Joseph N Abraham 
Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths [EPUB ebook] 
From Alexander to Hitler to the Corporation

Prologue: Fantasy and Horror

War is not gallant heroism, it is horror: it is the sadistic dismembering of soldiers and civilians.

Chapter I: Kings

Kings were gangsters running national protection rackets: they extorted money from their subjects, monopolized high-profit resources, and dealt brutally with any resistance.

Chapter II: Conquerors

Conquerors are serial killers who prey upon nations. They commit murder, theft, and enslavement against millions for fabulous wealth.

Chapter III: Psychopaths

Conquerors meet the diagnostic criteria for the ‘dark tetrad’: criminal psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and sadism. Kings and conquerors do not need to personally meet the psychiatric criteria for these disorders, because successful conquest

and monarchy always do.

Interlude: Genetics, Eugenics, Genocide

Human genetic behavior is ruts, not rails. It is a mistake to categorize people by their genetic characteristics, but ignoring our genetic influences leaves us more vulnerable to them.

Chapter IV: The Breeding Programme

Through rape and polygamy, on one side of our family tree we are all descended from the conqueror and his armies; on the other side, we are descended from their victims. Through both we are selected to ignore doubt and independent thought, on risk of torture and death. Survival under king and conqueror required that we we blindly believe anything the nobles said, however illogical or outrageous.

Chapter V: The Noble Classes

Those atop the noble hierarchy were ‘important’ people while the rest of us were unimportant and expendable. The king designed civilization as a rigid caste system of subjugation, subordination, and exclusion. Despite the expansion of egalitarian ideals in recent centuries, we struggle against authoritarian factions, working to pull us back toward hierarchy and oppression.

Chapter VI: Privilege & The Double Standard

‘Privilege’ means ‘private law’, a legal double standard: the king and nobility demand a middle class morality of the commoners, while they pursue a criminal anti-morality of exploitation and evil.

Chapter VII: The Authoritarian Personality

Millennia of cultural and genetic selection under king and conqueror leave us vulnerable to blind loyalty, and many of us still believe any lie or hypocrisy the despot presents. This explains political and religious fanaticism, and the cult of personality.

Chapter VIII: The Atrocino

King and conqueror have morphed into modern business and political leaders, who continue to exploit us and expend our lives for power, wealth, and narcissism.

Chapter IX: The Modern World

For 10, 0000 years under the king, progress was slow and serendipitous. As the oppression of the noble classes was gradually eliminated, diffuse prosperity and independent thought grew rapidly. That liberation created an expansion of intellectual and economic participation, giving us the modern world.

Chapter X: The Ugly Truth

Without the slaughter, torture, and terror of the conqueror, we would still be neolithic hunter-gatherers. That was the horrific cost of civilization.

Epilogue: Response

Equality and democratic participation are the only antidotes to the narcissists who struggle for monarchy and monopoly today. If progress is to continue, it is essential that we have an educated and engaged electorate. Without it, we will revert to the brutality of the past.

Joseph N Abraham MD is an emergency physician (Tulane ’86), evolutionary biologist, & civic activist.