> someone is talented and driven and charismatic and a sociopath, then they are probably at an advantage compared to someone who is missing one or more of those characteristics.
As I wrote above, people seem drawn to the fantasy of sociopathic behavior. They fear it and thus try to master it, following its feared power. We fear it, and the sociopaths (of course) try to amplify that - because they are weak. Look at Vladimir Putin or Saddam Hussein. All it takes is one person to stand up to them.
Have no fear. The world isn't perfectly just, evil happens, but humans are much more powerful as social, not sociopathic, creatures. Good is more powerful, really; we vastly outnumber the sociopaths. No dictator's dominion has ever even approached the heights of democracies based on human rights. George Washington, Ghandi, Churchill - they weren't sociopaths. Putin is; Zelenskyy is not.
But good people do need to believe in themselves, to act, and to act courageously. That's almost all Gandalf did (in the books), is to remind good people of their power and courage. Right now, we are only missing a leader.
Many people, of course, think Stalin was one of the greatest monsters in history, among other reasons, for the Holodomor, Soviet man-made famine.
I don't know what a sociopath is, ultimately, but it's not nearly as obvious as you think that Churchill goes in a different bucket than Stalin.
Oh and Gandhi...Gandhi famously said in response to the Holocaust that the Jews should've committed mass suicide since they were going to die anyway, and then maybe the world would've given a shit.
George Orwell (who was an apologist and ineffective propagandist for British colonialism during WWII) praised Gandhi for honesty and adhering to his principles, but claimed he didn't understand totalitarianism, that his movement could not have succeeded in Nazi Germany because it wouldn't have gotten any publicity.
You are debating someone who said they were saints, which I didn't, or with someone who fits some strawperson profile in your mind.
> it's not nearly as obvious as you think that Churchill goes in a different bucket than Stalin
You might be surprised that I might know more about it than you imagine, maybe more than you. It is pretty obvious that they belong in different buckets.
That's fine. I am not debating what a sociopath is, we can agree it's some kind of bad thing and if you would like to define it better be my guest.
My point is and was, that you didn't list Stalin, and putting him in either list is...problematic, as they say, when you consider Churchill and the Bengal famine.
Now I am not making any straw man or putting words in your mouth. I am interested in how you fit Stalin into your framework, not in telling you how to.
I'm not pushing the moral equivalence of Stalin and Churchill. Not at all. I'm just saying that there are well known facts that could support the opinion they are similar, and I'm fairly confident there are a lot of people (maybe millions) with that opinion.
That doesn't mean you or I need to accept it, but it does suggest to me that, from a global perspective, it should be considered respectable or at least not shocking.
There is a Wikipedia page on Washington-and-slavery, and while this is a tangent I don't want to discuss here and now, being aware of it makes the question of how to define a sociopath very complex in my mind.
As I wrote above, people seem drawn to the fantasy of sociopathic behavior. They fear it and thus try to master it, following its feared power. We fear it, and the sociopaths (of course) try to amplify that - because they are weak. Look at Vladimir Putin or Saddam Hussein. All it takes is one person to stand up to them.
Have no fear. The world isn't perfectly just, evil happens, but humans are much more powerful as social, not sociopathic, creatures. Good is more powerful, really; we vastly outnumber the sociopaths. No dictator's dominion has ever even approached the heights of democracies based on human rights. George Washington, Ghandi, Churchill - they weren't sociopaths. Putin is; Zelenskyy is not.
But good people do need to believe in themselves, to act, and to act courageously. That's almost all Gandalf did (in the books), is to remind good people of their power and courage. Right now, we are only missing a leader.