Learning this from my (soon-to-be-ex-) wife right now…
We create a world of kindness or selfishness, judgement or forgiveness every day. These behaviors may get you money or power, but the world you have to live in gets worse. I don’t think you realize how much you lose getting ahead, and how much you cost everyone else.
There’s very few things more galling than yourself playing by the rules, putting in the time and effort to have some kind of social contract, only to have someone flippantly disregard said rules and contract and to benefit from it. Doesn’t matter if it’s someone cutting in line or pillaging the highest office in the land for their own gain.
You’ll still be a shit person, likely with no meaningful friendships. That’s gotta factor into the equation somehow.
People with low empathy don’t see people as companions, but more as tools to benefit themselves. So they don’t really care as long as they have enough money and pawns to take care of themselves.
I’m a domestic abuse outreach worker and I see it a lot in clients. Abusers are always selfish and generally manipulative and liars. They have little or no empathy for their partner and rarely care how the partner feels. They’re often highly successful in their field, because they have such great manipulation skills.
I imagine your job is as draining as it is fulfilling
Thanks mate, you certainly have to accept the losses. I look at soft outcomes though, so making the children feel heard and like they matter. It gets me through.
You couldn’t be thanked enough for your work
I really, truly appreciate it Keanu thanks so much ❤️
Shhh…I made this elaborate fake name because I didn’t want everyone to know I’m 8 time MTV Movie & TV Awards nominee and 4 time winner Keanu Reeves
It’s because we live in a system with perverse incentives. It’s practically designed by psychopaths, for psychopaths. Still, we only get one life, don’t spend it going against your better nature.
This is only true in a world that is mostly full of people with morals. A society built on lying and manipulation inevitably collapses - look at what is happening to the United States. They elected an amoral lying manipulator and in just six months their society is unraveling. They just passed a law that took money away from hungry children and sick people so that their psychopathic leader can better persecute his enemies: that is, anyone who opposes him. ICE just became the best-funded “law” enforcement agency ever created. It is obvious to everyone except a handful of naive idiots that ICE will be used against US citizens to consolidate MAGA’s power in an attempt to create a permanent regime. These states always collapse sooner or later, though, because morality is the foundation of law. No one is going to invest in a country where their assets can be seized and they can be imprisoned on the caprice of a senile madman. You can’t have trade without trust - all that is left in places like the US are predators and prey.
I’ll die poor with morals rather than rich and evil. I’m okay with that.
You’ll also live better. It’s a sad indictment of society that people incapable of forming meaningful relationships, but able to buy some shiny crap they don’t need, are considered successful.
I so wish that I could grift the fuck out of the goddamn Nazis and get rich off of their idiocy but I would feel icky with dirty money.
You could do it and then give me the money
It depends where you want to go. Knowledge is always bigger than power, power gives money but knowledge gives depression and suicide thoughts. The fast escape path is obvious.
Maybe, but it also means that you’ll be alone for eternity and will never have true friends or camaraderie, and that by itself will consume you.
There is only so many people you can do that to before everyone else catches on and shuns you. All the evil people in the world don’t have any friends and are subject to betrayals and threats in their lives constantly. To me, that’s not a bearable existence. Sure, you got power, but you’re miserable and afraid all the time. Was that really worth it?
That doesn’t seem to bother the kind of people being described
via SMBC:
Yeah it really depends on what you consider success. For a lot of people, money & power isn’t necessarily the marker for success, and finding meaning and joy in life is more important. And I know that sounds like capitalist “money doesn’t buy you happiness” bs, but striving towards money and power consistently is the most capitalist thing you can do.
I think people who are able to attain a good amount of money to survive and still maintain their morals and find joy, that’s success.
There are plenty of corrupt people who are never caught, or even caught and let go with little to no consequences due to their influence and money. As much as I want to live in a world where karma exists and assholes get what they deserve, that is unfortunately not the reality we live in.
you’ll be alone for eternity and will never have true friends or camaraderie, and that by itself will consume you.
I AM a morally decent person who makes efforts to do the right thing. And that last part is STILL true!
I just don’t like most people.
Most people are selfish and amoral. When people like that encounter a decent person, they will do what they can to silence them so they aren’t given the chance to expose corruption.
You probably don’t like most people because most people are walking sacks of shit who would throw you under the bus if it means benefiting themselves
Wow. You actually get me.
shifty eyes
I still don’t trust you…
I want nothing from you other than your social security, bank cards and pins, credit card information, medical information, your first born, your shoe size, favorite color and why, as well as your third born
You’d be wrong. I’m sorry that you feel this way about humanity, but that is simply not true. And believing that won’t make you a “smart” person. It makes you’re no better than those people, and it also makes you feel worse.
It might be satisfying in the moment to hate humanity, but that satisfaction is fleeting and addicting. Being a misanthrope just brings the worst version of yourself out.
Seems condescending to assume I think that belief makes me “smart”. I’m speaking on my experience, that’s the only experience I have. I don’t appreciate you trying to make me out as some kind of angsty teen rebel.
Well, your experience isn’t universal. Most people aren’t like you described.
Maybe you need a change of environment.
Let me put it this way. If your family was 1 of 2 surviving families on earth for whatever reason and all the resources have run out. You’re stuck in an underground bunker and unfortunately your only option for survival is cannibalism (this is a common thought exercise in philosophy) are you more willing to eat your family? Or the other?
And what about towards the end, when it’s just you and one other person. Do you override your survival instinct and offer yourself up, or do you start reasoning to yourself that this is a necessary evil?
You can be selective with this power; works well for a lot of folks. Have a smallish in group where you’re always upstanding, enjoy all the benefits that our tribal brain craves, and also enjoy the material benefits.
Sure but it’s lonely at the top. If you rise to the top by backstabbing people, you’ll end up exactly how some people right now are, and you keep trying to accumulate more and be great or whatever messing up everything else and being hated.
While a simple life with your loved ones will give you satisfaction. And satisfaction is the key to happiness. Rather satisfaction is the ultimate happiness.
Yup and add intelligence to the list as well. Smart means nothing if you can’t back it up with being an amoral pile of shit that takes advantage of people every opportunity you get.
I know plenty of moral smart people who are doing very well in life.
If you are smart, you can afford the luxury of not being a complete piece of shit if you get into the right career.
What’s the “right career”?
For me it was enterprise software
I work in that myself, which allows me to be a step or two removed from being a complete piece of shit, but still pretty close to the shitscape.
Also, in that field, being an asshole without empathy gets you further up the org chart than being smart or good at your job, so my point stands.
Hence why I’ve been at the bottom of the org chart most of my 30 year career. I moved up one rung once, but after I refused to do some shitty things to people, I ended up moving back down ;-). No regrets.
I feel like that has got to be pretty difficult unless you include jobs where you are personally isolated from and ignorant of the harmful things the company you contribute to is doing
I mean every company probably has some bad effect on the world, but there’s also benefit. You have to weight the benefits vs the harm. I don’t feel like I have to be personally evil in my job or that it’s a net negative on society. I think things are better in the world because of my work. Not all things, but better on balance.
Your other comments in this thread seem to contradict that a little, at least the idea that these harms or benefits would be visible enough to you to evaluate, since you claim to have switched positions when they started becoming more visible and something you would have had to engage with directly. For software in particular, you empower your users to do whatever they happen to choose to do with it.
Which isn’t to say you’re doing the wrong thing. I just see the economy as a whole as an inherently cannibalistic system we have little choice but to be a contributing part of one way or another, with the main form of meaningful available agency being to minimize involvement rather than choosing how to be involved.
The economy as it is both provides and causes problems, but without the advanced economy we have today the majority of the world’s people would starve to death. And yes, technology can be used to bad ends, but I’ve seen a lot of applications of ours and mostly it’s just mundane “getting the job done” stuff that helps everyday people keep functioning.
Yes, there are evil people in my organization, but I feel like I’ve stood up for my principles where it counted. Yes I’ve been demoted for that, and I was much happier afterwards. Someday it may cost me my job, but I will keep losing jobs until I find one where I can be myself.
All things in life are a balance of good and bad, you just have to evaluate whether you are more on the good side or bad side. There are a lot of jobs out there that are just helping people do the stuff they need to get done, generally good. Yes some evil capitalist takes most of the profit and hoards it for their evil purposes, but for me it’s enough to know that I provided things needed by others and helped them to make it through their lives in some small way.
It makes a lot of sense. Lying and manipulation are done specifically to achieve goals. A defining characteristic of morals is that you’re supposed to follow them even if it’s neutral or disadvantageous for you. If someone follows “morals” to achieve a personal goal, they’re not actually following morals, they’re just acting in a way that incidentally looks moral.
By some definition of “further”, sure. Mainly the definition someone with no remorse would have.
Depends on how you define “further”. I’d like to leave this earth knowing I had a positive impact on those i met while I was here. I can sleep easy at night, even dispte all the hardships in my life atm, knowing I’m doing the best with what it is I have. Also, in my early 30’s, I started to really internalize the, “having nice things means keeping things nice” i.e. you don’t need new shiny things all the time. Take care of what you already have and you’ll never be without.
I can’t lie and manipulate my way into being a kind and honorable man, friend, son and brother. Me achieving those things brings me greater peace of mind and satisfaction than anything I’d ever need to lie my way into to get.
