Exploring Power Dynamics and Authoritarianism

In this episode, we examine the relationship between psychological variation, social role differentiation, and power, presenting a tripartite scheme of Strongmen, Technocrats, and Narcissists: societies with supposedly radically different politics tend to converge on similar outcomes because the same types of people end up in the same roles. At the same time, we examine the world through the bewildering lens of a 2021 paper making a rare journey into the psychology of left authoritarianism. Somewhere along the way, we examine similarities between Marxist and New Age cults, an epidemic of genital shrinking through magic in West Africa, the real and the imagined in the overabundant genre of cancel culture commentary, and the need for a parallel project to that of institutional academia.