must be recognized if we are to consider corporations "people".

Some of them are psychopathic and shouldn't be loosed on the general population.

[Echo In Light]

6. Yes. Private tyrannies that are by law required to put shareholders ahead of the public/common good

[glitch]

14. Their culture promotes and rewards psychopathology.

If they are going to be citizens we need to apply all the laws equitably to them. Including institutionalization.

[Enrique]

2. they have to be psychopaths

all corporations have a fiduciary responsiblity to their stockholders to be psychopaths.

[asdjrocky]

3. Well made point.

My problem is, experience has taught me that the people with the money rarely pay for their crimes. Now, if BP happened to be a poor person, simply stealing some food, that would be a different story.

This is America, after all.

[Name removed]

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[SammyWinstonJack]

5. -1

:eyes:

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[marmar]

7. Straight out of the DSM-4

[NightWatcher]

8. funny how Capitalism closely mirrors socio or psychopathy

So we are going to continue to base our way of doing things in this country and most of the world on a system that puts pure, vile avarice and greed over EVERYTHING ELSE?
I guess we'll just kick our feet up and wait for the system to eat itself as do all cancers, killing their hosts in the process

[Echo In Light]

9. Official Culture - A Natural State of Psychopathy?

Good article

http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/official_culture.htm

[fascisthunter]

10. great read Echo

[Echo In Light]

17. Bump

[annabanana]

18. li'l kick