April 2011
OVER MY DEAD BODY Why Some Dictators Just Won’t Go
PLEASE DON'T CLEAN
The Messy Life of Hoarders
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Should we play the lottery?
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Trash or Treasure?
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Digital Greed
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Over Their Dead Bodies
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Hundred Years of Greed
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Remarkable Research
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CONTENTS
Book Reviews
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The messy life of hoarders
Why Apple keeps taking your money
Some dictators just won’t Go
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Credits Editor-in-Chief Anouk Vleugels Executive Editor Mark Fonseca Rendeiro Editorial Bendert Katier, Elke Weesjes Design Michelle Halcomb Advertisement Send an e-mail to advertising @united-academics.org Questions and suggestions Send an e-mail to redactie @united-academics.org Address Warmoesstraat 149, 1012 JC Amsterdam Website www.united-academics.org
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EDITORIAL
Snakes in Suits Bret Easton Ellis already knew it in 1991 when he wrote American Psycho: a psychopath doesn’t carry around knives and axes, but a designer bag, and -in case of the book’s protagonist Patrick Bateman- a fancy card holder. Psychopaths desire money, power, or simply a nice car. Where can you find them? Often, in the corporate world. Take Bernie Madoff. A smart man. Charming, according to many of his friends and co-workers. What made him act the way he did? An easy answer is that Madoff, blinded by greed and power, just felt the need to make a whole lot of money. But some psychoanalysts say it’s more complicated than that, linking his personality to narcissism and psychopathy. Individuals with psychopathic personalities tend to strongly believe that they’re special. They are above the law; impossible to catch. They don’t feel remorse. When Madoff was finally unmasked, he remarked in an interview with New York Magazine: “People just kept throwing money at me. Some guy wanted to invest, and if I said no, the guy said, ‘What, I’m not good enough?’” However, there’s always a breaking point. The Achilles’ heel of the psychopath is his incapability to break the cycle of lies and deceit. In the end, he will get buried underneath all the layers that make up his personality. And once he has reached that point there’s just nothing left. “There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.” Anouk Vleugels, Editor-in-Chief
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urnal of Social Sciences CALL FOR ARTICLES BIOGRAPHIES AND BOOK REVIEWS July 2011: ‘Environmental Psychology and Architecture’ urnal of Social Sciences February 2011
UAJSS is a refereed online journal which publishes new research by post-graduate and post-doctoral academics. Deadline: 9th of June
Antony Hegarty: A transgender voice - Kathleen A. Stephenson Biographical representations of Reagan's childhood - Roger Johnson Work in Progress: Explaining media personalization of politics - Lutz Hofer Biography: Anarchist theorist Gustav Landauer - Oscar Broughton Interview: Josje Damsma on Dutch National Socialism
See our journal for submission guidelines Email: elke.weesjes@unitedacademics.org
www.united-academics.org 5
DIGITAL GREED “Our philosophy is simple,” said Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, when announcing that publishers, starting from June 30th this year, will have to pay 30% of their revenue from in-app subscriptions for magazines, newspapers, video and music to Apple. As a long time fan I’ve seen similar moves in the past by Apple, their philosophy is indeed ‘$imple.’ Apple once again tries to exploit its leading position by aggressively fencing in an area of digital media, which can only be accessed through its own products.
tent: the iTunes store.
It’s because Apple has such a good nose for creating cutting edge devices and hyping them to insane heights, that they have a very strong negotiation position when it comes to filling the online stores connected to these devices. “So you want to sell your digital book/music/movie in our online store so millions of people can access it on their latest iDevice?” Apple basically asks, “That’s ok, but only if it complies with these rules and if we get this percentage of the total revThe first sign of this became clear back in enue.” 2001, when Apple released its first iPod and, more importantly, the software that became Apple seems to be keen on creating dependcentral to Apple’s business model: iTunes ent relationships between their software and the iTunes store. When buying an Apple and their products and tries to extend that in product like the iPod, they make sure that every way they can. Beyond the App store, iTunes is the only channel through which no other application store is allowed to opcustomers can upload digital media to their erate on iPhone’s and iPad’s, so that Apple devices, hereby creating a mutually depend- controls which applications can be installed. ent relationship between software and de- Pornographic apps, for example, are not alvice. lowed. Apple’s competitors have a hard time getting their applications in the App store This type of business model has similarities as well. A telling example is that of Sony’s to that of a Gilette razor and the razor blade iPhone application, which would have let itself: every time a blade goes blunt you have people buy and read e-books from the comto buy the Gilette razorblades or else they peting Sony Reader Store, but instead got won’t fit. The difference in this case is that rejected because it wouldn’t let transactions with Apple you are not confined to one type go through Apple’s system. of digital content, but rather to one store through which you can buy your digital con- Recently Apple announced their iAd, a sys6
tem which enables advertising on smart mobile devices. This system would again enable Apple to control all data transferred between Apple and applications running on their devices. Apple makes sure that only iAd is used to advertise inside iPhone- and iPad apps, thereby effectively kneecapping Google’s Admob. Furthermore, iPhone- and iPad apps may only share user-interaction data with Apple. This means that only iAds knows when and where users interact with embedded ads. Since Google’s AdMob and other ad-broker systems are not able to tap into this data, their ads will be much less valuable.
of the digital content which is sold through their system. What has to be said is that alternative systems, which promise more openness, are gaining market share quickly. I for one wouldn’t mind seeing Android taking over some time soon. You can decide for yourself if what Apple is doing is either greedy, or simply a brilliant way of conducting business. Like it or not; pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.
By Bendert Katier
However, Apple doesn’t always succeed in creating mutual dependent relations. The European deal with T-mobile, which entailed that T-mobile could sell iPhones (in return for a percentage of the subscription fees), failed because T-mobile couldn’t cope with all the extra data traffic on their networks. Furthermore, the deal encouraged hackers to develop software with which iPhones could be unlocked and used with different carriers. In the end, Apple keeps having first-move advantages over competitors because of their future driven product development and excellent marketing. In most cases they move into areas where competition is nonexistent, enabling Apple to gain large market share and make the rules themselves. If you think this is unfair, that’s just too bad: Apple indeed wants to make as much money as possible off the things it develops. The company created a business model that not only provides the customer with a product, but also makes sure that those same customers have no other option than to buy affiliate digital products and services through Apple software. Because of this dependency, Apple is able to ask for a part of the revenue 7
Hoarding Disorder (HD) has received a lot of media atte dedicated several shows to this disabling and sometimes e ‘Hoarders’ is now being aired in the Netherlands. Our animals or in some extreme cases, feces, seems insatiable is partly responsible for this fascination. Until recentl Nevertheless, two different initiatives might be the brea waiting for.
Greedy or Needy Historically, hoarding has been discussed in the works of many psychoanalysts, for example Sigmund Freud’s anal stage of development. He suggested that the loss of control and what went down the toilet was a traumatic occurrence and that, therefore, the collector is trying to gain back not only control but “possessions” that were lost so many years ago. The term ‘hoarding‘ was originally coined in order to discuss animal behaviors regarding the storage of food. In a 1966 study conducted by Bolman and Katz, the concept was used for the first time to describe this behaviour in humans. They used the term ‘compulsive hoarding’ to discuss their findings in an anecdotic case report. It took another 30 years before an operational definition was published. Randy Frost and Tamara Hartl characterized hoarding by “the acquisition of and failure to discard a large number of possessions that cover the living areas of the home and cause significant distress or impairment.” Since this pioneering publication, research on hoarding has increased significantly. Hoarding has been found to be far more prevalent than previously thought - somewhere between six and fifteen million people in the US alone are believed to be hoarders.
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Tras
Treas
ention in recent years. Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil have even lethal problem. Furthermore, the American hit show fascination for those who accumulate excessive clutter, e. The fact that this affliction is surrounded by mystery ly researchers weren’t certain how to define or treat HD. akthrough extreme hoarders and their loved ones have been
sh or
sure?
Creativity run amok Randy Frost has spent nearly twenty years researching hoarders and is a pioneer in the treatment and psychopathology of compulsive hoarding. Together with his colleague, Gail Steketee, he published ‘Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things’ in September 2010. The authors draw upon various case studies spanning decades of field work and narrate their spectacular journey through piles of accumulated stuff. Whereas TV shows like ‘Hoarders’ only scratch the surface, ‘Stuff’ explores the depths of this disorder. Frost and Steketee examine the illness from a psychological, sociological, genetic and neuroscientific angle. Frost observes: “People who hoard save everything, and it’s the good stuff as well as the crummy stuff. Hoarders are very interested in the physical world and see it in a different and more complex way than the rest of us do. Most of us look at a bottle cap and see just that. Hoarders look at it and see the shape the color, the unusual details that the rest of us overlook. By noticing this, it gets valued and offers a whole host of potential uses. But it’s potential that they never follow up on. It’s creativity run amok.” Hoarders feel a very strong sense of emotional attachment towards their possessions and feel a need to stay in control of their things. They 9
don’t want anyone touching or moving their stuff. These traits make living with a hoarder very difficult and traumatic. A child of a hoarder remembers: “My mother taped strands of hair to door jams and cupboards so she could tell if the kids tried to: ‘Get in and touch or move her stuff.’ Another anonymous statement on the website ‘childrenofhoarders.com’ reads: “I feel that ‘things are put first and more important than her children are.’ I was accused of stealing her ‘things’ all the time, blamed for stuff she misplaced.” The stories are heartbreaking and really emphasize the fact that hoarding is a disabling disorder, for those who suffer from it and especially for their loved ones.
It becomes clear that HD is an incredibly complex phenomenon. It is frequently found in patients with other diseases, including dementia, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia and anorexia. HD is a behavioral syndrome that has always been considered a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but unlike most patients with OCD, those with hoarding disorder often display poor insight into the severity of their behaviour which makes treating this problem very difficult. Frost has observed that psy10
chologists, who are quite comfortable treating OCD patients, often describe frustration with hoarding cases. Patients passively resist treatment and only attend therapy sessions at the behest of others. No catch-all solution Hoarding is believed to be a pathological brain disorder and often runs in families, although it is uncertain whether DNA is involved. Out of embarrassment, many hoarders avoid inviting friends or family, which leads to social isolation and family conflict. In their book, Frost and Steketee conclude that because there is no catch-all cause, there is no catch-all solution either. ‘Stuff’ offers perspective for those who need to understand hoarders but doesn’t construct a new vision of compulsive hoarders. Frost relates this to a lack of research. He remarks: “The research on hoarding is in its infancy. We still need to study what’s happing in the brain that drives this behavior. And what part of the brain is involved in decision making and forming attachments to possessions? How does the brain sort it out, and what needs to happen to break the attachments?” There is no ‘cure’ for compulsive hoarders: no treatment will make the problem go away completely. However some treatments may help to manage the symptoms, for example anti-depressants and cognitive-behavioral therapy. As Frost points out, it is hard to come up with a treatment for a disorder that is still in many ways a mystery. Nevertheless new research might change this status quo.
The Case of the Collyer Brothers The first and most infamous case of hoarding that hit the headlines, was that of the Collyer brothers in 1947. Langley and Homer Collyer were two well-off brothers living in New York City. After their parents died in the mid 1920s, Langley and Homer remained in the old family home, a three storey mansion in Harlem. The eccentric pair completely withdrew themselves from the outside world. Curious burglars tried to break into the house many times, which made Langley decide to board up the windows and set up booby traps inside the house.
The two brothers failed to pay the bills and consequently, electricity, water and gas were turned off in 1928. Langley, who didn’t leave the house during the day, began to wander the streets at night to fetch water from parks. He picked up all sorts of trash: newspapers, old furniture boxes and even tree branches. Soon the house became an inhabitable labyrinth filled with towers of newspapers and other clutter. In the meantime, Homer had lost his eyesight and was cripple with rheumatism. He was completely dependent on his brother Langley for food and water.
In March 1947, after an anonymous tip from someone who insisted that there was a dead body in the house, police officers tried to break into the brownstone mansion. After hours of removing junk, they found Homer’s body. He had died of the combined effects of malnutrition, dehydration and cardiac arrest. Although a very foul smell indicated that there was another decomposing body in the house, the police weren’t able to find the source of the smell. It took the police 20 days before they finally found Langley. His body was eaten by rats and covered by bundles of newspapers. He had been crawling through his newspaper tunnel to bring food to his brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Rescue workers removed over 103 tons of rubbish from the house and subsequently, the fear of throwing things away is therefore also called the Collyer Syndrome.
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More Love Less Stuff The recent realization that HD is not a subtype of OCD but a distinct disorder, means a radical change in the way HD is assessed and studied. Based on this notion a group of renowned HD researchers have published new findings and suggested new treatments for hoarding problems in this month’s Journal of Clinical Psychology. Randy Frost, Veselina Hristova and David Tolin recognize past mistakes when it comes to HD treatment: “On both clinical and research grounds, we discourage use of hoarding subscales embedded within instruments designed and validated for OCD”. The authors suggest tailor made therapy sessions and home visits by therapists: “Many hoarding clients have not allowed anyone into their homes in years; a common treatment goal is to get clients to allow family and friends into their homes on a regular basis”. When it comes to designing effective treatment for hoarding problems, Edward Lemay’s recent study will have a significant impact. Lemay, assistant professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire, together with colleagues at Yale University and the University of Geneva studied the link between feelings of security and materialism. Prior research had focused primarily on examining effects of threats to felt security on heightened materialism. Lemay and colleagues, on the other hand, decided to demonstrate that enhancing felt security, the feeling of being loved and accepted by others, would reduce the value people place on goods. “Throughout history, the availability of responsive relationship partners and of possessions such a food, clothing, and housing provided literal protection from harm, Lemay writes, “We suggest that, to some extent, these sources of protection are interchangeable and that people often substitute one source of protection for the other.” To test their assumption ex12
periments were conducte searchers measured how specific items, such as a Lemay and colleagu clusion that people who placed up to five times gr than more secure people sessions, in part, because of protection, insurance, Lemay, “but what we fou ple already have a feeling accepted by others, whic sense of protection, insu those possessions decreas confident that his study w the development of an eff people with hoarding diso There is no doubt that c will continue to fascinat well as the general public. that this disorder is not o of collecting ‘stuff’, nor is HD is a much more com As research is still in its i need to be undertaken to of the issue of hoarding to tion. Nevertheless studies and Frost are paving the w treatments. Through th studies we know now th stop once a home is clean patient’s sense of being lo others, together with inte just be the way to break possessions.
ed in which these rew much people value a blanket and a pen. ues came to the cono did not feel secure reater value on items e. “People value pose they afford a sense , and comfort,” says und was that if peog of being loved and ch can also provide a urance, and comfort, se in value.” Lemay is will be of great use in ffective treatment for orders. compulsive hoarding te both scientists as . Research has shown only a simple matter it a subtype of OCD. mplex phenomenon. infancy more studies o increase awareness o the general populas like those of Lemay way towards effective hese groundbreaking hat hoarding doesn’t ned out. Increasing a oved and accepted by ensive therapy, might k the attachment to
By Elke Weesjes 13
SHOULD WE PlAY
Mathematically speaking, playing the lottery does odds, it is more likely that you’ll get struck by Or contract a flesh-eating disease. But suppose you good reasons to play the lottery?
Economic Sociology
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Neurology
Y THE LOTTERY?
sn’t make sense. We all know that. Looking at the lightning. Or be the victim of a terrorist attack. u don’t play to win the jackpot. Are there any other
Medicine
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Economic Sociology “Lotto’s a taxation. On all fools in the nation. But heaven be praised. It’s so easily raised.” This satirical poem, written in 1932, is still pretty close to the truth. Since the 1960’s, state lotteries have become a popular means for governments to raise taxes. A crooked system, according to some. Since the poor tend to buy the most tickets, but can least afford to play, state lotteries facilitate and increase social inequality.
Neuroeconomist George Loewenstein studied the decision making process leading up to a lottery ticket purchase. He set up an experiment where people were asked to participate in a (for the experiment insignificant) survey in exchange for $5.“We randomly assigned subjects to feel either relatively poor or relatively rich by having them complete demographic questions that included an item on annual income,” Loewenstein explains. “The group made to feel poor was asked to provide its income on a scale that began at ‘less than $100,000’ and went up from there, ensuring that most respondents would be in the lowest income tier. The group made to feel subjectively wealthier was asked to report income on a scale that began with ‘less than $10,000’ and increased in $10,000 increments, leading most respondents to be in a middle tier.” After filling out the form and receiving their $5, all participants were given the opportunity to purchase one or more lottery tickets. The result: the ‘poor’ group purchased twice as many lottery tickets than those made to feel relatively wealthier. A regrettable conclusion, says Loewenstein: “The find16
ing that when you make people feel poor they play more, is especially sad since playing the lottery is on average a massively losing proposition. The propensity of low income individuals to play the lottery has the perverse effect of exacerbating their poverty. Although there are no easy solutions to the problem, one obvious one would be to cease marketing and advertising that targets the poor. It probably makes sense for the state to sell lottery tickets,
because otherwise they will be sold by organized crime. However, does it really make sense for the state to be inducing, through advertising, poor people to play who wouldn’t play in the absence of such inducement?” In 2009, German sociologists Jens Beckert and Mark Lutter drew the same conclusion from their study. On the basis of a telephone survey, they examined the distribution effects state lotteries have on Germany’s social structure. The researchers found that less educated people with a modest income spend relatively more money on the lottery. “The fact is that social inequal-
ity is reinforced by the distribution of lottery revenues,” notes Beckert. “In Bavaria, lottery revenues are fed into the national budget, but in other states the revenues are intended for special uses. For example, certain recreational sports’ facilities are funded with lottery money. These sports are often practiced by the middle and upper class. So the lower class pays for it, but does not benefit from it.”
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Neurology About 45 percent of all people who’ve had had a stroke in the right side of their brain, suffer from a condition called spatial neglect. Because of a ‘magnetic attraction’ towards the right side, people with this condition tend to ‘neglect’ things located on the left. Thanks to a couple of lottery tickets, researchers now have a better understanding of how this condition works. Spatial neglect can lead to bizarre behaviours. People who suffer from it might bump into objects placed on the left, or become unable to eat from the left side of a dish. Dr. Tobias Loetscher, an expert in the field of neuropsychology, examined a group of twenty patients with left spatial neglect and 17 control patients without the disorder. All of the participants had had a stroke in the right side of their brain; a so-called right hemisphere lesion. During the study, Loetscher and his colleagues used a test based on a simple lottery game. First, the patients were asked to choose six lottery numbers by marking them with a pencil on a real lottery ticket. Predictably, the patients with spatial neglect tended to pick numbers located on the righthand side of the ticket, neglecting those on the left. The second part of the experiment was more surprising. According to several studies, the disorder of spatial neglect is not restricted to physical space, but also affects the exploration of mental images on the left side of the minds eye. So when a spatial neglect patient thinks of the map of Europe for example, he will only be able to visualize the
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Eastern European countries. And when they are asked to name an array of horizontally arranged objects, they begin by naming objects on the right, whereas control subjects name objects on the left. In order to test if this was also the case for the mental representation of numbers, a second test was developed. The participants were asked to pick six numbers between 1,000 and 10,000. It is commonly believed that when we think of numbers we visualize them arranged along a mental number line, with numbers increasing from left to right. According to the hypothesis, neglect patients were expected to only pick large numbers, because those are located on the right side of the mental line. However, the results showed that only four out of the twenty patients (20 %) were more likely to pick large numbers. This evidence suggests that there are different subcategories of spatial neglect: some patients only experience it while perceiving the ‘real world,’ while others also have trouble visualizing mental images. Knowing this makes it easier to find a suitable treatment for each patient. “Rehabilitation of neglect is still in its infancy,” says Loetscher. “There are many
different treatment options tested, but the shift the attention to that side.� outcomes are rather mixed. Therapy works in some, but not all patients.� Thanks to the Watch more development of simple tasks such as the one with the lottery ticket, subtypes can be distinguished and assessed. “For a patient with left-sided neglect in the real and imagined world, the left side of the world does simply not exist. However, if you have neglect for the real world, but not for your mental images you can access the left part of that mental image. This might be exploited for therapy purposes. When scanning the left part of the image the patient might become aware that he missed the left part of the real world and 19
Medicine Suppose you would be guaranteed to win the lottery. The prospect of winning a big prize may seem more than enough reason to buy a ticket, but even a sure bet has its downfall. Winning the lottery definitely makes you happy, but also ecourages you to party way too much.
Take Phil Kitchen. In 1999, this unemployed carpenter shot from rags to riches after winning £1.8m on the national lottery. Two years later, he drank himself to death. According to a study done by researchers at the Paris School of Economics, this was no surprise. They compared the mental and physical health of a selection of lottery winners with those who hadn’t won anything, in order to assess how much of a difference gaining money made to health. The results were unambiguous: the lump sum of money didn’t lead to improved physical health, but it did have a clear and significant effect on the mental health of the winners. “It seemed like a paradox,” says Dr. Andrew Clark, an economist who published the paper together with a colleague. “A ‘positive income shock,’ as we call it, was known to have a positive effect on mental health. However, other studies suggested that it didn’t improve general health, which is basically the sum of mental health, physical health and psychological functioning. I didn’t understand that. If one component shows strongly positive effects, but the overall effect is zero, there had to be a negative component as well. Finding that specific component, was what drove us into this.” And so the quest began. To conduct their study, the researchers used data from 20
the British Household Panel Survey, a survey which currently follows around 16,000 individuals in 9,000 different households over time. Each person was asked a range of questions, including some related to their physical and mental wellbeing. Furthermore, participants were asked whether they had won a prize in the lottery that year. All the researchers had to do, was compare the answers from the winners to those from the non-winners.
As expected, the lottery winners, claiming their wins had improved their lives, scored higher on the happiness scale than did the non-winners. However, the researchers also looked into ‘risky behaviours,’ which showed more interesting results. Clark ex-
plains: “We looked at physical health, mental health and overall health, but we also examined health-related behaviours: smoking and drinking. And that’s actually where we found the culprit; the more people win on the lottery, the more likely they are to increase their smoking and drinking. Which, as we all know, is very unhealthy.” So there it was, the key component. Lottery winners tend to get a little too excited once the money comes in, and spend it all on booze and cigarettes. This conclusion proves that the assumption that an increase in income always leads to a better health, is simply not true. “Something is causing people with a higher income to be in better health. In order to improve people’s health, we should go after whatever that omitted variable is, rather than just going after income itself.” Unless you’ve just had a stroke, playing the lottery is not recommended. Most lottery tickets are heavily taxed, which puts a massive strain on their (often low-income)buyers. As a result, social inequality is maintained and in some cases even increased. Furthermore, your chances of winning are ridiculously small. And even if you do get lucky, you probably won’t spend your winnings on healthy foods and a gym membership. Rather, you’re more likely to blow it all in a pub somewhere, which causes your health to go down the drain. So in the end, the house does always win.
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Show Me The Money >>> 23
Empress Dowager Cixi, 1835-1908 Dowager Cixi started out as an insignificant concubine of emperor Xianfeng in 1851, but was promoted to ‘Royal Concubine Yi’ - second to the empress- after giving birth to his only son, Tonghzi. When the emperor died a few years later, Cixi took power. She eliminated all competition –when Tonghzi died at age 19, she put her 3 year old nephew on the throne- and became the de facto ruler of China for 47 years. Cixi allegedly used the navy’s money to build herself a marble banquet boat, ate 150-dish dinners with golden chopsticks, and owned 3,000 jewelry boxes for ‘ her everyday jewels’.
1900s
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Charles Ponzi (1882-1949) The term ‘Ponzi Scheme’ would not have existed without Charles Ponzi. This Italian-born swindler was one of the first to set up a scam that pays early investors returns from the investments of later investors. Charles Ponzi promised clients a 50% profit within 45 days, or 100% profit within 90 days, by buying discounted postal reply coupons in other countries and redeeming them at face value in the United States as a form of arbitrage. However, Ponzi made no effort to generate legitimate profits. As long as money kept flowing in, existing investors could be paid with the new money. As a result, an estimated 17,000 people were swindled by Ponzi.
1920s
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Kreuger (1880-1932) 1930s Ivar The name Ivar Krueger might not ring many bells today, but
this extravagant Swedish entrepreneur was the Bernie Madoff of the 1930’s. Krueger took a family owned match factory and transformed it into a global financial empire, by bribing several governments into letting him establish monopolies. But when credit tightened up in late 1929, Krueger couldn’t finance his debt with the profits from making matches anymore. Having exhausted his fortune, he decided there was no way out and shot himself. Afterwards it became known that he had left a $250 million dollar hole (about 3$ in dollars today) where investors thought they had match franchises . 26
Göring (1893-1946) 1940s Hermann Hermann Göring was one of the most important figures dur-
ing Hitler’s regime in Nazi-Germany. As Commander-in-Chief, he implemented both the Gestapo and the Luftwaffe, and was eventually promoted to the rank of Reichsmarschall. Göring, a self-acclaimed patron of music and art, used his powerful position to enlarge his personal art collection. He looted numerous museums, stole from Jewish collectors, and bought art for grossly discounted prices in occupied countries. Göring was sentenced to death in 1946. He killed himself the night before his scheduled execution. 27
Fulgencio Batista, (1901 – 1973) This soldier, president, and dictator who twice ruled Cuba (1933 – 1944, 1952 – 1959) worked his way up through the army ranks before he came to power. Under Batista, Cuba became profitable for American business and organized crime. Havana transformed into the playground of choice for wealthy gamblers, and very little was said about democracy, or the rights of the average Cuban. A percentage of the money won from the tourist industries went straight to Batista, until his regime was finally toppled by Fidel Castro in 1958. Batista fled to the Dominican Republic, and finally ended up in Portugal, were he spent his last years in great wealth.
1950s
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Frank William Abagnale, Jr. (1948 -) Some forms of greed can be quit entertaining. Frank Abagnale, Jr. , who currently works a an American security consultant, is widely known for his history as a former check forger, impostor and scam artist. Abagnale became notorious in the 1960s for passing $2.5 million worth of meticulously forged checks across 26 countries over the course of five years, beginning when he was 16. During that period, he pretended to be an airline pilot, a doctor, a Bureau of Prisons agent, and a lawyer. The movie Catch me if you can is based on his life story.
1960s
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Imelda Marcos (1929-) Imelda Marcos is the widow of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. During that period, Mrs. Marcos became notorious for her extravagant fashion collection; while the average Filipino lived on less than $2 a day, she easily spent 5 million dollars on shopping trips to New York or Milan. Most impressive was her collection of shoes: at one point she owned 3,000 pairs of them. Mrs. Marcos herself never really understood why this should be a problem: “I get so tired listening to one million dollars here, one million dollars there, it’s so petty.�
1970s
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Ivan Boesky (1937-) Ivan ‘The Terrible’ Boesky rose to fame and fortune in the 1980s, taking huge positions in companies that were soon to be taken over. Through this strategy, Boesky ‘earned’ over $200 million. There was just one problem: Boesky was trading stocks using inside information. In 1986 he was arrested and convicted. Boesky had to pay a fine of $100 million and spent two years in prison. The character of Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street is partly based on Boesky, especially regarding a famous speech he delivered on greed, in which he said: “I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”
1980s
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Robert Mugabe (1924 - ) Since becoming president of Zimbabwe in 1987, Robert Mugabe has led the good life. After asking other countries for a $2 billion in economic aid for his bankrupted country, he and his wife Grace spent $250,000 on a birthday party, purchased a $40 million mansion in China and decorated it with multiple Vietnamese marble statues worth over $50,000 each. Ironically, Zimbabwe’s leader has blamed “unbridled greed” in the business sector and “saboteurs” for the country’s economic woes.
1990's
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Bernie Madoff (1938-) Former stock broker Bernard (Bernie) Madoff used to be the head of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, one of the biggest market maker businesses on Wall Street, which bypassed “specialist� firms by directly executing orders from retail brokers. In 2009, Madoff admitted he had turned his business into a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison.
2000s
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Over Their Dead Bodies
Why Some Dictators Cling to Power Until the Bitter End 34
When street protests began throughout Tunisia in December 2010, it wasn’t long before President Ben Ali fled the country and gave up his power. When millions throughout Egypt took to the streets in February 2011, president Hosni Muburak swore he would never leave his post and his country. He eventually stepped down from the presidency after 18 days of massive demonstrations. When protests broke out in the East and West of Libya in March 2011, Muammar Gaddafi - the longest ruling dictator in the world- vowed to fight until his last breath, resulting in a civil war that is ongoing. Where some despots see the writing on the wall, grab the money, and run off to some safe haven; other rulers refuse to accept that their time has come. Where some talk tough, but ultimately take action to save their own skin, others feel it is their sacred duty to remain in power until they are physically dragged out of the presidential palace.
would have predicted all the changes that have been taking place. We lump them together into one category. Because of that, we don’t really understand all the nuances and all the differences that exist between dictatorships.” What Ezrow and her fellow researchers on the subject of dictatorships have been able to explain by looking at economic or domestic policy, political organization, corruption, and military involvement, is that there are different categories of dictatorships. These categories , which were first developed by Barbara Geddes of UCLA in her book Paradigms and Sandcastles describe the different types of dictatorships that exist as well as their subcategories. There are personalist dictatorships, (e.g. the one implemented by Saddam Hussein in Iraq), military dictatorships (e.g. the Junta in Argentina from 1976-1983), and single party dictatorships (e.g. the Communist Party in presentday China). Further study led to the expansion to include sub categories to describe different types of single party arrangements, viscous psychopathic versus benevolent populist personalist regimes, and institutional military regime’s versus a more individually focused military regime.
How is it that these dictators choose one route versus another? Why is the greed for power and influence so powerful for some yet not for others? And do we, outside observers trying to understand and get involved somehow, correctly understand the nature of dictator- Ben Ali ships around the world? In order to gain a deeper understanding of both categories of dictatorships and why events have Natasha Ezrow is a researcher and scholar on unfolded the way they have over the past three the topic of dictatorships. As the Head of Inter- months, let us take the examples of dictatornational Development Program at the Univer- ships Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. On January 14th sity of Essex, she has written extensively on the 2011, following weeks of protests throughout topic including as a co-author on the book: Dic- the country, Ben Ali who had been President tators and Dictatorships – Understanding Au- of Tunisia for more than 23 years, gave up his thoritarian Regimes and Their Leaders. Watch- power. He fled the country with his estimated ing the international media attempt to explain fortune of $5 million. Prior to becoming presithe current events as they unfold across North dent, he had been prime minister and came Africa and parts of the middle east, she notes from a diplomatic as opposed to a military how under-studied the topic of dictatorships background. When his predecessor fell sick is: “We’ve always thought that these dictator- and medically unable to continue as president, ships in the middle east were incredibly stable, Ali took over in what has often been referred that nothing was going to happen and no one to as the ‘Jasmine Revolution.’ As president his 35
regime was notorious for its human rights violations, especially in regards to its suppression of journalists and a free press. He was also reelected four times by huge margins in contests where international observers were barred and opposing candidates were known to have been abused. Ezrow explains further how the Ali regime can be classified and how this explains his departure from power: “Ben Ali took over and sought to personalize the regime and concentrate more and more power into his own hands. He had not quite done that to the extent that we see now, a leader like Gaddafi has done, and so therein lies an important difference. By the time the revolution in Tunisia took place the military was by no means loyal to Ali , he had not developed the kind of personal security forces that Gaddafi has. As a result, Ali had to leave.” Mubarak Following the fall of the dictatorship in Tunisia came the massive and now legendary demonstrations against the regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Like Ben Ali, Mubarak had been a vice president who took over the presidency following the death (assassination) of a sitting president. He too would see re-election after re-election by impressive and question36
able margins. However Mubarak, who’s rule would last for 30 years, was from a military background- a former commander of the Egyptian Air Force. “Egypt was different because it was a regime where the military, a single party, and a dictator shared power,” Ezrow explains, “because the military was so powerful, this changed the mode of exit quite a bit and, even today, the military still has a lot of power. The military was loyal to Mubarak to an extent, but it didn’t want to do anything to disrupt its own legitimacy and its own economic interests because it owns about 50% of the manufacturing capacity of the country. The military is a huge business and it couldn’t do anything to disrupt its own legitimacy by killing everybody who was protesting and in the end they didn’t kill anybody, it was more the police force that got involved in that way.” Gaddafi Despite their differences, and their obvious mutual desire to hang on to power as long as possible, Ezrow points out that both these dictators had enough contact with reality to know when it was time to let go. A combination of their psychological outlooks and advisors willing to
tell them unpleasant facts helped keep them abreast about developments on the streets and outside their presidential palaces. A combination some personalist leaders in particular, who surround themselves with only those who tell them what they want to hear, may not experience. One such case is that of Muammar Gaddafi, who even at the moment of publishing this article, continues to resist the departure his fellow North African dictators opted for. Again, Ezrow lays out this dictatorship’s context: “Gaddafi, because he’s surrounded by yes men, shuns all outside expertise. He has little accurate information. Muburak was a little out of touch but compared to Gadaffi you see he wasn’t as out of touch because ultimately his mode of exit was easier, not as protracted. In the end he was pragmatic about it. Personalist dictators, like Gadaffi and Saddam Hussein, hold on to power until the very end. They usually die in office in some way, because they’re incapable of seeing what they are doing. You can see this in interviews with both of these men, after years and years of being supported blindly by loyal sycophants, they’re living in a delusional world, without the information necessary to make pragmatic decisions.” Beyond the Arab Spring In all three cases the question of what kind of government will come next is still an open one. Presently, Libya’s personalist dictator continues to wage a civil war in an effort to hold on to power until his last breath. While Tunisia and Egypt have seen their dictators step down, the coming elections and political reforms leave open the question of who and what kind of government will come next. Pundits and observers from all sides continue to speculate about the dangers as well as the positive aspects of the changes that are to come. Will greed for power once again take hold or will there be a new kind of democracy for these nations? Natasha Ezrow sees a mixed bag in the immediate future: “In Egypt, they will most likely implement something that looks like a
democracy but is very flawed. This translates into a powerful military which will be involved behind the scenes and not fully institutionalized political parties that are based on ideology. There will be a lot of personalism, where votes are tied to a personal leader. The reason for the revolt had to do with corruption, and economic mismanagement, which is not going to go away any time soon, so you will also have some chaos. While it will be a very difficult transition for Egypt, I think Tunisia has a much better chance. At least in the past, they were one of the most democratic countries in the middle east. So they have had experience with it, while Egypt hasn’t had much experience with political parties and legislature. These institutions haven’t been functioning for years.” As the Arab Spring continues, the lack of knowledge about dictatorships which Ezrow refers to becomes more apparent. When we understand the differences between dictators’ thoughts and actions, we can predict if and how they will leave their positions. When we factor in actions that neighboring countries as well as other international players may take, as in the current case of NATO in Libya, it is clearly time to shed light on and expand this type of research. We need to make sure we understand that not all dictatorships are alike, so that we are better equipped to predict, react to, or understand events when yet another country starts revolting against its dictator.
By Mark Rendeiro 37
Book & Review In Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention Manning Marable
Endgame: The End of the Debt SuperCycle and How It Changes Everything John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper
In Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, Manning Marable examines Malcolm X’s life from several angles, which is necessary given the fact that he played many different, often contradictory, parts during his life. He started out as a smalltime criminal, who became a self-made intellectual, who became a white-hating black nationalist, who became a follower of The Nation of Islam.
Greece isn’t the only country struggling with a huge debt. According to Endgame: The End of the Debt SuperCycle and How It Changes Everything, we’re all in trouble. The book gives a detailed, easy to read overview of the world economy and its interacting financial systems.
Malcolm X does not offer any psychological insights as to why Malcolm became such a figure of many faces, but rather focuses on the way his different layers related to each other, and how others perceived him. According to Marable, Malcolm’s fickleness was precisely what gave him a broad appeal: “Malcolm’s journey of reinvention was in many ways centered on his lifelong quest to discern the meaning and substance of faith. As a prisoner, he embraced an antiwhite quasi-Islamic sect that nevertheless validated his fragmented sense of humanity and ethnic identity. But as he travelled across the world...Malcolm came to adopt true Islam’s universalism, and its belief that all could find Allah’s grace regardless of race.” GET IT HERE
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What does the Debt SuperCycle entail? “Over a period of about sixty years,” authors John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper explain, “debt levels grew faster than incomes. By 2008 the burden of debt became too much to bear and the debt supercycle came to an end. People started deleveraging and banks started collapsing due to low levels of capital and large losses from loans people couldn’t pay back.” Their book is built on the premise that the accumilation of debt today will affect your ability to spend money in the future. It’s not rocket science. However, applying this on a macroeconomic level has proven to be quite complicated. “We forsee rising inflation in many parts of the world,” the authors note, “reductions in real income as people lose purchasing power due to higher food and fuel prices and more macroeconomic volatility.” GET IT HERE
The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
‘Most Human Human.’ It was this title that author Brian Christian set out to win in 2009, when he enrolled in the Turing Test; a test which determines a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. A human judge engages in a conversation with both a human and a machine, each of which tries to appear human. Somehow, humans are becoming less human, Christian argues, which explains why the computer Elbot fooled 30 percent of the judges in 2008’s competition. Christian explores the depths of his degrees in computer science, poetry, and philosophy to unravel just what it is that makes human thought unique. “One of the first winners [of the Most Human Human prize], in 1994, was the journalist and science-fiction writer Charles Platt. How’d he do it? By being moody, irritable, and obnoxious,” the author points out. Can machines replace humans? Not according to Christian: “For everyone out there fighting to write idiosyncratic, high-entropy, unpredictable, unruly text, swimming upstream of spellcheck and predictive auto-completion: Don’t let them banalize you.” GET IT HERE
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution Francis Fukuyama
Political order begins in ancient China, says political scientist and author Francis Fukuyama. By the time of the Chin dynasty in 221 B.C., some how 10,000 individual chiefdoms had merged into one state. What happened? In short: the state evolved to allow for a more effective making of war. A strategy which proved to be successful in other countries as well. Fukuyama is concerned mostly with the cultural, not biological, aspects of human society. But he explicitly assumes that human social nature is universal and is built around certain evolved behaviors. For example, our propensity for warfare, and our desire to create and follow rules, are part of our wiring. In this book, Fukuyama attempts to understand how humans moved from tribal and familial connections to organized institutions of states and governments. “In the developed world,” he writes, “we take the existence of a government so much for granted that we sometimes forget how difficult it was to create.”
GET IT HERE
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R emarkable e s e a r c h 40
Neurology
Psych
ALCOHOL IMPROVES MEMORY
OLD PEO
Alcohol might not be as damaging to the brain as is often thought. New research shows that although a night of heavy drinking makes you forget names and birthdays, it can improve your subconscious memory.
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The study, which was recently published in The Journal of Neuroscience, found that repeated ethanol exposure enhances synaptic plasticity in a key area in the brain. “Usually, when we talk about leaning and memory, we’re talking about conscious memory,” neurobiologist Hitoshi Morikawa explains, “but our subconscious is capable of learning too. We found that alcohol may actually increase our capacity to learn at that level.” The results add to the growing consensus that addiction is related to the subconscious memory. When we drink, or use drugs, dopamine is released. At the same time, environmental, behavioural and physiological cues –music, chatting with friends, dancing- are connected by our brain with dopamine release, and stored as such in our memory. Therefore we are not just addicted to alcohol (or drugs) itself, but also to the cues we associate them with. Morikawa’s long-term hope is that by understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of addiction better, he can develop anti-addiction drugs that would weaken, rather than strengthen, the key synapses.
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Law
OPLE ARE SOCIALLY AKWARD
JUDGES MILDER AFTER LUNCH BREAK
here’s a scientific explanation as to people tend to do embarrassing ccording to a recent study done by a research psychologists, people over e a harder time recognizing awkward s.
Are judicial rulings based solely on laws and facts? Researchers from Columbia University found evidence to the contrary. According to their study, judges tend to be milder when they have just had lunch.
ers began by having a group of people watch certain scenes from The Office, ow in which Ricky Gervais plays the ly embarrassing manager David Brent, d them to write down every scene in avid Brent showed social inappropriaviour. Afterwards, this experiment ated with a group of young adults. As out, older participants couldn’t care ut David Brent. The younger subjects, le, described half of all scenes as emg.
uffman, psychology professor, said the s the first to examine age differencecting social gaffes from appropriate r while measuring emotional recoglls. “‘If you look at recognition of exs of faces, or of bodies, or of voices, worse as we get older.” Our ability to nd emotions is connected to our need g to a group. Because people become ested in ‘fitting in’ once they get older, ity to understand social cues probably as well.
During the study, about a thousand parole decisions made by eight Israeli judges were analysed. After a snack or lunch break, 65 percent of cases were granted parole. During the following cases, the rate of favourable rulings fell gradually, sometimes as low as zero. These results are consistent with previous research that has demonstrated the positive impact of a short rest and glucose on mental resource replenishment. Professor Shai Danziger, who led the research, notes that the current study does not measure other external factors which can influence the decision making process, such as the mood of the judges. “However, the results do indicate that extraneous variables can influence judicial decisions,” Danziger explained, “which bolsters the growing body of research that points to the susceptibility of experienced judges to psychological biases. “
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