I think it's more of a selection bias. In most structures, it's more beneficial have emotional detachment as emotion in most cases can be exploited to adds constraints to your decision space.
It's not that power holds a carrot and says, to hold me you must be a sociopath, it's that competition for power selects those lacking emotion.
I'm no anthropologist but I suspect since humans evolved from small groups, emotions developed because group work was beneficial. As humanity evolved rapidly into larger societies, it's not clear that emotion in these group sizes are so beneficial for survival.
At some point survival from the size of the group becomes nearly guaranteed and competing more within the group becomes a better survival strategy from an independent standpoint. These days you're far less likely to starve to death or be eaten by say a bear or lion because you live in large societies with all sorts of services and just basic proximity scares other predators away. Now the dynamic is about succeeding within the bounds of that system itself. Detaching from others and focusing on yourself tends to give you better success in that environment. Specific cases exist where you should work as a team but if you can do this without emotion and identify all these cases on a highly transactional basis, you can better optimize your own success.
Frankly I think it's kind of sad because, well, I have emotion and don't like to think of the world like a sociopath but... if you want to compete, you need to more and more.
It's not that power holds a carrot and says, to hold me you must be a sociopath, it's that competition for power selects those lacking emotion.
I'm no anthropologist but I suspect since humans evolved from small groups, emotions developed because group work was beneficial. As humanity evolved rapidly into larger societies, it's not clear that emotion in these group sizes are so beneficial for survival.
At some point survival from the size of the group becomes nearly guaranteed and competing more within the group becomes a better survival strategy from an independent standpoint. These days you're far less likely to starve to death or be eaten by say a bear or lion because you live in large societies with all sorts of services and just basic proximity scares other predators away. Now the dynamic is about succeeding within the bounds of that system itself. Detaching from others and focusing on yourself tends to give you better success in that environment. Specific cases exist where you should work as a team but if you can do this without emotion and identify all these cases on a highly transactional basis, you can better optimize your own success.
Frankly I think it's kind of sad because, well, I have emotion and don't like to think of the world like a sociopath but... if you want to compete, you need to more and more.