The world actively rewards bad behavior. This realization was a difficult pill for me to swallow.
Learning this from my (soon-to-be-ex-) wife right now…
I’ve known this for a long time but I continue to do my best to operate honorably. I may never be rich or powerful, but I sleep very well at night.
I still don’t sleep well, knowing the state of the world
Yea. Trying to be correct and do things in a respectful and good way makes me more and more bitter, resentful and judgemental.
Soon that in itself will corrupt me.
I have to manipulate and lie to myself that things will get better
“control what you can” is my largest crutch.
I just had a talk with my son, 12, this morning about the bad feelings we get when we lie, trick, or cheat and are caught. For me, I explained, it can even physically hurt because my chest tightens. Sometime around when I was my son’s age, I decided I wanted to avoid that feeling at all costs, and just stopped trying to lie, or trick, or get away with something wrong, because the risk was never worth it.
I may not be rich, or powerful, or hell even interesting, but I do sleep well at night and nearing middle age, I’ve more love in my life than I’ve ever had before. I hope to pass that to my son. Honest man’s living is superior.
My neighbor will tell me all about her grown son (who I know as a racist shit bag, and his son bullys mine) is so successful financially, yet in the same breath tells me she doesn’t bother wasting money on her garden because she can get free tomatoes from the food bank.
Money doesn’t mean one is successful in my opinion. Are they happy? Do they love themselves? Do they treat others kindly? Do the add to their community in positive ways? Do they never take more than they need so that others can have too? That’s success.
I prefer to have my conscience clean, and be the brokest person out there, than to lie, sceme, cheat to gain some arbitrary “success”.
“Having the ability to lie and manipulate with no remorse will get you much further in this world than having morals and being correct” This is the reason psychopaths are so successful.
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.
Yeah that tends to happen when most everyone enables such behavior.
It makes you bad at art and inventing tho. The liar plays a shallow game.
It says grim things that by playing the shallow game you can succeed in our society. I blame the rule of law. It was basically designed to be gamed.
Say what you will about dictators, at least they’re human.
You take the Edison route of stealing from people like Tesla. One goes down as a famous inventor and the other dies broke and alone other than his pigeons.
And yes, the system is made for people to be pieces of shit because it was created by pieces of shit.
The system could also be described as an abstraction of the same system that’s existed for millions of years. Domination by the powerful, exploitation of the weak, etc. Not so much evil as brutish.
That’s just slavery with more steps!
I don’t see the connection.
Modern wage slaves are not far removed from royalty having an imbalance of power. It’s common to refer to our current “work to live or die” society as slavery with extra steps because many are forced to spend their time doing things that benefit their bosses more than themselves
I suppose slavery is an abstract form of being eaten. It certainly “uses every part of the animal” better than just chomping it up.
I see that It’s my turn to be confused
Most successful artists are just as manipulative as any CEO. It’s a money laundering front at this point
yeah but those guys are assholes
A system designed by psychopaths benefits psychopaths? No way…
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
Yeah, that’s what the rest of us try to convince ourself so that we can cope with it. That or the idea that these people must sleep very poorly thinking about what they’ve done, while we’re actually the ones who have poor sleep thinking about what they’ve done and feeling powerless.
Yes and i would choose to have morals anyway
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.
This unraveling has been going on a lot longer than just six months. It’s been accelerating hard since the Patriot Act after 9/11. And even before that, Republicans had been lying about their support of free markets for generations.
Sure it has. It’s been going on since the 70s and CEOs making 300 percent of the workforce. It is exactly the same as nobles and their taxes of the poor in almost every Empire’s history. And it always leads to a purge that changes things. We could be on the cusp of a Roman takeover. We could be on the cusp of a total collapse. Hard to say which way it’s going.
Whatever it is, this will not last forever.
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.
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
Does Muskrat seem like a happy and balanced individual to you? What about Coked up Bezos or AI Zuckerberg?
Zuckbot seems legitimately happy now after being less involved with the company and pursuing personal goals
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
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?
I want the worst version of myself out. I recently made two shitty co-workers crap themselves.
Being bad towards shitty people is a different beast from being bad towards everyone because you assume the worst out of everyone.
Righteous outrage is addicting, but it’s also extremely fucking draining. I left reddit because I’d constantly rage bait myself every day and it was destroying my relationships.
Read your profile, our stories are nearly the same!
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
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.
Just because we don’t see it or it doesn’t look like we think it should doesn’t mean it’s not real. Imagine being shallow and wanting to marry for how it looks on the outside. Imagine 20 -30 years later realizing you’re stuck in a companionless relationship, but refusing to end it because it makes sense on paper to keep it intact.
I believe in consequences of your actions of course, but I don’t believe there is some kind of cosmic scale balancing right and wrong. Maybe there is but that’s quite an assumption to make. Lots of old rich men and women end up in that cycle of trading partners in like leased vehicles. Some people don’t care so much for companionship as much as they care about vanity. Sad, yes, but who am I to dictate how some people find happiness.
Maybe they are happy. The people I’ve met living that way seem miserable. That’s really all karma is, cause and effect. We either learn or don’t. I really believe that the kingdoms of heaven (and hell) are inside us. That doesn’t necessarily equate to physical reality, eg, every need met can still leave people miserable, people who seemingly struggle manage to find peace, if not happiness, others who match their physical reality, often we slide among points on the spectrum of being.
I don’t see it as perfectly balanced or absolute equilibrium. I see it as more of a spiral hourglass that flips like the magnetic poles. But that’s a whole other discussion and I need to develop that concept, as I just surprised myself with it. That’s a sleepy thought.
I do find that a lot of “bully” type people seem miserable, angry, combatative. That’s likely what drives their lack of empathy though, they don’t care about hurting others because they think in some roundabout way that if everyone is upset then it’s fair. There are a lot of reasons why some people justify the way they live and a lot of them will never willingly change.
Yes karma is cause and effect but a lot of times the effect won’t happen without human intervention to force it into reality. I would describe that more as social structure or framework. Tomato potato
Outside pressures are often the driving forces of evolution, and affect everything engaged in a particular process. Dawkins talked about this, iirc.
Anyway, observing a thing changes it. There will always be latent effects. Maybe it’s not about individual learning, but collective learning, with a nod to Dawkins.
It would be great to think one day society would reward good people more often but we are still crawling to that goal
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.
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.
Hey, you just described church!
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
Go to work for ICE, and be the worst worker in the history of America. Then you earned your money gumming up the works of an evil organization, and you can feel good about taking their money to hurt them.
I would be alright with ICE getting fake armor plates, defective bullets, and boots with thin soles.
Eh, I bet the pay is shit
