The Exploiters by Harvey Kaplan

Society places a high premium on the clever person who has the energy to put their ideas into action and to succeed in our competitive world. However, our ethical heritage places certain restraints on the exercise of cleverness. A person must not cheat, lie or hurt others. They are not supposed to take unfair advantage of another person. Exploitation stands to lying, cheating, and deceiving. The lie, the distortion of reality is clearly one of the most pervasive evils of our time. The exploiter is capably of causing much of the human misery, grief and suffering in the world today.

The exploiter uses the other person as a mean to an end rather than as a fellow human being; they devalue the other person who frequently becomes an object of contempt, a disposable item to be used and discarded or to be kept around for convenience and pleasure but not for friendship. The question of honesty and integrity are not important to them. In fact, their values are so distorted that they often undertake schemes with so little chance of success that they have been thought either to lack the foresight to see the consequences of their actions, or to be driven by some underlying guilt to engage in activities which will lead to their downfall and punishment. This book aims to highlight and illustrate the many facets of the exploiter’s personality and what motivates them. I hope the reader gains a better understanding into this type of character.