Evil Genes

by Barbara Oakley

  Ismail the Bloodthirsty's successfully sinister behavior was shared by despots across a broad range of agriculture-based societies. “Under complex preindustrial hierarchies, despotism appears clearly to have been a general phenomenon,” Betzig writes, defining despotism as “an exercised right to murder arbitrarily and with impunity.”31 As Machiavellian researcher Richard Christie and his colleague Florence Geis aptly note: “[H]igh population density and highly competitive environments have been found to increase the use of antisocial and Machiavellian strategies, and may in fact foster the ability of those who possess those strategies to reproduce.”32

  Betzig's book is filled with example after example, such as that of the Byzantine emperor Justinian, who literally gave despotism a bad name. Among other memorable deeds:

  Within days of coming to power, he executed the head of the palace eunuchs for making an “injudicious remark” against an arch-priest; he accused a member of the opposition faction of committing “offenses against boys,” and had him dismembered,…and he took immense wealth from the grandson of a former emperor when a will openly rumored false was produced upon his “unexpected” death…. These sorts of accusations, punishments, and false documents were liberally brought…against anybody “who happened to have come up against the rulers in some other way,” and especially, against those exceptionally well off…. He and Theodora eventually asked subjects to prostrate themselves flat on their faces in front of them, kiss one of each of their feet, and address them as “despotes” and “despoina,” master and mistress, making themselves, by implication, their slaves.33

  Betzig's ultimate point is not that the corrupt attain power but that those corrupted individuals who achieved power in preindustrial agricultural societies had far more opportunity to reproduce, generally through polygyny, and pass on their genes. The more Machiavellian, that is, despotic, a man might be, the more polygynous he tended to be—grabbing and keeping for himself as many beautiful women as he could.c.34 Some researchers have posited that envy is itself a useful, possibly genetically linked trait, “serving a key role in survival, motivating achievement, serving the conscience of self and other, and alerting us to inequities that, if fueled, can lead to escalated violence.”35 Thus, genes related to envy—not to mention other more problematic temperaments—might have gradually found increased prevalence in such environments.

  Incan kings, for example, are recorded as keeping more than seven hundred women with whom to take their pleasure. Further thousands of women were sequestered throughout the kingdom for the king's sole use if he happened by. These women “lived in perpetual seclusion to the end of their lives, and preserved their virginity; and they were not permitted to converse, or have any intercourse with, or to see any man, nor any woman who was not one of themselves.”36 Below the rank of king, reproductive rights were precisely prescribed—caciques were given fifty women, vassal leaders thirty, provincial leaders twenty, and still lower leaders were allocated fifteen, twelve, eight, seven, five, or three, depending on their positions. The remaining women were given to whomever was left.37 Betzig's work provides example after example of similar societies.

  Questions we might reasonably ask are—has the percentage of Machiavellians and other more problematic personality types increased in the human population, or in certain human populations, since the advent of agriculture? And if the answer is yes, does the increase in these less savory types change a group's culture? In other words, is there a tipping point of Machiavellian and emote control behavior that can subtly or not so subtly affect the way the members of a society interact? Certainly a high expectation of meeting a “cheater,” for example, would profoundly impact the trust that appears to form the grease of modern democratic societies and might make the development of democratic processes in certain areas more difficult. Crudely put, an increase in successfully sinister types from 2 percent, say, to 4 percent of a population would double the pool of Machiavellians vying for power. And it is the people in power who set the emotional tone, perhaps through mirroring and emotional contagion, for their followers and those around them.38 As Judith Rich Harris points out, higher-status members of a group are looked at more, which means they have more influence on how a person becomes socialized.39

  An example of how a leader's tone might contaminate an entire society was related by Ceausescu biographer Edward Behr, who recalled his attempt to interview a senior ex-minister who was a brilliant, British-trained medical specialist with a reputation as an Anglophile.

  I found myself in a hospital consulting room face to face with a frightened but at the same time angry individual who, instead of answering my questions about the Ceausescus, about whom he knew a great deal, seemed solely preoccupied in finding out how I had come to track him down. He clearly intended to report on this intolerable invasion of privacy to the appropriate authorities. His harsh, inquisitorial tone was such that I could not refrain from pointing out, somewhat curtly, that while I would have expected such conduct during the Ceausescu era, I was amazed that the changes in the regime since December 1989 had had so little effect on him. It seemed, I said, that Ceausescu lived on—at any rate, in the hearts and minds of all those who had had anything to do with him. Visibly shaken, he paused. There were tears in his eyes as he said, in a completely different tone of voice, “I don't know what came over me. I don't know why I started asking you these questions. There's no reason for it. But there's something of Ceausescu inside me that will never go away.”40

  GOLD DIGGERS, STABLE SINISTER SYSTEMS, AND THE SLOW-MOTION IMPLOSION OF EMPIRES

  But it is not only despotic, Machiavellian men who might pass along more than their share of “evil” genes. Machiavellian women can also play that game. As it happens, there is enough documentation passed down surrounding the intrigues of the Ottoman Empire to make a good guess at how the game might have been played.

  In the early 1500s, a fifteen-year-old girl—probably captured in one of the many Tartar slave raids on the Ukraine—was purchased from the open-air market in Istanbul. The girl's buyer was Grand Vizier Ibrahim, the best friend of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. The girl's name was Roxalena; her new home was to be the Ottoman sultan's harem. Much of what is now known about Roxalena comes from widespread gossip and hearsay—yet the compelling story that has come down to us parallels that of many other successfully sinister individuals.

  Arriving at the harem, the quick-witted Roxalena soon surpassed dozens of other concubines to become a favorite of the sultan—she was “so full of light that Suleyman seemed blind to her dark side. He named her Hurrem, ‘the laughing one,’ because of her crystalline laughter and freedom from inhibition.”41 Roxalena soon bore Suleyman a son, Mehmed, which elevated her to third-highest woman in the harem.

  Fig. 10.1. Roxalena, the wife of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. She lived from around 1500 to 1558.

  Both Western and Ottoman sources of the time viewed Roxalena as an extraordinarily dark and malevolent influence on the throne. A contemporary remarked: “For myself I have always heard every one speak ill of her and of her children, and well of the first-born and his mother.”42 (Recent attempts to rehabilitate Roxalena's reputation involve putting a positive, feminist spin on her more unsavory, power-hungry attributes.)43 In any event, it appears Roxalena forged a letter that made it seem that crown prince Mustafa—Suleyman's favorite son—was scheming with the shah of Persia to dethrone his father. Mustafa was subsequently strangled on Suleyman's orders. Roxalena also orchestrated Grand Vizier Ibrahim's death, taking advantage of every bit of gossip and information to inflame Suleyman's mind against his stalwart commander and best friend since childhood. Suleyman had Ibrahim strangled as well.

  Roxalena had five sons with Suleyman. Three, through inconvenient deformity or death, rendered themselves ineligible for the throne. This left Beyazit, who was “able but cruel” (echoes of his mother), and Selim—a drunkard. Selim, clearly the weaker-willed of her two sons, was Roxalena's choice to succ
eed her husband. And indeed, Roxalena's genes lived on through this son, “Selim the Sot,” and his descendents, each generation's heir mixing his genes with those of the most beautiful—and often, the most Machiavellian—slave girls in the harem. Descendent after descendent proved to be squirrelly or outright mad. Roxalena's great-great-great grandson, Murad IV, enjoyed haunting the streets incognito, the better to catch people and kill them for some small infraction. (Corpses, it was said, hung at every street corner.) Murad managed to kill his brave and handsome younger brother, Beyazit, leaving only an insane youngest brother, Ibrahim. On his deathbed in 1640, Murad ordered Ibrahim's death, telling his mother “it would be better for the dynasty to end than to continue with insane royal seed.”49 But Ibrahim lived, and the problematic personalities continued through his progeny. Five generations further removed, in the 1830s, an outside observer unaware of Ibrahim's dissolute predecessors would write of Sultan Abdul Mecit: “[H]e has the taint of madness which has existed in the family since Sultan Ibrahim, who was known as ‘the madman.’”50

  The House of Hilton

  Those on the lookout for a modern version of the Ottoman dynasty might be satisfied with the warped characters and antics of the Hilton dynasty, as chronicled by respected biographer Jerry Oppenheimer, from whose work this account is drawn. Conrad Hilton, Paris Hilton's great-grandfather, was a hotelier and womanizer of no mean talent. But it is Paris Hilton's gold-digging maternal grandmother, “big Kathy,” who seems to have set the tone for her modern-day descendents. Big Kathy was an emergenic stage-mother-from-hell who was so vindictive that she put a screw in her stepdaughter's cheeseburger in an attempt to ruin her perfect teeth. The stepdaughter later noted: “I was so afraid of [big Kathy] that I just finally withdrew into a complete shell. She has a violent disposition and she intimidated me and she knew she intimidated me and she enjoyed it. She had a sadistic streak. She needed help.”44 Big Kathy was also extraordinarily materialistic and obsessed with marrying rich. Big Kathy's daughter, little Kathy, was viewed by those in the know as a clone of big Kathy—one noted, “Little Kathy and big Kathy loved hurting people…. They are very bizarre.”45 Both women realized their dream when little Kathy snagged a Hilton heir as a husband. One observer of the time noted that “she nailed him with her fake personality, her false way of being.”46

  The problematic personalities carry on. “[Little] Kathy Hilton's very selfish and very spoiled and very self-centered, and that absolutely carries through to [her daughter] Paris.”47 Of Paris Hilton herself, one close observer has noted, “She's bright about three things—money, men, and how to get attention—and those are the only things she really cares about; she's basically classically self-involved and narcissistic…I've spent an enormous amount of time with her, and after she leaves a meeting I always find myself wondering, where did this creature come from? What are the genetics happening here? Who's responsible for turning out a persona like Paris? Where'd she get her values and ethics and morals?”48

  Recollecting our discussion of “evil genes,” we can easily imagine how a trickle of troubled serotonin receptors and transporters here; a brilliant but neurotic splash of BDNF or COMT there; and a pinch of inefficient MAO-A alleles rounding off the already troubled upbringing of many of the sultans’ sons might contribute, generation by generation, to the dissolute character of the Osmanli line. Some of each sultan's inherited alleles were undoubtedly associated with the charismatic, temperamental, and often deeply Machiavellian personalities of the women who clawed their way to the top of the harem to charm the sultan and destroy their competitors. These genes would have been affiliated with some of the best and brightest, but also some of the most troubled of offspring. Unfortunately, the best were usually killed by their more Machiavellian rivals or by Machiavellian powers-behind-the throne who needed a weak and easily manipulated front man. Like a slow-motion train wreck, the Ottoman Empire—the Sick Man of Europe—continued on with its troubled system of inheritance through the seraglio, losing territory and careening from one weak, cruel, or unhinged sultan to another. The real question is how such a clearly dysfunctional system of governance could have lasted for so long.

  We'll get to that.

  It may be a little tough to segue from the Ottomans to the Hiltons to the Roman Empire, but the parallels are there, if you're willing to dust off your ancient National Enquirer equivalent: the Historia Augusta. Marcus Aurelius, for example, who lived from 120 to 180 AD, was the last of the five “good” emperors who were selected for merit rather than direct blood propinquity. Marcus married his cousin Faustina, who, although apparently possessing a “lively” personality, was also characterized as a woman who enjoyed whoring around with gladiators and sailors—she may also have actively worked against her husband's interests. Although questions remain as to whether Faustina was really as bad as she was made out to be,d. there is little question that her son Commodus, ostensibly fathered by Marcus Aurelius, was a disastrous character who could charitably be described as a neurotic megalomaniac. As the (admittedly spotty and unreliable) Historia Augusta notes:

  Marcus tried to educate Commodus by his own teaching and by that of the greatest and the best of men…. However, teachers in all these studies profited him not in the least—such is the power, either of natural character, or of the tutors maintained in a palace. For even from his earliest years he was base and dishonourable, and cruel and lewd, defiled of mouth, moreover, and debauched…. In the twelfth year of his life, at Centumcellae, he gave a forecast of his cruelty. For when it happened that his bath was drawn too cool, he ordered the bathkeeper to be cast into the furnace…

  The more honourable of those appointed to supervise his life he could not endure, but the most evil he retained, and, if any were dismissed, he yearned for them even to the point of falling sick. When they were reinstated through his father's indulgence, he always maintained eating-houses and low resorts for them in the imperial palace. He never showed regard for either decency or expense.51

  When Marcus Aurelius appointed his son Commodus rather than a more deserving candidate as his heir, the results proved devastating for Rome. Instead of taking serious interest in matters of state, Commodus showed himself to be interested only in staged gladiatorial events, for which he charged Rome extortionate sums, and sex, indulging himself with hundreds of female concubines and young boys. He surrounded himself with sycophantic fellow Machiavellians who ran the government for their personal profit rather than the empire's benefit—which, after an extended period of extraordinary malfeasance, eventually drove the Romans to kill both Commodus and his claque.e.52 The creepy Severan dynasty followed, marked by incompetence, brutal rivalries, and marriages with boundlessly ambitious women. After the last of the Severans was butchered, the empire was left in churning chaos. It was kept afloat only with the occasional inspiring rule of emperors like Claudius III (who fell unfortunate victim to the plague), Aurelian, and Constantine the Great.

  Historians of the Roman Empire note that dynastic successions were often given to the most plausible heir rather than simply the oldest male descendent of the emperor—although the latter was generally preferred if he looked like a reasonable choice.53 But many of the most successfully sinister emperors, including Caligula and Nero, portrayed themselves, chameleon-like, as having pleasing personalities. Thus, they seemed like credible candidates when they came under consideration. Often, these decadent and malevolent sorts were the sons of social climbing mothers with reputations for troubled personalities—clearly women with propensities for “evil genes” (although one still can't discount acquired nastiness).

  For insight into the phenomenon of powerful men (who often come with their own set of psychological quirks), attracting charismatic, troubled, sometimes deeply sinister women, it's useful to hop back to the present and take note of modern psychiatric findings. Jerold Kreisman, a psychiatrist and leading expert on borderline personality disorder, uses a description of Princess Diana to introduce his most r
ecent book on borderlines: Sometimes I Act Crazy: Living with Borderline Personality Disorder. Kreisman writes: “The fractures in Diana's personality became more prominent during her adolescence. She could be charming, charitable, and remarkably empathic with friends at times, but on other occasions she exhibited an unpredictably cruel rage when these same friends disappointed her. Sometimes, during stressful periods, she appeared calm and stoic, but at other times she became irrationally emotional, alternating between inconsolable grief and ferocious anger.”

  Kreisman tellingly adds: “Typically, the borderline seeks partners who are in a position of power. The most common scenario involves the younger, attractive, borderline woman and the older, narcissistic man: the secretary embarks on an affair with her older, married boss; a student becomes involved with her professor; a patient with her doctor.”54 Marriage into the aristocracy or royalty, in times of old, or for Diana in modern times, offers the readiest route for borderlines to partners in positions of power.

  In short, it seems hereditary aristocracies—not to mention the decidedly wealthy—can attract mates with ambitious, manipulative, controlling, chameleon-like, semi-neurotic personalities, who in turn are more prone (although not guaranteed) to have children with a genetic predisposition for similarly idiosyncratic personalities. And indeed, there is a growing body of research literature that reveals how people selectively seat themselves into positions that suit their personalities.55

  There is little question that the unrest and decay surrounding the most sinister emperors and sultans, as well as the corruption they and their Machiavellian minions fostered, contributed to internal weakness of the empires. It was only a matter of time before increasingly powerful external forces were able to leverage this weakness to their advantage.56 It seems that the longer an empire is in existence, the more time the successfully sinister have to find ways to subvert the system and insert themselves into positions of power. But even as empires—be they political, religious, or business—begin gradually to founder, they can still muddle on, year after dysfunctional year. Sometimes, especially in political or religious enterprises, they can slither through century after dysfunctional century.