Conclusion

MAINTAINING OUR IMMUNITY

The world will always have high-conflict personalities and high-conflict politicians. They are the greatest threat to humanity if they are not understood and reined in, rather than given more power. The more people who understand their patterns and practice the types of methods described in this book, the safer we will all be.

This isn’t a problem we can solve and put behind us any more than we can conquer all disease and dispense with medical care and the human immune system. For as long as there are human beings, roughly 7 to 8 percent of us will be sociopaths or narcissists (or both), and some of these will be HCP Wannabe Kings who are irresistibly drawn to seek unlimited power.

But now you know their patterns. You know that they are preoccupied with attacking endless Targets of Blame. You know that they use Fantasy Crisis Triads to recruit followers. You know that they use emotional warfare to divide their opposition and take down any individual close to them who challenges them or becomes inconvenient. They seduce, attack, divide, and dominate. We must recognize these patterns as early as possible—and we can. And we must remember, this problem is not about the politics; it’s about the personalities.

It may appear that Wannabe Kings throughout history have simply taken advantage of extremely deep unique historical resentments to get into power, such as in Hitler’s Germany. However, the HCP theory regarding emotional warfare and Fantasy Crisis Triads suggests that HCPs in the last hundred years have used the latest viral media to turn their people into extreme horrific fighting forces against anyone they chose to target no matter how absurd. Rather than harnessing a unique history of resentments, it’s this power to teach division and splitting in the present that may be the driving force of HCPs. This makes our vigilance and immunity against giving HCPs power even more important everywhere.

All of us, in all countries, in all generations now and to come, need to learn to understand the dynamics of HCPs, and we need to work actively to keep them from gaining power, in the same way that our bodies need to always produce and circulate antibodies.

We can never stop and relax and imagine that the threat of high-conflict politicians is not imminent, and that politics is just about politics, not personalities too. If we do, this is precisely when the next HCP will storm through the gates and seize control. This is probably why so many Wannabe Kings have arisen in the 2000s, when things are generally going better than ever worldwide. We haven’t been paying attention and maintaining immunity to the narcissists and sociopaths that have been gaining attention all around us.

But we can build awareness and appropriate protections into our culture so that they become as normal as locks on our doors and police on our streets. Only when we have done this can our freedom and democracy—and health and safety—be preserved, year after year. It’s up to us—all of us working together—to not allow ourselves to be divided by high-conflict politicians selling fantasy crises, villains, and heroes.