Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

So true, that "Mother Teresa" is a generic term for the epitome of saintly altruism, but the truth of the matter is that she was a fraudulent self promotor who glorified the suffering of others, claimed poverty and disease were gifts from God that build character, and who Christopher Hitchens described as "a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud," and called "The Ghoul of Calcutta".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa

>In 2013, in a comprehensive review covering 96% of the literature on Mother Teresa, a group of Université de Montréal academics reinforced the foregoing criticism, detailing, among other issues, the missionary's practice of "caring for the sick by glorifying their suffering instead of relieving it, ... her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding, in particular, abortion, contraception, and divorce". Questioning the Vatican's motivations for ignoring the mass of criticism, the study concluded that Mother Teresa's "hallowed image – which does not stand up to analysis of the facts – was constructed, and that her beatification was orchestrated by an effective media relations campaign" engineered by the Catholic convert and anti-abortion BBC journalist Malcolm Muggeridge. [...]

>She was sometimes accused by Hindus in her adopted country of trying to convert the poor to Catholicism by "stealth". Christopher Hitchens described Mother Teresa's organisation as a cult that promoted suffering and did not help those in need. He said that Mother Teresa's own words on poverty proved that her intention was not to help people, while he quoted her words at a 1981 press conference in which she was asked: "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" She replied: "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."

Christopher Hitchens - Mother Teresa: Hell's Angel [1994]

In 1994, three years before her death, journalist Christopher Hitchens made this documentary asking if Mother Teresa's reputation was deserved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76_qL6fiyDw&ab_channel=CaNAN...

Christopher Hitchens explains why he didn't like Mother Teresa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wckZo3ks1ro&ab_channel=moema...

Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa (2006)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZiKAeJ9mAU&ab_channel=Stipo...

Penn And Teller "Bullshit" episode: Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4nCaxHN-cY&ab_channel=Chris...

An example? Of things you've said? Anonymized I suppose

Sounds clearly reasonable to me

This is absolutely true in my experience. Early in life I would go on to avoid obviously manipulative people and that mostly worked.

As you get older you run into people who are more skilled manipulators. These people realize that in order to be good at it you need to be able to hide your intentions and seem like you’re doing the opposite. This fakery can get so elaborate that sometimes it can turn into a quasi genuine relationship. The contradiction only comes to the fore at crucial moments when you realize what’s truly going on.

The first thing skilled manipulators realize is the need to mask your true intentions. If you’re ambitious you need to seem like you’re the opposite. This means an insane amount of attention given to charm and appearances. An extremely charming and soft spoken manner can go a long way in concealing ambition / motives.

The next thing one can do is to use moralistic principles to stymie your rivals instead of open opposition. This can mean using arguments about morality, code quality, loyalty. The point is that it should seem like it comes from a concern for the greater good. Which it might be but people won’t notice how this is wielded selectively.

The best tell for such people is usually an obsession with power. They will usually spend a lot more time networking with the powerful than their peers. This is often done discreetly.

Another tell is how they treat their friends and family though it’s hard to find out.

The next thing that is often done is to find people who are emotionally vulnerable because of what’s going on in their life. Some people have a very good nose for this.

Dark and Light are just labels for the extremes of the spectrum.

In general be very careful in your dealings with people who are high up in the world / extremely popular. There’s a reason they’re there and it’s not just their aptitude for the job.

It's not shocking that as an anti-theist Hitchens was not a fan of Mother Teresa.