As someone who re-reads "The Gervais Principle" monthly, I found this enjoyable. I also suffer through a lot of office politics.
I'm probably neurotypical by your definition (with strains of sociopath). I sometimes wish I was more energized by office politics. That's how the Stalins of the world outmaneuver the Trotskys, after all. But maybe it's for the best that my goals aren't quite so lofty. Many executives seem haunted to me, like hungry ghosts who will never be satisfied. Rapacious mouths who want to devour the world and probably will succeed some day soon.
I sometimes think I'm a "half-breed" in the sense of being half-neurotypical—I do understand human social status and motivations, nearly perfectly; I'm just terrible in the field—but this is probably more a case of high-masking ASD. I am mostly the same as everyone else, but some computations just do not happen on time. (And others, that are socially irrelevant and come off as eccentric, happen ten times faster.) I'm also shockingly face-blind; I took one of those ASD diagnostics for reading facial expressions, and thought I was doing well at ~65%... then found out that neurotypicals get 90+.
Middle-of-the-road neurotypicals (not psychopaths) are exhausted by office politics too, just not as fast as we are. And this is actually part of the problem. The things we need—freedom from pointless interruption, a decent office space with some privacy, basic respect and autonomy so my adrenal system isn't in a state of activation—in order to be productive are things that most neurotypicals would also prefer to have at work and, quite honestly, should have. And so, especially if we are high-masking, it is taken by boss types to be some kind of snowflake syndrome rather than genuine neurodivergence. "Youz ain't special," they want to say. And, in fact, I tend to agree. The benefits and accommodations I need in order to be productive, everyone else should also have. But, of course, the modern office functions by the stick, instead of the carrot, because the carrot costs money and the stick is free.
The theory behind the modern office is that if people aren't scared, they won't work. The thing about people like me is that, because we are driven and we do have nonzero baseline anxiety, all the stupid added stresses don't make us more productive, but less, because they push us to the righthand slope of the Yerkes-Dodson curve.
As for the Gervais Principle, I don't think MacLeod Sociopaths are the same thing as clinical psychopaths. I would also classify myself as a MacLeod Sociopath—I care more about myself than the organization, because I know it will eventually it will toss me overboard—but I'm not very good at it, and I don't qualify as a clinical sociopath (let alone psychopath).
Regarding executives and their being haunted, I agree. Power and status are drugs—the first time people fly first class, they understand why others are willing to pay for it; being treated well makes flying something you look forward to instead of something you try to minimize and avoid as much as possible—and, as with all drugs, tolerance builds up. They are chasing the next fix, but they are also chasing that first fix, to which nothing else is going to measure up. By middle age, they are dysfunctional tweakers who broke their own families, largely because their wife and kids fail to give them the high that the office does.
Self-loathing, as for any addict, is a major component, too. Rather than view aging as a natural process that every living creature will face, executives experience it as a personal indignity and a nightmare that only affects them (because they've never fully considered that other people exist) and, by late middle age, are grasping at everything they can to feel young again. This is behind the corporate ageism, of course; these declining narcissists don't want to be around people their own age. It is why sexual harassment, though it is objectively abhorrent, will never go away; the sorts of people who get to the top of corporations will find ways around whatever rules you set, and their drive to humiliate and dominate others is the main reason they still go into the office in the first place.
As someone who re-reads "The Gervais Principle" monthly, I found this enjoyable. I also suffer through a lot of office politics.
I'm probably neurotypical by your definition (with strains of sociopath). I sometimes wish I was more energized by office politics. That's how the Stalins of the world outmaneuver the Trotskys, after all. But maybe it's for the best that my goals aren't quite so lofty. Many executives seem haunted to me, like hungry ghosts who will never be satisfied. Rapacious mouths who want to devour the world and probably will succeed some day soon.
I sometimes think I'm a "half-breed" in the sense of being half-neurotypical—I do understand human social status and motivations, nearly perfectly; I'm just terrible in the field—but this is probably more a case of high-masking ASD. I am mostly the same as everyone else, but some computations just do not happen on time. (And others, that are socially irrelevant and come off as eccentric, happen ten times faster.) I'm also shockingly face-blind; I took one of those ASD diagnostics for reading facial expressions, and thought I was doing well at ~65%... then found out that neurotypicals get 90+.
Middle-of-the-road neurotypicals (not psychopaths) are exhausted by office politics too, just not as fast as we are. And this is actually part of the problem. The things we need—freedom from pointless interruption, a decent office space with some privacy, basic respect and autonomy so my adrenal system isn't in a state of activation—in order to be productive are things that most neurotypicals would also prefer to have at work and, quite honestly, should have. And so, especially if we are high-masking, it is taken by boss types to be some kind of snowflake syndrome rather than genuine neurodivergence. "Youz ain't special," they want to say. And, in fact, I tend to agree. The benefits and accommodations I need in order to be productive, everyone else should also have. But, of course, the modern office functions by the stick, instead of the carrot, because the carrot costs money and the stick is free.
The theory behind the modern office is that if people aren't scared, they won't work. The thing about people like me is that, because we are driven and we do have nonzero baseline anxiety, all the stupid added stresses don't make us more productive, but less, because they push us to the righthand slope of the Yerkes-Dodson curve.
As for the Gervais Principle, I don't think MacLeod Sociopaths are the same thing as clinical psychopaths. I would also classify myself as a MacLeod Sociopath—I care more about myself than the organization, because I know it will eventually it will toss me overboard—but I'm not very good at it, and I don't qualify as a clinical sociopath (let alone psychopath).
Regarding executives and their being haunted, I agree. Power and status are drugs—the first time people fly first class, they understand why others are willing to pay for it; being treated well makes flying something you look forward to instead of something you try to minimize and avoid as much as possible—and, as with all drugs, tolerance builds up. They are chasing the next fix, but they are also chasing that first fix, to which nothing else is going to measure up. By middle age, they are dysfunctional tweakers who broke their own families, largely because their wife and kids fail to give them the high that the office does.
Self-loathing, as for any addict, is a major component, too. Rather than view aging as a natural process that every living creature will face, executives experience it as a personal indignity and a nightmare that only affects them (because they've never fully considered that other people exist) and, by late middle age, are grasping at everything they can to feel young again. This is behind the corporate ageism, of course; these declining narcissists don't want to be around people their own age. It is why sexual harassment, though it is objectively abhorrent, will never go away; the sorts of people who get to the top of corporations will find ways around whatever rules you set, and their drive to humiliate and dominate others is the main reason they still go into the office in the first place.