(And Why We Are Creating Them)
Lizard People.
It is the label commonly tossed around Silicon Valley backrooms to describe a specific breed of colleague: those devoid of human consideration, understanding, or empathy. In lay terms, socio- and psychopaths. In our terms, the architects of the modern world.
While the “Lizard Person” is a metaphor (lest we veer into David Icke conspiracy territory), the data suggests the archetype is real. According to research by Dr. Robert Hare and Dr. Paul Babiak, while only about 1% of the general population qualifies as psychopathic, that number jumps to an estimated 3% to 4% among senior business executives (Babiak & Hare, 2006). Other studies suggest the number in upper management could be as high as 12% (Croom, 2021).
What draws them there? And more importantly, what happens when we strip-mine the education system of the Humanities, removing the very tools designed to stop their creation?
To understand the Lizard Person, we first have to look at the human mind.
The age-old debate of “nature vs. nurture” asks if we are born this way or if we are merely clay dolls molded by our environment. Consider Dr. James Fallon, a neuroscientist at UC Irvine. While studying the brain scans of serial killers, Fallon discovered a scan that looked exactly like a psychopath’s: low activity in the orbital cortex, the area involved in ethical behavior and impulse control.
The scan was his own.
Fallon possessed the genetic and neurological markers of a killer. Yet, he was a non-violent, successful academic. Why? As Fallon argues, it was his upbringing (a supportive, connected community) that prevented his biology from becoming his destiny (Fallon, 2013).
If isolation breeds monsters, then community breeds humans. The most effective way to establish that sense of community is to understand where you came from. To feel like part of a whole. This is the function of the Humanities: studying our species’ art, our evolution, our history. It stops us from becoming mindless, formula-spouting robots.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum warns of this explicitly in her book Not for Profit. She argues that by slashing Humanities budgets in favor of technical training, we are producing “useful machines” rather than citizens capable of empathy or democratic thought (Nussbaum, 2010). We are removing the very curriculum that teaches us to see others as souls rather than data points.
Capitalism and Lizard People are a match made in hell (pardon my French). The system is the perfect playground for someone without empathy. Corporations love a mindless accountant who crunches numbers all day without questioning shady tax reports. CEOs love optimizing operations to boost margins, even if it means exploiting labor or the environment.
Consider the “efficiency” of lobbying. A study regarding the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 found that for every $1 corporations spent lobbying for this tax holiday, they received a return of $220 in tax savings—a staggering 22,000% return on investment (Alexander et al., 2009).
This is what happens when you optimize for math without morals. You get high returns, questionable ethics, and a ruling class that views the population as a resource to be mined rather than a community to be served.
Perhaps these decisions are intentional features of the system, not bugs. But the education system can at least attempt to lower the odds of this outcome by producing an ethically aware population. By removing the requirement of Humanities courses, we remove the requirement of understanding what makes us human.
Resources
Alexander, Raquel M., et al. “Measuring Rates of Return for Lobbying Expenditures: An Empirical Analysis Under the American Jobs Creation Act.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2009.
Babiak, Paul, and Robert D. Hare. Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. HarperCollins, 2006.
Croom, Simon. “The Prevalence of Psychopathy in Corporate Leadership.” Fortune, 2021.
Fallon, James. The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain. Current, 2013.
Nussbaum, Martha. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton University Press, 2010.
Jessica Cole 