The Dark Truth About Our Personality

Have you done something you shouldn’t have and still derived pleasure out of it? Have you furthered your interests at the expense of others and tried to justify it? Have you wished harm to somebody else in any aspect? Have you been evil or animalistic? Or have you encountered anybody like this? Got you thinking. Isn’t it?

It’s a bad bad world.

Do you have an X-factor? That’s irrelevant to this article. But do you have D-factor? Certainly. This D factor or Dark factor of personality indicates the extent to which one strives for and justifies harming other people’s interests in order to further their own towards a goal. That’s not all. They might also derive pleasure out of it. While, in some cases, hurting is the sole motive.

Does this sound too cruel to represent your darkside? Most probably it does. But... You got it in you. Little or more or the most, the scale is different for different people. But yes, You got it in you.

Unethical, immoral, treacherous, criminal, sinful, cruel, animalistic. Yes. Dark sides to the personality. D factor. Does this remind you of horribly insane acts committed by humans? Those are the people who have a high D-score. A person with a high D score on one dark personality trait is likely to score higher on other Dark traits. Let’s see what those are:

1. Egoism: My wishes matter the most. To hell with the interests of others.

2. Machiavellianism: Everything is fair when I gotta win. Cheat, deceit, robbery, manipulation? Justifiable.

3. Moral Disengagement: Howsoever immoral. Whatsoever consequences. No shit!

4. Narcissism: I, me, myself. Give me attention you morons!

5. Psychological Entitlement: I deserve better than them. I shall get more.

6. Psychopathy: I have no empathy. Is it hurting? Let me shoot you dead and it will hurt no more. Haha. I told you, no trifling with me.

7. Sadism: I get my share of contentment when I thrash her. I want to take it out.

8. Self-interest: My money and my name are above the means I used to acquire them.

9. Spitefulness: If it hurts me, it's fine. It will destroy you.

(These are the extremes. You might score far less and in that case, Congratulations! Only be more aware of your traits and become an even better human)

Mankind (evading the feminist reading of the text) teaches humans to be kind. Yet, is this the world we had in mind? Mankind is the uniting religion of every human. Oh! Religion! With all due respect to secularism, that just brought up discrimination to mind and the heinous acts associated with it. Who do you think wants discrimination? No oppressed ever said they wanted to be oppressed. It is the people who consider themselves superior. What justifies their criminal acts against the considered lower class is the D-factor.

Can anybody justify acts like murder, mass killings, rape (let alone gang rapes), domestic abuse, and more? Yes. A psychopath can. No offense to any particular chair(s). If you have ever tried to justify these, you can continue to pretend it’s not you.

War. Let’s talk about the war. Everybody knows that in a war there is merciless life loss of innocent people on both sides and yet “Great” political leaders convince the nation that this is the need of the hour. Killing is what you need to be alive. Quite a justifiable statement for life-loss. These are the leaders for whom, their vision stands above mankind.

Funny is how we’d rather associate psychopathy with terrorism than State politics. When terrorism is also politics and many political leaders have massacred mankind in their reign. Timur, Bloody Mary, Adolf Hitler, and Mao Zedong are only a few names who have authorized the most brutal killings possible on Earth. From building a tower by stacking live men and cementing them together, burning of hundreds of people in the name of Catholicism, eradicating the existence of over 11 million people to build a “master race”, and destruction of around 40 million people for an erred political vision, charismatic leaders have pierced the heart of mankind time and again. What would be its score on the D factor?

Nationalistic sentiments and war cries are dangerous. If your nation won a war would you be happy at the expense of the other people’s killings?

We talked global. Let’s talk local. We all have a little evil inside us. A little. But become the part of an organized process which portrays cruel means to carry out an agenda, which again is evil, but is not acknowledged to be, as justified, and the line between ethical and unethical disappeared.

Consider Self-interest alone and money laundering happens. Consider narcissism in male counterparts and patriarchy exists. Consider sadism and domestic physical abuse is only very common. Make Spitefulness ethical and vengeance declared as life’s goal sounds sensible too.

A great many crimes happen for sexual gratification itself. And then there’s masochism. Combine narcissism, psychopathy, masochism, psychological entitlement and sadism, and brutal cases of rape surface to the news every single day.

We don’t live in a clean society. Therefore, there are laws. If laws fail to hold people with higher Dark personality scores accountable, our faith in the system is but false hope. Stringent punishment, education, rehabilitation, could be carried out. But when power boosts and affirms the D factor further than who will hold accountable whom?

Awareness and accountability are crucial to make this world a better place to live in.