The Psychology of...

In today's ultra polarized, highly tribal society we find ourselves working with, fraternizing with, and sometimes even living with people with whom we may disagree vehemently on some seemingly key social and economic issues. Our families and communities are often split when we start to talk about hot button issues. How many times have you made friends with someone and then added them on social media only to find out that they have views diametrically opposed to yours? "Oh no!" We profess with disappointment. "Am I going to be able to be friends with this person anymore?" And then, you spend more time with them. You play sports, you eat, you talk about your families, and more times than not, you are able to pass the time with enjoyment and much needed social connection, despite your differences. We do it all the time. Now why wouldn't we expect this of our elected officials who are supposed to be working on passing legislation that is ideally going to ...

This is part two of my "How to Be an Evil Villain" series although part 1 was suspiciously erased completely from my blog. This is no lie. I must be on to something. My first post was about gaining influence over other people, which I intend to rewrite eventually. But in the meantime, here is the second lesson on becoming an evil villain. One of the most essential parts of being a villain is that you need to make other people think you are the hero, or at least neutral. Comic books make it painfully clear who is bad and who is good but the real world is not so easily sorted. We have words like "terrorist", "dictator", and "bully" that help us discriminate between the good and bad but the ugly part of this is that no one, including the terrorists and the dictators and the bullies think they are the bad guys. A lot of "evil" behaviour is carried out by people who truly believe that they are doing the right thing and what's worse, th...