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Dacher Keltner on the Power Paradox LISTENDOWNLOADOPEN IN ITUNES

From KPFA | July 6, 2016

If you take a quick inventory of all the wealthy people and CEOs who’ve made news by being complete, heartless jerks, you’re left with a pretty simple question: who put them in charge? One narrative: Ruthless people win, so it’s the jerks who float to the top. The counter-narrative: power makes us act bad. Most explanations land on some marriage of the narratives, but our next guest has a radically different approach: it’s things like kindness and compassion that make us powerful in our society – but that power makes us the opposite of kind and compassionate.

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