This is an uncomfortable observation, but a persistent one across history:
The people who rise to the top of large power structures are rarely the most empathetic, grounded, or humane among us.
This isn’t because humanity prefers bad leaders.
It’s because the systems we’ve built reward specific traits — and those traits are often anti-human.
The issue is structural selection, not moral failure.
Certain personality traits simply scale better inside hierarchical, competitive, high-stakes systems:
- Low emotional sensitivity
- High tolerance for conflict
- Comfort with abstraction over human consequence
- Ability to prioritize outcomes over people
- Willingness to externalize harm
These traits are advantageous in environments where:
- Decisions affect millions
- Accountability is diffuse
- Distance from consequences is large
- Success is measured in metrics, not human wellbeing
Power Filters for a Specific Personality Type
In small communities, leadership is constrained by proximity.
You live among the people you lead.
You face them daily.
You can’t hide from the consequences of your decisions.
In large-scale systems — corporations, nation-states, global institutions — that constraint disappears.
Power becomes:
- Abstract
- Layered
- Mediated through reports, dashboards, and proxies
This creates a filtering effect.
Those who feel least disturbed by harm at scale are most capable of operating in such environments without psychological overload.
That doesn’t make them monsters.
It makes them compatible with the system.
Empathy Does Not Scale in These Structures
Empathy evolved for small groups.
Your nervous system is not designed to emotionally process:
- Layoffs affecting 10,000 people
- Military decisions affecting distant populations
- Policy changes that ruin lives you’ll never see
People with strong empathy often self-select out of these roles — or burn out quickly if they enter them.
Those with muted emotional response last longer.
They advance.
They get promoted.
Not because they’re better leaders — but because they’re less internally conflicted.
Incentives Reward Ruthlessness, Not Wisdom
Modern leadership environments reward:
- Aggressive growth
- Risk externalization
- Short-term wins
- Loyalty to the system over loyalty to people
Compassion rarely shows up on a balance sheet.
Long-term societal health rarely fits into quarterly reports.
So leaders who hesitate, reflect, or humanize decisions are often seen as:
- Weak
- Inefficient
- Indecisive
Meanwhile, those who act decisively — even destructively — are praised as “strong.”
Jerks Prosper in Zero-Sum Games
Many global systems are structured as zero-sum or near-zero-sum competitions:
- Markets
- Elections
- Corporate ladders
- Geopolitical power games
In such environments:
- Cooperation is risky
- Trust is exploitable
- Ethical restraint is a handicap
People willing to lie, manipulate, dominate, or discard others gain an edge.
Again, not because they are superior — but because the rules reward those behaviors.
The Tragedy: This Becomes Self-Reinforcing
Once such personalities dominate leadership:
- They design systems in their own image
- They promote similar people
- They normalize cold decision-making
- They redefine “success” accordingly
Over time, humanity mistakes this outcome for inevitability.
We begin to believe:
“This is just how leadership works.”
It’s not.
It’s how this kind of system works.
Why This Feels Personal
Most people experience this truth not through theory, but through life:
- Bad managers rising faster than good ones
- Ethical employees punished for integrity
- Cruel behavior excused as “results-driven”
- Kind people burning out or disengaging
This creates cynicism, not because people are naïve — but because they are observant.
This Is Not a Call for Revolution
Trying to “fix” leadership at the top misses the point.
As long as:
- Systems are large
- Power is abstract
- Accountability is distant
- Incentives reward domination
The same personality types will rise again.
Replacing individuals without changing structure is theater.
The Real Insight
This chapter isn’t about hating leaders.
It’s about recognizing that massive, centralized systems select for traits that are misaligned with human wellbeing.
Which leads to a deeper question:
Why are we organizing our lives around systems that require inhuman traits to function?
That question points forward — toward smaller scales, local sovereignty, distributed power, and systems that reward being human instead of suppressing it.