CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER THREE
You are driving along in your two-seater car on a cold, stormy night. You pass by a bus stop and notice three people waiting for a ride home:
•A very old lady who’s clearly seriously ill and needs to get to a hospital.
•An old friend who once saved your life.
•The perfect partner you have spent many years dreaming about.
Knowing that you only have room for one passenger in your car, who do you decide to give a lift to?
You could:
•Pick up the old lady and help save her life.
•Select your old friend as he once saved yours, or
•Choose that perfect partner you may never see again unless you make an immediate move.
Which is it to be?
Andy and I are sitting having a coffee in a glass-fronted restaurant with a view across London to die for. It’s early December, late afternoon, and the twinkling lights of MI6, Canary Wharf and the Old Bailey are gold and glittery against a dark, pre-Christmas sky.
Bond, Gekko, Dexter and Lecter are all out there somewhere, I think to myself. Doing their thing. No doubt it’ll only be a matter of time before we hear about their latest incarnations.
The shimmering skyline is a fitting backdrop to the dilemma Andy has just posed me.
‘It’s meant to be an initiative test,’ he tells me in between loud slurps of his cappuccino, ‘for people working in an investment bank.’
He picks up a spoon and starts skimming the froth off the top.
‘Andy, mate,’ I say. ‘This place has got a Michelin star.’
‘I know. This foam tastes great!’
I have been giving Andy’s conundrum some serious thought. Or, rather, have been trying to give it some serious thought while he deconstructs his coffee. But as soon as I hear the words ‘initiative test’, that’s it. I throw in the towel.
‘Go on then,’ I say. ‘What’s the answer?’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘according to what I’ve heard, the answer they’re looking for is this. You mow the old girl down to put her out of her misery, get your perfect partner’s telephone number, then drive off for a few bevvies with your old mate. Apparently, this shows that you’re ruthless, well organized and loyal to those who’ve been good to you in the past – the qualities, so they say, of a perfect investment banker.’
I stare at him blankly.
‘Well organized?’ I say. ‘So hang on, let me get this right. Your perfect partner is supposed to give you her contact details, and your best mate is supposed to go out for a drink with you, after just seeing you plough into an old lady right in front of them?’
Andy takes another slurp.
‘The wrong answer is to take the old lady to hospital and leave your perfect partner alone at the bus stop with your old friend,’ he continues. ‘This shows that you are easily distracted from the main task at hand, fail to grasp opportunities as they arise, and allow your competitors to get the jump on you.’
‘You’re taking the piss.’ I laugh. ‘So, OK, how about this then? You bung your mate your car keys to take the old dear to hospital, see your dream partner on to the bus to make sure she gets home all right – and while you’re at it you get her mobile phone number. This shows that you have more than one brain cell, a bit of common sense, and the ability to avoid being banged up for life in a hospital for the criminally insane. Where does that fit into the equation?’
Andy shakes his head. ‘Don’t know,’ he says. ‘But it’s what I’d do. Chances are the old dear’s going to have an artificial hip and if you catch them wrong those things can be a real bugger for your paintwork.’
‘Banks,’ I mutter. ‘No wonder it all went tits up.’
Andy’s moral dilemma/initiative test is a brilliant example of how not to live your life. Of how not to go about pursuing your own self-interest.
There’s nothing wrong with getting what you want. But running an old lady over in your car? That’s not ruthless. It’s malicious, boneheaded stupidity.
Stupidity like that is not what this book is about. Instead, this book is about getting what you want in a way that may, at times, be tough but which is always within the rules . . .
. . . though admittedly, there can sometimes be grey areas!
I once remember taking the F line into Manhattan on the New York subway. I was on my way to some store or other when it dawned on me that I didn’t actually know which station to get off at.
The train was packed so I decided to ask the guy standing in front of me.
‘Next one,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ I said, and stood up.
He sat down.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘it’s 34th Street. That’s another five stops, man. But you know what? My legs are killing me!’
Everyone else in the carriage started laughing so hard I had little choice but to ‘suck it up’, as they say in that part of the world. 34th St station couldn’t have come round fast enough.
But is what this guy did acting within the rules? It’s a difficult one to call. Yes, he pulled a fast one. There’s no doubt about that. But, looking back on it, I have to ask myself this:
In hindsight, was the ignominy and inconvenience of standing up for a few extra minutes on the New York subway worth what I got in return – a story I’ve been telling ever since?
An unstoppable free kick of a scam that screamed straight into the top corner of my brain?
A quick and dirty master class in how to be a CHEEKY psychopath if not an entirely GOOD one?
I reckon so!
Some people have asked me whether I might have looked more favourably on what this guy did if it had been for the benefit of someone else as opposed to himself. If, for instance, after getting me to stand up, he then ushered an old lady into my seat.
Or the partner of his dreams.
Or his best mate.
I don’t think so. If that had been his game it would’ve seemed, to me, a little too patronizing. A little too smug. A little too much like he was trying to teach me a lesson. And no one likes being taught that kind of lesson. Especially not by that kind of guy!
Besides, surely the right thing to do in that situation would be to punch the old lady to the floor, get the number of your perfect partner as you settle them into their seat, then jump off at the next stop to have a celebratory drink with your mate?
Or maybe I’ve been knocking about with too many investment bankers.
The first time I met Andy he told me something that has stuck in my mind ever since.
‘You can get away with anything,’ he said, ‘so long as you can get away with it.’
He’s right.
The trick is to get away with it.
Sometimes Andy can be cleverer than he looks – not often, but sometimes – and over the years I’ve occasionally found myself reflecting on those words.
They’re shallower than they sound!
Basically, I think, the bottom line is this:
Everything is impossible until someone comes along and does it. And then, all of a sudden, it becomes possible.
Possible and impossible, in other words, are not Harry Pottery super words with the power to define reality. In fact, it’s the other way around. REALITY defines THEM. Whether something is possible or impossible very much depends on what WE are going to do about it. It’s an incredibly empowering thought.
It is also, I think, a philosophy – a philosophy which pretty much encapsulates what being a GOOD PSYCHOPATH is all about.
In Chapter One Andy made a very important point. He said, if you recall, that what we’re offering you here isn’t just a Jamie-style recipe book for success: a handy hints manual to get you up the ladder.
It’s a PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.
Which it is.
But what kind of philosophy is it, exactly?
And where does it come from?
In the rest of this chapter we’re going to answer these questions by sketching out for you the ethical, cultural and intellectual traditions that the Good Psychopath philosophy draws upon – the theoretical foundations of this lifestyle we’re describing. The resulting ideological cocktail may surprise you: an unlikely blend of hedonism, existentialism and Judaeo-Christianity.
On the other hand, however, philosophical tasting notes may not be your thing. So if you’re not really bothered about how the brew was mixed and are more concerned with what the concoction tastes like, then please feel free to skip the next few pages. The less you think, the quicker you get your drink!
We begin our degustation in the company of the ancient Greeks. Well, an ancient Greek to be precise: the philosopher Epicurus.
In the third century BC, Epicurus put forward a notion that most of us now take for granted. As we make our way through life, we have two primary motivations:
•The attainment of PLEASURE
•The avoidance of PAIN
These dual motivations are not exclusively human. In fact, so fundamental is Epicurus’s idea that it applies at even the most rudimentary levels of life. Under powerful microscopes, for example, simple, single-celled microorganisms may be observed moving TOWARDS REWARD STIMULI (e.g. a food source) and AWAY FROM THREATENING STIMULI (e.g. a sharp probe).
‘A bit like someone who’s overweight ordering more cake instead of binning the carbs and going on a diet!’ Andy chimes in, picking up a menu.
Epicurus called this preference for pleasure over pain hedonism (from the Greek word hedonismus, meaning delight) – and even the most masochistic of us are hedonists at heart. Not only that, but we start off rather early!
Here’s an example.
Harvard University biologist David Haig has spent the last few years systematically debunking the notion that the relationship between a mother and her unborn child is anything like the rose-tinted idyll that one usually finds on the glossy covers of maternity magazines.
In fact, it is anything but.
Pre-eclampsia, a condition of dangerously high blood pressure in pregnant women, is brutally kick-started by nothing short of a foetal coup d’état. It begins with the placenta invading the maternal bloodstream and initiating what, in anyone’s book, is a ruthless biological heist – an in utero sting operation to draw out vital nutrients.
And I’m not just talking about baby Gordon Gekkos here – I’m talking about all of us.
The curtain-raiser is well known to obstetricians. The foetus begins by injecting a crucial protein into the mother’s circulation which forces her to drive more blood, and therefore more nourishment, into the relatively low-pressure placenta.
It’s a scam, pure and simple, which poses a significant and immediate risk to the mother’s life.
‘The bastard!’ says Andy. ‘Shall we get some olives?’
‘And it’s by no means the only one,’ I continue.
In another embryonic Ponzi scheme, foetal release of placental lactogen counteracts the effect of maternal insulin thereby increasing the mother’s blood sugar level and providing an excess for the foetus’s own benefit.
‘A bowl of the citrus and chilli and a bowl of the sweet pepper and basil,’ Andy says to the waiter.
Then he peers at me over the menu.
‘So basically what you’re saying then is this: forget the Gaddafis and the Husseins. When it comes to chemical warfare it’s the unborn child that’s top dog!’
‘Well they definitely nick stuff that isn’t theirs,’ I say. ‘And they don’t give a damn about the consequences.’
Andy smiles.
‘So in other words they’re psychopaths!’ he says.
Epicurus’s observation that we are all motivated by self-interest, by the attainment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain – accompanied, some two millennia later, by the supporting scientific evidence that we’re all at it from the moment we can manage to scrape a couple of bog-standard nerve cells together – should, in theory, go some way towards making us feel good about ourselves.
Or better, at least.
Towards soothing our troubled consciences.
But it doesn’t.
Besieged, as we grow up, by the pressure of social norms and the personal and professional consequences of stepping on others’ toes, we carry the burden of getting what we want, of unpasteurized self-interest, very heavily.
We ruminate . . .
We cogitate . . .
We deliberate . . .
We hesitate . . .
. . . not just over decisions of life-changing importance but also over those of considerably lesser magnitude.
We sweat the small stuff, the big stuff, and all the differently sized stuff in between. In Flipnosis, I – like Andy – drew a number of striking parallels between newborn babies and psychopaths. It ruffled quite a few feathers at the time. Most notably among readers who didn’t have kids!
Babies are charming, manipulative, heartless, and in it totally for themselves, I wrote. Like their equally ruthless counterparts. And also, like psychopaths, engage in uncomfortable periods of prolonged, unblinking eye contact – a reliable indicator of social disinhibition.
Psychopathy, I argued at the time, is our natural state. We are born that way. At the precise moment that we come into this world, natural selection has already kitted us out for the hazardous mission ahead – tooling us up with a deadly psychopathy starter pack chock to the brim with every trick in the black-belt con artist’s book to get us what we want.
Which, of course, it does.
Little did I know that we opened that pack in the womb!
But as we get older things begin to change. Our ruthlessness mellows and our psychopathic fearlessness subsides.
It is – in varying degrees – loved, punished, educated and indoctrinated out of us so that, by the time we reach adulthood and begin to take control of our lives, by the time we’ve grown up and have the power to make our own decisions rather than have others make them for us, we are absolutely terrified of doing so.
We freeze in the glare of the consequences of our actions.
We stand dazzled and confused in the immobilizing headlights of choice.
We are paralysed by the freedom we fought so hard to win.
The olives arrive and Andy dives straight in.
‘You know what we need don’t you, mate?’ he says.
‘Go on,’ I say.
‘An updated version of that in utero psychopathy starter pack.’
This idea of existential angst that Andy and I are talking about is, needless to say, not new. It’s as old as the philosophical hills.
But the first person to really put their finger on it, to properly sit down and quantify it was not, in fact, an ancient bearded colossus classically bedecked in a laurel wreath and toga, but the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.
To illustrate his point, Kierkegaard came up with a brilliant analogy. Imagine that you’re standing on the edge of a cliff, he wrote.
You will experience two kinds of fear.
The first kind is the fear of falling (which is fair enough).
The second kind is the fear of throwing yourself off – the terrifying realization that whether or not you plunge into the abyss below is COMPLETELY UP TO YOU.
You have total FREEDOM OF CHOICE.
In keeping with the vertiginous theme of his analogy, Kierkegaard coined a beautiful phrase to describe the ontology (a philosophical word combining reason and origin in one) of this fear.
‘Anxiety,’ he wrote, ‘is the dizziness of freedom.’
Even Andy nods his head. ‘But he couldn’t have been talking just about standing on cliff tops,’ he says. ‘I mean, if that were true we wouldn’t still be talking about him now.’
‘You’re right,’ I reply. ‘He wasn’t. His insight goes much deeper than that.’
Kierkegaard proposed that we experience this kind of dizziness all the time – when we teeter on the edges of personal or moral or financial cliff tops (to name but a few) during the course of our everyday lives.
And, in the grand scheme of things, he didn’t think it did us much harm.
Quite the reverse, in fact.
It kept our wackier impulses in check and society on the straight and narrow by ensuring that we didn’t go and do anything too ‘over the top’.
Sure, it may get us down from time to time. It may drive us into depression or spill over into the full-blown psychological vertigo of anxiety disorder.
But in general, Kierkegaard maintained, the benefits outweigh the costs. It heightens our self-awareness and gives us a greater sense of both personal and communal responsibility.
‘Fair one,’ says Andy. ‘But the downside, I guess, is that some people develop an unhealthy fear of heights. And a lot more, even if they aren’t afraid of going up the mountain to begin with, are reluctant to jump even a small distance when they get to the summit.’
‘Got it in one!’ I say.
The problem, it seems, lies in striking the right balance.
In direct contrast to our in utero and newborn personas, we’ve scampered too far up the other end of the spectrum.
We’ve become too risk averse.
Banks didn’t exist back in Jesus’ time. Well, not the big multinationals that piss us about today anyway. If they had done, and the Roman Empire had experienced the same kind of credit crunch that we did a few years ago, then the following tale might well have panned out differently.
But as it stands there is no better example of the failings of risk aversion, of too much risk aversion, and of the moral responsibility that each of us has to roll the dice and get the very best out of ourselves, than that provided by the immeasurably surprising story that Andy brings up next.
It’s one of the most elegantly discerning treatments of healthy and unhealthy mindsets, of positive and negative outlook, in the history of Western thought.
And an exquisite encapsulation – some two thousand years before he came up with it – of Kierkegaard’s big idea.
Unfortunately, Andy’s rendition isn’t as good as some of the others out there on the market (a mouthful of olives doesn’t help).
So here it is, the Parable of the Talents, in the narrator’s original words.
Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
After a long time, the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’
His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
The man with the two talents also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’
His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’
His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
‘Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ (Matthew 25:14–30 NIV)
This brutally simple story, as Andy rightly observes, holds a perfect psychological mirror to Kierkegaard’s altitudinous analogy. But it also goes one further.
Because the main thing we notice, alongside the element of RISK, is that success is completely RELATIVE. It is not absolute.
‘Whenever we look at the final standings, be it at the end of a race, competition, selection process or whatever,’ Andy points out, ‘it’s important to remember that we all begin from different positions on the starting grid. In other words, whatever it is that we’re setting out to achieve in life there are always going to be some lucky bastards who have it easy, who are blessed with natural ability (five talents). And there will always be those who aren’t (one talent).
‘I think that getting your head around this simple, basic truth is key to how you see success. And key to how you achieve it. That Danish bloke you were on about is right. It’s true that a lot of people don’t get what they want because they’re scared of taking the plunge.
‘But I reckon there’s another reason why people fail at stuff – and it’s got nothing to do with a lack of application or the way they go about it. It’s purely and simply because they have unrealistic expectations of what is actually possible. They set themselves goals which, given where they are on the starting grid, are impossible to reach.
‘Earlier, you were talking about success being a byproduct of two things: talent on the one hand and the right kind of personality to maximize that talent on the other. Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? One without the other just won’t work.’
By way of example, Andy tells me about a common occurrence on SAS selection – the most fearsome military selection process in the world.
‘Some of the guys who turn up on Day One look like Olympic athletes,’ he says. ‘They train for months to get themselves into peak condition only to discover, at some point down the line, that peak condition for them still falls short of the benchmark physical talent required to get into the Regiment.
‘These guys are in bits when they’re “binned” and returned to their units. They’ve worked so hard and yet they’ve still “failed”.
‘Except that they haven’t failed at all. They’ve failed Selection, yes. But they haven’t failed themselves. They’ve given the very last drop of what they’ve got to give. But it just wasn’t good enough. It never was going to be good enough. There’s no shame in that.
‘On one SAS Selection a few years ago a couple of the candidates died. The Commanding Officer summoned the Training Officer who ran the course to his office and asked him how he was supposed to justify it. There were questions being raised in the Commons.
‘“The way I see it,” said the Training Officer, “it’s Nature’s way of telling them they’ve failed Selection!”
‘His answer was immortalized as a print, set in a frame and hung in the Training Wing’s accommodation block for all Selection candidates to read.’
But it works both ways.
The story might be called the Parable of the TALENTS. But notice how the narrator places equal emphasis on the PERSONALITY side of the equation. On how those talents are managed.
If you happen to be one of the lucky ones, like Five-Talent Man for instance, it just isn’t good enough to rest on your laurels and take it easy on yourself. If you happen to be naturally gifted, the return you get on those gifts should be consistent with the outlay.
In contrast there may be times in your life when, like One-Talent Man, you simply have to do the best you can with it. Which does not translate to burying it in the ground! A one-talent return on one talent is just as good as a five-talent return on five.
‘Agreed,’ says Andy. ‘In fact, that’s one of the guiding principles on which the SAS operates. Selection is open to everyone within the British Army, Navy and Air Force – from head chefs on submarines to airframe mechanics who keep the RAF Chinook helicopters flying to Regimental Sergeant Majors from a Para battalion.
‘But it doesn’t matter what you are, the Selection training staff will expect a level of knowledge and expertise from you consistent with where you came from. It’s all about the ability to learn, not what you already know. That means there is no way you can judge your progress by comparing yourself with others. The only person you are competing against is YOU. Pass him – and you’re in.
‘They are perfectly happy to teach the navy chef the basics of stripping and assembling a weapon. But a Para regiment RSM? You’ve got to be joking!’
We order dinner and look out at the MI6 building. It hass started to rain and with the lights and the opaque windows, the place is enveloped in a greeny-gold haze. I ask Andy if he’s ever been in there.
‘What, Legoland?’ he replies. ‘Yeah, loads of times.’
As we begin to get more comfortable, Andy tells me a story about his own time on Selection, which is a perfect demonstration of the SAS’s approach to talent.
Having completed the initial four-week endurance and navigation phase, those who remained on the course (and there weren’t many) were flown off to Brunei to begin what is called ‘continuation’ (or jungle) training.
As the boys settle down to learn basic Morse Code beneath the sweltering emerald canopy of the rainforest, one of them, whose parent regiment is the Royal Corps of Signals, decides to loaf about drinking cups of tea.
As a signaller, he is already skilled in Morse Code and sees no reason to sit in on stuff he could quite easily do in his sleep.
As soon as they return to England, he’s packing his bags and is gone.
‘It was a fair one, for two reasons,’ says Andy. ‘First, if he’s getting a brew on it shouldn’t have been just for himself; he’s part of a team. And second, as soon as he’d made it he should’ve then started pitching in – helping us get our heads around all those dots and dashes.
‘It’s not just Who Dares Wins. It’s Who Shares Wins, too.’
In an ironic twist, once news of his fate got out, a mysterious note composed of strange hieroglyphics turned up on his bed.
‘Morse Code?’ I ask Andy.
‘Yes,’ he grins, shoving his bacon and sun-dried tomato bread roll into his mouth. ‘For “Fuck off, teaboy!”’
There are two sides to success: SUBJECTIVE and OBJECTIVE.
When the two coincide it’s brilliant. But when you get one without the other, the results, for the most part, are usually less than optimal.
Subjective without objective can code for disappointment.
Objective without subjective can lead to laziness and underachievement.
The bottom line, as we can see from the way the Parable of the Talents eventually pans out, is self-confidence.
Not over-confidence.
Self-confidence.
It is:
•Believing in yourself.
•Throwing down the gauntlet.
•Facing down your demons.
The Parable of the Talents is an audacious invitation – to return to Kierkegaard’s ‘cliffhanger’ metaphor – to overcome the ‘dizziness of freedom’ and to throw in your lot with the person you dare to become.
It is a licence to go for your shots.
‘Many years ago, when he was still with us, the American tennis player Vitas Gerulaitis dumps Jimmy Connors out of some tournament or other,’ I tell Andy. ‘Connors – who’s gone into the match on a sixteen-game winning streak against Gerulaitis – is livid. At the post-match press conference tensions were widely expected to boil over. Until, that is, Gerulaitis takes the stand.
‘“No one beats Vitas Gerulaitis seventeen straight!” he booms.’
The remark has everyone laughing.
Including Connors.
But, despite what had gone before, Gerulaitis had played brilliantly that day. And his quip was as much a mantra as it was an icebreaker.
He had stood on the edge of the precipice and had taken the plunge.
He’d suffered innumerable losses but had refused to cash himself in.
‘He refused to bury his talent,’ says Andy.
Vitas Gerulaitis had the guts to keep believing in the person he dared to become. He had the guts, as Epicurus might’ve put it, to persist in stumbling towards a dreamed-of oasis of pleasure even when the route took him time and time again through the parched and lonely killing fields of pain.
Which is easier said than done.
A classic experiment conducted back in the 1960s showed that dogs repeatedly given electric shocks with no way of escaping those shocks, subsequently chose to passively accept their fate EVEN WHEN AN ESCAPE ROUTE WAS MADE AVAILABLE TO THEM.
They lay down and whimpered instead of getting up and walking away.
This strange tendency that the brain sometimes has to be brainwashed into submission – called ‘learned helplessness’ by psychologists – can also be observed in humans.
It explains, among other things, why battered women often remain loyal to abusive husbands when the door to a new life is, quite literally, thrown wide open in front of them. And why, when they have the chance, long-term hostages and kidnap victims do not make a break for freedom, and instead, against all the laws of objective common sense, choose to remain incarcerated.
And going back to SAS selection, it also explains why candidates throw in the towel – even in the latter stages, when the physical stuff is over and there are only a few days left to run.
Here’s Andy again:
‘On the final week you’re dumped in the middle of the Brecon Beacons with a hunter force after you. You’re set up to be captured because they have to interrogate you, see how you stand up to it.
‘It usually lasts seventy-two hours. They hood you, blindfold you, tie you up, yell at you, throw water over you, throw everything at you – white noise, stress positions, the lot – to see if they can break you.
‘And a lot of people do break. Even blokes who have got that far and have got only a few hours left on the course will break.
‘I’ve never understood it myself. Interrogation was easy for me. I remember thinking: “Just a few more hours of this and that’s it. Pull on the beret, one of the boys.”
‘That was the goal I’d set myself. That’s who I wanted to be. I wanted to look at myself in the mirror wearing the famous winged dagger and say: “Mate, you’ve come from the gutters of Peckham to take your place among some of the finest soldiers who ever walked the face of the earth. Good on you!” And no amount of beasting was going to take that away from me.
‘But the problem for some blokes is that they start believing it’s real. They start believing that it actually means something.
‘When you’re cold, wet, tired and hungry, blindfolded and handcuffed and being bombarded with bursts of white noise in some minging shithole in the middle of fuck-knows-where that stinks of bat, rat and cat piss, it’s easy for your mind to start playing tricks on you.
‘It’s easy to start thinking that they’ve got it in for you. That they’re trying to kill you. That they don’t want you to pass. That it’s never going to end and that there’s no way out.
‘But it’s not like that at all. They just want to see if you’re good enough. And if you start thinking like that – that it means something, that it’s all about you, that there’s never going to be an end to it – then, quite frankly, you’re not good enough.
‘Fuck it – when it came to noise and piss and stress positions, I knew nightclubs in Hereford that were worse!’
Andy’s take on the final few hours of SAS selection, which, in a unique and unlikely narrative, unites Epicurus, Kierkegaard and Jesus under the one metaphysical roof, brings us to the halfway point in our historical and philosophical excavation of the core principles and values of the Good Psychopath psychology.
But before we progress from mantra to methodology we need to touch base with a second triumvirate of philosophical greats whose thinking comprises the high-wire, existentialist suspension bridge between the PRINCIPLES of being a Good Psychopath and their PRACTICE: Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche.
The food arrives and we start tucking in. Fillet of John Dory for me: lightly grilled.
Burger for Andy: burnt.
‘You know, you’re probably not going to like this,’ I say, as the ketchup does a flypast over the burger and touches down at an undisclosed location somewhere to the right of our shiny Conran table, ‘but I’d put you down as a disciple of Sartre and Camus. During the final few days of SAS selection anyway.’
Andy’s not listening – too busy sorting the sauce bottle malfunction.
Sartre, a Parisian who was at the height of his philosophical powers during the mid-twentieth century, is famous for his contention that, when it comes to us humans, ‘Existence precedes essence.’
Or, to put it more simply, we are born without purpose so we are free to become whoever we wish to become.
We are at liberty to shape our own destiny.
To clarify, Sartre uses the example of a paper knife. It is inconceivable, he suggests, that a paper knife could exist without the prior intention of the craftsman who made it. In other words, in order to fashion a paper knife, as opposed to, say, a carving knife or a Stanley knife, the craftsman would have to know exactly what it was going to be used for.
To cut paper. Not fabric or meat.
But humans, Sartre reasoned, are different to paper knives. A devout atheist, he maintained that there was no Master Plan behind the creation of the human form – no envisaged purpose – and that each and every one of us was teeming with unique potential.
‘First of all man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and only afterwards defines himself,’ he proclaimed. ‘As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.’
‘A bit like ketchup then!’ says Andy.
I ignore him, drizzling some white asparagus velouté over my grilled fish.
‘Whatever,’ I say. ‘But get this: what Sartre was mulling over some half a century ago in the coffee houses of the Left Bank is exactly the same thing that you were mulling over as you lay hooded and gagged on the floor of some Brecon Beacons hay barn on your journey from Peckham to Hereford!’
The bottle farts and a big dollop of tomato ketchup lands slap bang in the middle of his burger.
‘Perfect,’ says Andy.
With its emphasis on freedom and possibility, on breaking the mould of a preordained natural order, Sartre’s philosophy is seen as profoundly liberating.
But he is quick to point out that we do have to accept some limits on the scope of our personal achievement.
Unless you are blessed with the VO2 max, lactate threshold, and ratio of slow to fast twitch muscle fibres of, say, a Mo Farah then you are never going to be . . . Mo Farah!
Likewise, as Andy told us earlier, unless you have the innate physiological capabilities required to pass SAS selection you’re never going to pull on the famous sand-coloured beret, no matter how fit you are.
On the other hand, however, within the range of realistic options that we do have at our disposal, the choices we make are often distorted by powerful societal forces way beyond our control: by ancient psychological jet streams that have, over time, expediently sculpted the supple neural forests of our brains.
Over millions of years of complex biological development these withering evolutionary trade winds – fear of failure, social norms, self-consciousness and the like – have weathered our decision-making landscape into coppices of convention and conformity: a psychic malaise which the Parable of the Talents neatly captures.
Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher of the late nineteenth century, wrote on a similar theme.
But for Nietzsche – like Sartre an atheist – the constraints on human potential were not customs and norms like tradition and expectation, but the prevailing Christian values of his day.
Nietzsche railed against the way that Christianity devalued life as just a warm-up act for the infinitely more rewarding ‘life after death’ – how it advocated turning our backs on what seemed important in the here and now in readiness for life on an eternal, ethereal, more exalted plane of existence. By doing this, Nietzsche argued, Christianity was essentially urging us to ‘de-friend’ life itself – a pompous and universally restrictive philosophy which threatened to undermine us as a species.
Instead he called for a ‘revaluation of all values’ – a comprehensive audit of all the things that we habitually think of as ‘good’.
Were they genuinely good?
Or, when you cast a cold eye over them, were they extraneous codes of conduct that simply held us back?
Is staying in a boring job, or an abusive relationship or a toxic friendship merely out of a sense of duty, for instance, really the right thing to do? Are the so-called ‘sins of the flesh’ actually sins at all? Is ‘turning the other cheek’ a legitimate strategy by which to live one’s life?
Science, I tell Andy, has in fact come up with an answer to this last question.
And it’s NO!
Research has shown that responding to nice people by being nice and to not nice people by being not nice is by far the most effective way forward.
‘So the meek don’t inherit the earth after all,’ he says. ‘They get jack shit!’
I degust the last of my truffle ravioli.
‘Man is a rope tied between the animal and the Superman,’ Nietzsche asserted. ‘A rope over an abyss . . . human life is a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous trembling and halting.’
Kierkegaard would have approved.
To be who we CAN be as opposed to who we SHOULD be, we have to brave the storm.
In our quest to be our very own Clark Kents we have to transcend the dizziness of freedom.
I doubt if Albert Camus knew much about elite military selection procedures – although he did work for the French Resistance during the Second World War editing an underground newspaper. But were his indomitable revolutionary spirit to have attracted him into the military fraternity as opposed to the hotbed of anarchist and communist activism – in Algeria in the 1930s and then Paris in the 1940s and 1950s – I have a feeling he might have excelled.
Like Sartre and Nietzsche, Camus was struck by the profoundly empowering meaninglessness of existence.
‘I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky,’ intones Meursault, the central character in Camus’s 1942 novel L’Etranger, ‘and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.’
‘I know where he’s coming from,’ says Andy. ‘I did the same through the bars of an Iraqi prison cell. It feels great.’
For Meursault and Camus – and Andy – the celestial cupboard is bare.
But unlike Sartre and Nietzsche, the illusion of meaning was not, for Camus, a guilt-laced fuzzy-headedness that stemmed from the torpor of some moral or religious hangover.
It was a little bit more psychological.
It’s long been accepted by psychologists and neuroscientists that each of us is fitted with a meaning detector in our brains. We are rational, thinking beings and we look for patterns in everything.
Sometimes, these patterns are there. They form part of the fabric of an objective, coherent reality. The symmetry of a snowflake, for example. Or the ‘eyes’ on the wing of a butterfly. But sometimes these patterns are not there and our brains fill in the gaps. They jump to conclusions to make themselves look useful – one of the taxes we pay on the bumper evolutionary windfall that we call consciousness. (See the Bullshit Grid overleaf for an idea of how this works.)
But Camus took things one step further – and extended the argument beyond the cognitive stratosphere of mental computation deep into the realms of philosophical outer space. For Camus, the truth was absurdly and brutally simple.
Nothing meant anything anywhere!
Well, anywhere, that is, except the space between our ears.
Sure, lots of things seem meaningful, conceded Camus – significanced-up by our pattern-seeking, sense-addicted consciousness. But the reality is very different. There is no rhyme or reason to anything in the universe.
Or, for that matter, the universe itself.
THE POWER OF BOLLOCKS
Need to get the jump on someone fast? Then quickly consult this handy business bullshit grid. It works like this. Think of any three-digit number (e.g. 2-6-6) and then select the corresponding buzzword word from Columns One, Two, and Three respectively (e.g. the selection 2-6-6 produces: ‘Systematized Transitional Time-phase’.) You will immediately come up with a meaningful corporate phrase that will massively impress your boss and completely bamboozle your work colleagues. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3 . . . or Heuristic Organizational Flexibility!
Camus was killed in a car crash in 1960, aged 46. He’d torn up a train ticket to Paris to accept a lift with a friend. Not that he would have taken such a thing to heart. Life, in Camus’ book, didn’t have it in for you. It didn’t give a damn.
It just wanted to see, as Andy put it earlier, whether you were good enough.
No need to take it personally.
The SAS have even devised a selection test based around Camus’ thoughts on meaninglessness. Or more accurately, I suppose, around his thoughts on meaning.
‘During the first month of Selection, life consists of climbing up and down the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains in Wales with a Bergen [rucksack] on your back,’ Andy tells me. ‘The Bergen weighs between 16 and 25 kilograms and the distance covered can be anything from 15 to 62 kilometres. But to make things more interesting you don’t know the cut-off time, how fast you have to get from A to B. There are two reasons for that.
‘First, it means that you’re performing under uncertainty, which is much harder psychologically.
‘Second, if any Olympic-class racing snake gets across those mountains in record time and is feeling a bit smug, the training team have the opportunity to set them another little test to see if they have as much mental stamina as they do physical stamina.’
The test involves carrying rocks in their Bergen up a hill . . .
then carrying them back down . . .
then carrying them back up . . .
then carrying them back down . . .
ad infinitum.
Until the instructor tells them to stop.
This was exactly the fate that befell the Greek king Sisyphus in Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus fell out of favour with the gods and was duly transported to the Underworld. There, for all eternity, he was condemned to heave a huge rock up a mountain, only to watch it roll all the way back down again once he reached the top.
It’s not a nice feeling.
‘That was a bastard,’ admits Andy, looking back. ‘There’s nothing like a task that’s both pointless and physically draining to rip the shit out of you. Especially if you don’t know when it’s going to end. Quite a few of the lads jacked it in on that one. Talking of which: shall we get the bill?’
Meaning is like psychological oxygen. Without it we wither and die. But not all of us, it would seem.
For the men who pass SAS selection, the ability to:
•let things wash over them
•not take things personally
•not dwell on the past
•not overthink the present
•not worry unduly about the future
is second nature. As it has to be in their line of work.
Here’s Andy again:
‘I remember the RSM saying to a few of us not long after we’d first been badged: “The secret of success is this. Train like it means everything when it means nothing – so you can fight like it means nothing when it means everything.” And he was right. That just about sums up Regiment mentality. Sums up any winning mentality, in fact.’
‘Sounds like the geek’s version of Who Dares Wins,’ I tease.
He laughs. ‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘And you should know!’
The philosophy tour is over – our sightseeing trip around a few of the more popular beauty spots concluded. We pulled out of the station with some words of advice from Andy – that The Good Psychopath’s Guide should not be seen as just a handbook of success but as an all-encompassing PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE – and we embarked on a quest to find out what it was.
What were the roots – classical and modern, moral and psychological – of the Good Psychopath way of life?
What are the guiding principles underpinning its no-nonsense mindset?
Arriving back at the terminus it seems that we’ve come full circle. We set off on the trail of a philosophy of life and have ended our journey with a Special Forces maxim of success.
Somewhere along the way – via Epicurus, Jesus, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Nietzsche and Camus – the two got tangled up.
But what do we pack in the way of souvenirs?
What can we take from the ideological gift shop?
Well, the first thing of note, which we can take from Epicurus and Kierkegaard, is that, hiding behind success, embedded within the genome of achievement, there lurks a mutant paradox.
On the one hand, as Epicurus observed, we have an inbuilt desire for the positive over the negative. To favour pleasurable experiences over less pleasurable experiences.
On the other hand, however, in order to get what we want – to attain that pleasure and to avoid that pain – we have no option but to square up to pain head on. We have to move out of our comfort zones. We have to overcome the ‘dizziness of freedom’ of which Kierkegaard spoke so eloquently and take the plunge into the unknown.
We have to have the courage to take chances. To take a chance on ourselves. To make the most of our talents instead of burying them under a mountain of excuses.
‘Going back to our mixing-desk analogy,’ observes Andy, picking up the tab and shooting me a knowing look, ‘you have to make sure that your FEARLESSNESS dial is twiddleable . . . ahem . . . and in the pages that follow we’ll be giving it a bit of a workout.’
But there are other dials that might also need some twisting and turning. Sartre’s obsession with becoming all we can be, with sawing through the shackles of convention and becoming the masters of our own destiny, demands that we play with our RUTHLESSNESS dials a little.
Likewise, Nietzsche’s idea that some of the classical virtues that we traditionally think of as good are in fact psychological restraining agents that prevent us from reaching our full potential suggests that we adjust our CONSCIENCE and EMPATHY dials.
Not to the point where we start to harm those around us.
But certainly to the point where levels become low enough not to start harming ourselves – not to actively endanger our own self-interests and life-goals.
Last, the hand of Camus hovers ghostlike over our FOCUS dials.
So often in life our preoccupation with meaning . . .
•What’s in it for ME?
•What’s in it for THEM?
•What do I stand to LOSE?
•What do I have to GAIN?
. . . starts to get in the way of . . . well, life itself!
We get so caught up in the consequences of what we’re doing that we start not to do it very well.
Things begin to MATTER.
Stuff begins to MEAN SOMETHING.
And before we know it we’re not just making decisions. We’re making decisions about making those bloody decisions!
‘Anyone can walk along a three-foot-wide plank if it’s three feet off the ground,’ says Andy, handing me my coat. ‘But three thousand feet off the ground? That’s a different story.’
‘But why? It’s still a three-foot-wide plank, isn’t it?’
The reason, of course, is that at three thousand feet we’re no longer focusing just on the plank. In fact, we’re probably not focusing on the plank at all! We’re focusing on everything but the plank.
We’re focusing on what’s either side of it . . .
NOTHING!
EVERYTHING!
NOTHING and EVERYTHING!
And that’s just it.
We’re focusing on nothing and everything instead of just putting one foot in front of the other. Instead of w-a-l-k-i-n-g. Instead of just getting to the other end of the plank.
The result is that we freeze.
We hesitate.
We dither.
And when you’re three thousand feet off the ground with no margin of error, such indecisiveness can be deadly.
Andy again:
‘The reason planes don’t fall out of the sky is simple. The principles of aerodynamics aside, the bottom line is because they’re going too fast.’
Absolutely right.
If, mid-flight, they suddenly developed consciousness and routinely started to think about it, every airline in the world would go bust.
It’s the same with us and planks.
The same with us and LIFE.
Focus on what’s in front of you, not what’s on either side of you, and you’ll stand a far better chance of making it across the abyss. The abyss, as Nietzsche put it, that separates the animal from the Superman.
Of course, it’s easier said than done. But in the pages that follow we’ll set you on your way.
We’ll help you change out of your horn-rimmed, collar-and-tie, short-back-and-sides personality to reveal underneath the DECISIVE, FEARLESS and SUCCESSFUL persona of a Good Psychopath.
Our Good Psychopath Manifesto will transform you from someone who pussyfoots about on the left to a dynamic, go-getting achiever who maxes out on the right:
So what are the principles of the Good Psychopath Manifesto? And what can they do for YOU?
All is revealed in the seven-point action plan below – a psychological blueprint not just for success but for a richer, happier, more fulfilling life in general. These SEVEN DEADLY WINS of Good Psychopath living will help you achieve your goals not just at work but in all aspects of your life.
They will help you:
•get that job
•get that deal
•get that guy or girl
•get that raise
•get that opportunity
. . . that you’ve always been striving for but have never been able to nail.
They will also get you peace of mind. Because the more you begin to take control of your life, the more you will start to realize something amazing: so many of the things that you used to do BEFORE, you did for OTHER PEOPLE! You did them:
•to impress your boss.
•to make your colleagues like you (after you’d impressed the boss!).
•to keep the peace at home.
•because you owed it to a mate.
•to make the girl at the bus stop think you’re cool. (Run over any old ladies recently?)
Jesus once said: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ A fine sentiment!
Disrespecting others is NOT in the GOOD Psychopath Manifesto. But it’s equally important not to disrespect YOURSELF. So we would like to amend that venerable and honourable statement to the following:
‘Do unto YOURself as others would do unto THEMselves.’
And here are the principles to put it into action.
The following seven chapters will focus on each one in turn.
Good luck in overcoming the dizziness of freedom!
Good luck in unmasking your own GOOD Psychopath Superman!
Psychopaths go for it. Research shows that procrastination uses up valuable mental resources. If they want something, psychopaths just go for it. They are very reward-driven and don’t waste time thinking about things. They just do it!
Psychopaths know how to win. This ability to ‘switch on’ when it really matters is a trait common to both psychopaths and top sportspeople. A study found that when psychopaths were rewarded for success, rather than being punished for making mistakes, they learnt a lot quicker. They play to win!
Psychopaths have immense self-belief. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, so psychopaths don’t see the sense in voting against themselves. Most of us are scared of putting our head above the parapet but psychopaths don’t care what people think. They’re not afraid to speak out.
Psychopaths study people. They are genius-level psychological code-breakers because, like any predator, getting inside the mind of their prey gives them a distinct advantage. As one of the world’s top con-artists once said: ‘I can read your brain like a subway map. Shuffle it like a deck of cards.’
Psychopaths move on. They focus on what they are good at and do it – avoiding emotional hangovers. They don’t beat themselves up and they don’t have regrets. Research shows that in mock business scenarios, psychopathic negotiators make more money than other negotiators because they’re way less bothered by being screwed by unfair deals. As the Zen proverb goes, ‘Let go – or be dragged.’
Psychopaths are focused when it matters. Believe it or not, the ability to ‘live in the moment’ is something that psychopaths and elite Buddhist monks have in common. It’s also another trait they share with top sportspeople. Next time you’re going for that interview, remember this quote from the athlete Michael Johnson: Pressure is nothing more than the shadow of great opportunity.
Psychopaths aren’t ruled by emotions. In fact, they take a step back and surgically remove emotion from the situation. When stressing over a difficult task, ask yourself: what would I do if I didn’t feel this way? What would I do if I didn’t give a damn what other people thought? What would I do if it just didn’t matter?