The title of the book comes from a checklist of questions that comprise a psychopath test created by Canadian psychologist Robert Hare. Hare’s study of psychopathy reveals enough consistency that if someone scores high on the test they are likely to be psychopathic, without conscience or the kinds of fears that “normal” people have. They are, he attests, not curable or treatable.

And this creates a thorny problem. If psychopaths are not curable or treatable, and if, as the book reveals, they make up one percent of the general population, 25% of the prison population, and scariest of all, four percent of those at the top of the corporate ladder, we have a big problem. Psychopaths appear normal, but without conscience, with no restraints on causing harm and suffering to others; and, with honed manipulative skills and a penchant for pathological lying, they wreak havoc. When they are in positions of power (as corporate, religious, media, or political leaders), they harm thousands, even millions. A psychopathic criminal who rapes, mutilates, and kills stirs our terror, but their victims are far fewer in number than those skilled, but still psychopathic Wall Street moguls, religious manipulators, government leaders, and media heads.

And because humanity is easily manipulated, swayed, and susceptible to influence (note the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments and the brown eyes/blue eyes exercise), the potential for harm by psychopathic manipulators is even greater.

So what to do?

It will come as no surprise to readers of my blog that my best suggestion is this: humane education that is dedicated to teaching critical and creative thinking skills and fostering reverence, respect, and responsibility. Only when we have these skills honed, practiced and employable 100% of the time, are we able to discern misleading and manipulative words and behaviors. These skills are hardly foolproof, but they are a good start. When psychopaths mastermind religious, political, media, and economic control, and an easily manipulated populace blindly follows – as we so often do – we should not be surprised by the outcomes. When a generation truly taught to be investigative thinkers, to deeply self-reflect, to understand connections between behaviors and outcomes, to be system-analyzers and system-changers, and to hold fast to their deepest values, which they are taught from the earliest ages to cultivate with conviction, then there is hope that that powerful 4% of conscience-less people will not go unchecked.

I recommend Ronson’s book for a fascinating, albeit disturbing, view into the mind of psychopaths and to hone your own skills in recognizing psychopathy for your sake and the sake of our world. And I recommend the resources and programs at the Institute for Humane Education for training in this field that offers real hope for combating the power of psychopaths in our midst.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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But the more I think about this whole hoopla, the more unsettled by it I feel. Camping preyed on people’s gullibility and vulnerability. And those who believed and spread his message did likewise. And the media gave this silliness attention, so we all knew about it. Who knows how many people gave up their jobs, spent their life savings, and changed their lives in anticipation of rapture, only to have rent to pay and food to buy and lives to continue? It’s easy to think that it serves them right for being so foolish, but this is who we are as humans – easily manipulatable and eager followers (as the Milgram and Stanford prison experiments and the brown eyes/blue eyes exercise reveal).

Once again, there is a solution to this sort of thing: humane education. We must educate youth to use their minds, their reason, their critical thinking capacities, and their ability to research, investigate, inquire and learn. Only when we are able to think clearly and rationally can we hope to keep at bay the brainwashing, influences, and manipulations that come our way constantly: through media, advertising, religious crusaders, and politicians who prey on our emotions and create a fervor of (pick one or more): fear, rage, and/or greed, while simultaneously fostering self-aggrandizement and overconfidence in what has been fed to us as “truth.” Fear-mongering and hatred and the instigation of rage come from both left and right. We are preyed upon as much by the purveyors of beauty products endlessly generating self-doubt as we are by pundits on opinion shows encouraging us to hate others and to feel empowered when we follow their true path, and equally by religious zealots telling us what to believe, as Camping did.

Before we scoff at Camping’s “silly followers,” let’s remember how susceptible we all are to influencers and manipulators (even when we think we are not). And let’s commit to educating the next generation to have the skills they desperately need (and which the world desperately needs) to think well and clearly for a healthy world for all.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Image courtesy of Analogick via Creative Commons.

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Vanquishing the enemy means looking below the surface evil to the ways in which rage, hatred, sociopathy and brainwashing occur, and attempting to find root causes and root solutions.

While it may feel satisfying, and deeply so for those who lost loved ones on September 11, Osama bin Laden’s death represents no solution to hatred and bigotry; minds easily influenced; actions determined more by situations and systems than by careful thought, reflection and analysis. These are the real and powerful roots of evil.

There is a way to confront our biggest enemy, and it lies with children….That way is through schooling that teaches critical and creative thinking and problem-solving and that fosters reverence, respect and a sense of responsibility.

It is, in fact, the only way to cultivate healthy roots so that each of us has the capacity to resist the effects of a destructive environment — whether that environment is political, cultural, economic or ecological — and then transform that environment into systems that are more just, sustainable and humane.

Read the complete post.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Image courtesy of L. Marie via Creative Commons.

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I have no suggestions; I have nothing of value to add. There is no link of relevance, at least not at this moment of crisis, to humane education and MOGO (most good) living, the subjects for which I advocate in our blog. I cannot recommend one particular aid source over another. I have no words to serve as a balm. Yet I feel compelled to write something, because to ignore this tragedy in the pages of our blog feels all wrong.

The Internet provides us with a new opportunity: to know about our extended family of fellow inhabitants of this beautiful planet; but what do we do with this knowledge? How do we do more than “know”? How do we do more than grieve? Certainly we can send money, which the Japanese people need, but what else? And even as Japan suffers, I’m aware that every day at least as many people die from poverty or preventable diseases as died in the tsunami, and many, many more are living desperate and horrifying lives as slaves or political prisoners or simply as women in the many places where misogyny is a way of life. Billions of animals are enduring nothing short of torture in our modern farms and through our various industries.

The plight of all these people and animals is as mundane as the rising sun in today’s world, and consequently, it doesn’t preoccupy most of us as this tragedy in Japan rightly does at this moment in time. But shouldn’t they all have their place in our hearts and minds? And if they should, then how? How do we carry such suffering, and what good can we then do with such knowledge? It is simply impossible to hold it all: the suffering in Japan at this moment, along with with the relentless daily suffering of so many, every day. We were not built to know this much, and yet our technology now enables it; and I believe that we mustn’t turn away.

And so, while I have no words of wisdom, I will make this plea: Along with the good things we do for our family and friends, can we each seek to do one thing each day to help another whom we do not know? Can each of us strive toward one small act of heroism – putting another before ourselves and perhaps at risk to ourselves – at least once each year? And can we each choose a goal, worthy of the gift of our life, toward which we will work in our lifetime to make this world better?

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm

Image courtesy Eastop.

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“Nothing the federal government, the state government, or the school district does will improve education and schooling nearly as much as recognizing the impact and magic created by a master teacher connecting with students.”

“What really sets teachers apart are two traits. The first is that teachers are idealists. To a person, they believe the world can be a better place and they, all by themselves, can make a difference, and, perhaps, a big difference.”

“Everybody has moments of success, but teachers see it every time the kids’ eyes light up when they see and understand something never seen and never understood before.”

“By the time he retires, every good teacher has hundreds of heirs. Perhaps this is the best reason to teach. Teachers dream a better world and have a capacity to achieve that dream not for just one generation but certainly two and possibly three generations.”

“The good teacher needs student questions the way a thirsty person needs water. And no matter where the question leads, the master teacher can bring it back to where the students have to go.”

“Teachers are political animals. The decisions they make about what knowledge to include in their class is an intensely political act. This fact cannot be avoided because not choosing is an equally political act. College professors have the partial protection of tenure, but most K-12 teachers do not. Safety for many teachers lies in mediocrity, where the definition of mediocrity is what most people do most of the time. However, master teachers do have a safety net or protection that is not available to mediocre teachers, the trust of their students. Master teachers have compassion; the ability to meet students where they are. Over time, compassion breeds trust. Over time, trust allows the teacher to shake the students’ knowledge base to its foundations, while the students make a conscious effort to protect the teacher.”

“Integrity and empathy are the beginnings of a foundation for lifelong learning. Therefore the goal of the master teacher must be to increase both in students.”

“The flow of information from the teacher to the student dwarfs the flow from the student to the teacher. The measure of success is regurgitation. Can the student give back what was given? Yes? No? Success? Failure?…. It is a trivial system indeed that returns an input as output with no change. How trivial are we going to make education and our students?”

“Optimistic teachers are confident that the world can be changed. However, they do not believe that only they have the power to change the world. They trust their students. Therefore, their role is not that of a blacksmith hammering a piece into shape, but rather a gardener encouraging growth…. A second trait of optimistic teachers is the belief that they have never peaked as a teacher. What happened in their class yesterday can be improved on. It has never been as good as it might be. They are constantly looking for other ways to do things, to broaden the experience, to enrich the information sources, and to tailor the structure and function for the class to meet student needs and interests.”

“While we rush, rather thoughtlessly, to copy the rote memorization techniques that enable kids in Asia and elsewhere to score so well on standardized tests, the education ministries in Japan, China, and India are frantically dispatching minions into the field, exhorting teachers to ‘teach in a more American fashion,’ in order to stop squelching the creativity, imagination, and argumentative confidence that we encourage (or used to encourage) so well.”

“Part of the art of teaching is to be able to read the students as they come through the door… To make our lives easier, I built a eudemony meter for the classroom. Eudemony is a measure of general well-being. The meter consisted of an open pine cabinet with a layer of cork in the back with a seven-inch circle inscribed. At the base of the cabinet were five containers of push pins; green, blue, clear, yellow, and red. The cabinet was situated so I could not see the color pin the student put into the cork on entering the class. Before I started class, I would look at the pattern in the target and knew immediately what I was dealing with. Some days I could go for broke and some days I couldn’t. Some days, I just abandoned the lesson plan, and did something else entirely because it was really green or really red…. In those instances where I had a single red at the start of class for two or three days running, the students always made sure I knew who was having a bad time. They never did it outright; it was always in code, but they made sure I knew. The student in question was always grateful.”

“A necessary basis for students feeling safe is the presence of rules that are held inviolate. The rule that leaps to mind is the golden rule, ‘Do unto others…’ The trouble is that this rule is meaningless to precisely those students who have the greatest tendency to create social havoc. They are bullies who have ‘already been done to’ and see the world as being a place where you do first before it can be done to you. A better rule might be, ‘You can say, or do, anything provided it is true, kind, and useful (it gets us down the road to where we want to be).’”

“Competition between students has a bad aroma with some teachers…. However, done appropriately so that one person, group, or team does not metaphorically score ten runs in the first inning, it can generate very positive outcomes…. the competitive situation should have the following characteristics:
• It must be limited to a specific situation, assignment, or time, and not generalized across the context.
• The ‘rules’ must be the same for all players but the outcomes may be different.
• There must be multiple, limited competitions between variable groups.
• The competitive situation should always be novel and unpredictable.
• And finally, the competition must always remain a game and be fun.”

“… there are two questions to be asked. The first question is, if we gave any one of the high stakes tests such as the SAT, ACT, or NCLB mandated state tests to a thousand congressmen, CEOs, artists, or military officers, would a significant portion be embarrassed by their performance? Which raises the second question, what does a successful person need to know, and how and where can each person learn it? The answers to these last questions should drive a national organization of teachers. Forget the rest of it. If we can get this in front of the nation, everything else will follow.”

“Please do not even try to be a teacher if you do not have all of the attributes of character: integrity tempered by empathy, intelligence tempered by awe, risk-taking tempered by common sense, independence tempered by the desire to serve, and most important, self-confidence tempered by self-knowledge. Even with all the attributes, please do not start or continue on the journey just because it is possible. Start or continue on the journey because it is what you have to do, almost a calling.”

“In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and highest responsibility anyone could have.”

With hope for schools filled with master teachers like Dexter Chapin,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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“You must teach because you want to help students achieve their dreams. You must teach because you care almost as much as much about the children in your class as you do about your own children. And you must approach the job with the humility to know that what you are trying to do – to help children grow up wisely and well in an ever-more-complex world – will tax you to the limits of your being. It should – it will – demand the best of you. If you can engage in that reflection… you will understand why you must apologize deeply and profoundly to your students… because you would never want another person to hurt your students as I imagine you have hurt them.”

Read the complete post.

Thanks, Chris Lehmann, for these eloquent and wise words.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Image courtesy of Chris Lehmann via Creative Commons.

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Dan dropped out of college because, as he said, “my schooling was interfering with my education.” As he describes a typical college class and makes a passionate and positive plea for real education for the 21st century, do you find yourself in sympathy? I certainly do. When information is a click away, don’t we really need thinkers, innovators, visionaries, developers, creators and solutionaries far more than we need memorizers? And shouldn’t school foster and instill these critical qualities as it’s primary goal, rather than perpetuate the rote memorization approach to learning.

I’ve posted James Randi’s TED talk before, but it’s worth a look again. Graduating a generation who can spew out facts, but not think critically about them; who know information, but not how to tell if it’s accurate; who believe what they’re told and fail to take responsibility for the truth of those beliefs, is a potentially dangerous generation, especially at a time when critical and creative thinking are the keys to a safe and healthy future. Graduating a generation of solutionaries, however, ready and able to think deeply AND broadly, so that we can create a restored and humane world, is a worthy goal for schooling.

It’s nice to see Dan Brown thinking critically about his own education and taking responsibility for it.

Zoe Weil, President of the Institute for Humane Education
Author of The Power and Promise of Humane Education

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At the Institute for Humane Education, January is when we offer our online course, A Better World, A Meaningful Life, based on my book Most Good, Least Harm. We offer this course in January because it’s a perfect way to begin a new year, providing, as it does, the opportunity to reflect upon one’s deepest values, build community with others who want to align their choices and lives more deeply with what is most important to them, and start the year by putting intentions into action. It takes New Year’s resolutions and grounds them in practice.

In the dark of winter, such a course is a wonderful opportunity to introspect, to inquire about what is most important to us and make our goals real in order to live with greater integrity and purpose. We know many people who not only decide to take this course themselves, but give it as a holiday gift to a friend or family member, creating the chance to share themselves, their values, their vision and their dreams with someone they love.

Here’s to the joyful, meaningful lives we can create for ourselves and the humane and healthy world we can build together. Happy holidays!

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life

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I just laughed. MacKinnon is spot on and doesn’t hold back when describing “eco-douchebags,” those people whose holier-than-thou judgmentalness crushes every last speck of both blessed denial and even more blessed joy. But while naming the huge challenges we face in choosing accountability (as MacKinnon would say) or MOGO (most good), which I address in my book, Most Good, Least Harm, MacKinnon does not let us off the hook.

Doing nothing is not an option even as we struggle to decide what somethings are worthy of our time and energy and refuse to become self-righteous as we diligently research and strive for the accountability we wish everyone would embrace. Her rule of thumb for choosing which somethings to do? Those that feel like an adventure. That’s a nice alternative to epic-scale pain in the ass.

Zoe Weil

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