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rule #1: be kind
I've been saying this, on Lemmy and IRL.
The other thing I've become adamant about is, if we want honest politicians who aren't nasty personalities, it begins with seeing dishonesty and nastiness in ourselves, doing the shadow work and deep healing to address wounded inner child, and modeling and expecting healthy behaviors in our children.
Why would anyone want to change when the rewards for being awful are so good? Doing the things you described not only make advancement in a dark society nearly impossible, but it takes a personal toll on the psyche and perspective of the person attempting bettering themselves and the world around them. I say this as someone doing the work.
Maybe it makes achieving personal things in a dark society harder, but it strongly helps to improve society itself. And it's much more pleasant to live in the opposite of a dark society. A better society is not a zero sum game
Healing is hard and uncomfortable in the short to medium term, but in the long term it's always preferred
Imagining humanity as one organism to which you can either contribute positively or which you can actively damage helps for me.
Or just believing in karma in its simplest form: you reap what you sow.
Doing the work is exploring and sitting with the uncomfortable feelings, going beyond the obvious stem to find the root. I don't like it either, but it gets better, then worse, then better for a while. Sometimes therapy is necessary.
Yeah. It mostly sucks at least for me. A cornerstone of a lot of my personal crap is lack of self worth which makes improvement pretty tough. I've been in therapy for over 5 years now, and understanding concepts is much easier than applying them. Of course that's just my experience.
That's a lot more common than you would imagine. You're worth it though. Sometimes you may not feel like it. Show up for yourself, anyway.
You're right. I know my experience isn't uncommon and that's unfortunate. Thank you fur the kind words.
You're so welcome. I've been there, and in therapy off and on for a lot of years. We're in it together.
The threat of groups out of the normal population correcting them, or in worst case firing them, for not kept promises or derailing plans, can keep them from seeing the population as nothing more than numbers and themselves as a superior in-group.
That's why i think that Swiss' initiative/referendum right is a prerequisite for a longtime-stable democratic system. I often see that in germany, where politicians do what they want and people complain that they lie in elections anyway. While here, even the president can take the bus to the Bundeshaus.
The biggest influence on society for most people is probably what you described and then raise children in a mostly trauma free environment.
That's what I meant when I said modeling healthy behavior. Mother/father wounds still happen, we're still human, but even in the healthiest households, weaning, toilet training, separation, learning table manners is stressful for little ones.
Beautifully said.
100% but that work is very difficult and for some people impossible to do. I watched an interview with a psychologist who had a former mobster as a client (not named Tony). The guy was in his 80s and had been retired from the game for years but kept having nightmares about bloody babies. He was unable to connect his work as a hit man to this nightmares, and always said that he was fine with his occupation.
Sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies are rewarded by positions of power
For me, seeing corruption and inequality lead to major depression, but I figured out early I didn't want to cause harm.
What hit hard is learning deception and exploitation is baked into the system.
You mean capitalism.
Yes, but no. If there were other systems dominating today, I would argue those conditions always coincide. But yeah, capitalism is the only one today
Yeah dark triad personality traits definitely thrived in pre industrial political and economic systems as well
What is curious to me is why billionaires don't start massive civil projects that would get their bronze statue in every state park?
Musk had several opportunities, except he then had to figure out a way to monetize it so it profited him.
They're insanely disconnected and selfish. Yes, all of them.
Previous society’s ultra-wealthy were raised socipathic but with some form of social contract as well. Even if it was completely a classist version of the contract with them at the top, there was some form of duty to society - not necessarily the individuals in it. IOW they’d build an orphanage but exploit the hell out of individual workers. Bonus points if you enacted some large public work like libraries or schools with your name on it so people would know it was you that did it.
Now? They get fuck you money, so fuck you. Sure, they engage in philanthropy to their kid’s charity to lighten the tax burden and build their kids’ fortunes. Donate to prestigious universities to build a wing on to the campus that drives tuition even higher with new staffing and maintenance costs. Build bunker mansions for themselves. Support far right government that gives them tax breaks and other deregulation that makes them richer, because fuck you money isn’t enough.
Musk is going the Genghis Khan route. In 500 years he wants to be genetic ancestor to the majority of humans. To accomplish this goal he must:
Have many children (we're seeing this)
Encourage his children to provide him with grandchildren (we see his reaction to his trans child who is therefore unlikely to give him biological grandchildren)
Maximize the amount of wealth and assets he earns in his lifetime so that all his children and grandchildren can each be obscenely rich as well, thereby increasing their chances of having many descendants
Leverage the capitalist system to give him and his descendants as much control over the means of production and the levers of power as possible, thereby making them more likely to survive societal upheavals
This will give him the posthumous status he desires the most, as people are more likely to forgive historic wrongs if those wrongs were committed by their own ancestors. He can be as horrible as he wants and still be remembered in a good light if the only people around to remember him are people for whom he is intertwined with their own sense of identity.
He expects the future to slowly reduce the amount of children poor people can have as the global population drops due to obvious and intractible economic pressures.
in a system where money is the only goal, those with the most start believing they are also smarter than everyone else. mostly luck and mass hoarding opportunities at the expense of everything else. follower counts also have similar effects when they are the only goal. buy the follower system and just edit counts until satisfied. never enough. hoarding anything eventually buries the hoarder. dark is a general term for a hoarding fixation. change the goal and they will fixate on the new goal.
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“Dark” personality thrives in societies ~~with corruption and inequality~~
irrelevant qualifiers
A healthy society expels those types
No, it treats them and keeps them out of positions of power. Expelling them just creates criminals.
But democracies really need to recognize the threat that sociapathic and psychopathic disorders pose to the system.
A healthy society
Name five