By: Cameron MacKenzie
We’re all crazy. That’s more or less true, if by crazy we mean deviant—that is, degrees of deviation from an artificial norm. But so much money in the market is made based on predicting not what the market will do, but what normal people will do when the market does what it inevitably does. And so, following that logic, to get away from that ‘normal’ thinking would seem to be a path to financial success.
Amazon is the old example. If I’d bought Amazon in 1999 at $86, by today I’d have...a ton of money. But while Amazon was 86$ in February of '99, it was at $50 by the end of July, and two years later it was hanging out around $6. Was anybody but Bezos still in the stock at this point? And if anyone was, he’d have to be considered—as the Animal Spirits guys have suggested—a "psychopath." This comment stood out to me because they’re not the first to suggest that a psychopath might have an edge on regular folks when it comes to the market (see, for example, Ken Dutton’s Wisdom of Psychopaths). But there’s a legitimate question as to whether the psychotic brain really is wired in a very particular way that gives it significant advantages in relation to business.
What would make a psychopath successful in the Amazon situation is that a psychopath is capable of a level of total certainty that is completely foreign to normal people. The psychopath needs that certainty in order to stay sane, and he achieves it by working harder, knowing more, and thinking deeper about big problems than everyday folks. He has to work harder because, in order for the psychopathic brain to work properly, it has to have the ANSWER. And so the psychopath wants to solve the big problems. He has to have complete mastery over the facts. He needs to be endlessly creative in his approach to obstacles. The psychopath literally allows nothing to stand in his way and, because of this, he can become an inspiring leader. Psychopaths are both tireless and ruthless in their pursuit of what they understand to be success, whether that’s a perfect painting, a new theorem, a better phone, or just plain and simple money. Psychopaths oftentimes succeed in their quest, and dominate their field, but it never feels to them like they’ve won. Nothing ever feels stable, nothing’s quite right, and this is because while the psychopathic brain is intensely strong, it is also profoundly fragile.
The psychopath works so hard to be right because if he’s wrong, the implications are disastrous for his sanity. In order to control himself, the psychopath has to have the answers, and the creation of those answers requires the psychopath to build a map of reality that covers every hole and ties up every loose end. This is why psychopaths get easily lost down back alleys: aliens, pyramids, shadowy government agencies, international conspiracies. They’re trying as best they can to get to the “truth” about these things because they need to fill out the map—a map that will show, of course, that everything is connected, thereby affirming the big answer the psychopath needs to get out of bed and get through the day.
And this sort of driving obsession indicates another drawback of the psychotic mind: a total focus upon the self. The psychopath is so occupied with his own desires that he doesn’t really understand other people like he understands himself. This enables him to use, manipulate and discard other individuals in pursuit of a larger goal—but it also limits his ability to deal with people who don’t conform to his expectations.
Indeed the psychopath can’t handle anything that doesn’t conform to his meticulous map of reality. And the fact of the matter is, no matter how diligent, relentless and creative someone is in controlling his environment, reality is messy.
When the unexpected occurs, when the numbers don’t match, when the shipment doesn’t get in on time, when the inevitable unforeseen event comes about, the psychopath cannot adjust. He doubles down and doubles down until he cracks. Unfortunately, we’re getting all too familiar with what that looks like. When things go wrong, it’s never the psychopath’s fault; it’s always the other people. The people that aren’t really people. The people that just keep getting in his way.
Long story just a little longer, when Amazon fell 50%, sane people should’ve gotten out, and those who didn’t either weren’t paying attention, or were in it to make Bezos happy.
And why not? Bezos is, by all accounts, a strong and inspiring leader. A hard-driving perfectionist with an iron will, a total mastery of the facts, a contagious belief in his own ability, and a broad and wide-ranging plan for complete and total dominance of any and all fields. It’s almost as if he has a grander vision than the rest of us, a total plan for the future, a new type of reality that he seems compelled to impose.
That’s not to pick on Bezos. I think the same things could be said about most of the leaders we hold up as models for emulation. But I do think it’s getting increasingly dangerous to valorize a type of thinking and behavior that hinges on two profoundly disturbing attributes: the total commitment to a self-made version of reality, and the willingness to disregard anyone who doesn’t conform to it. It almost feels like America itself is becoming increasingly psychotic. And if that’s the case, if crazy is becoming normal, then what are the normal people supposed to do?
Opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of SagePoint Financial, Inc.