this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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Think less illness and more...idk...corruption of the mind?
Like we all know power corrupts people. But absolute power, extreme wealth? There's gotta be an underlying spiral of mental health that allows these people to continue to function, and left unchecked leads to...well, extreme, unimaginable corruption.
I find it hard to believe a bunch of pedophiles became the richest and most powerful people in the world. I find it much easier to believe a bunch of the richest and most powerful people in the world became pedophiles.
Like, when all the other forbidden fruit are easy to get (and were all fucking awesome), and you don't see others as people at all...there's the most forbidden fruit.
All I'm really saying is, statistically, the odds of so many billionaires being pedophiles is very low...unless either closeted/repressed pedophilia is way more common than we think, or it can develop out of an array of personality disorders that can be amplified by extreme wealth/power.
Psychologically, this is very interesting.
Yeah I'm with you, but I really think it's crucial to make a distinction between framing it as an illness vs framing it as the logical conclusion of the capitalist mindset, for which we have thousands of pages of prior analysis to understand.
Por que no los dos?
I edited my parent to you to elaborate more on my train of thought.
I think it's less "power makes people unethical" and more "only unethical people get to be rich/powerful". Correlation != causation
I think an underlying personality disorder is a prerequisite, sure.
But does that mean that even somewhat self-made billionaires did not always start with good intentions?
I think the Steves...Jobs and Woz...are a good pair to look at for the kind of example in talking about. They had equal opportunities. In an alternate universe, Jobs could have ended up like Woz. Or Woz could have ended up like Jobs.
There's an underlying catalyst that gets triggered and fed and allowed to grow. It starts as an untreated personality disorder....you mix that with money/power and a circle of yes-men and that's a recipe for disaster.
Respectfully, I must disagree. Even those two you mentioned could have not got to being a billionaire in the first place without exploiting people via capitalism, and certainly could not have retained the money (rather than spending it on good causes and compensating workers fairly) while still being a good person. It is a filter for the most selfish kind of person.
I don't think it's as simple as there being "good people" and "bad people", and that only the worst people are capable of extreme wealth. I think wealth just happens to some people. Some people are born into it, some stumble into it, a lot of people seek it out and a few of those people "succeed", though I'd argue even then it's mostly chance. Of the people who get substantial wealth, some give it away, some retire into a wealth cocoon and are never heard from again, some lose it, and some actively grow it because they love the feeling of gaining wealth.
I don't know if it's addictive in the same way that some chemicals are addictive, but I bet it's addictive in the same way that gambling is addictive, and wealthy people can get hooked on the feeling of "winning" more wealth the same way people get addicted to slot machines. I also think that it's not strictly wealth addiction, but power addiction, which is why some super wealthy people tend to extravagantly flaunt their power: building megaprojects, influencing or simply taking over governments, violating laws with impunity, forcing the working class to work in extreme conditions if not outright enslaving them, etc. The use of power is their drug and they won't stop themselves because they can't. Does that make them bad people? It makes them harmful people who need intervention, the same way an alcoholic needs intervention before they get behind a wheel. I feel bad for kids born into wealth, who never had the chance to just be a human without the veil of power being drawn between them and the rest of humanity. The Don Jr.'s of the world. That doesn't excuse their actions, nor does it mean that they don't need to be stopped. But I think it hurts us to think of them as fundamentally "bad" in the same way I think it's unhelpful to categorize alcoholics as "bad". The real horror is that the monsters are just like us, and treating wealth hoarders and power addicts like they're a different, less human kind of human is the same thing that they do to rationalize their own abuses.