4mo ago

How do we accept that evil people do better in this world?

It really seems honesty and kindness get you nowhere.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours volunteering. I donated money to good causes when I had it. I spoke up for others.

But I have nothing for it. No one will wish me happy birthday this year. No one will ever do any of the things that I did for others for me.

While evil people succeed. Narcissists can charm others into playing along with their world, people who do their jobs poorly will keep them.

Hard work, honesty, really any of those “positive” values seem to get you nowhere in life.

56 comments

The evil people you see succeeding in the news are outliars. They're the ones who were smart, lucky, or some combination of the two.
- In my personal life, evil people have pretty consistently succeeded. All that bullshit about “it gets better” I was fed in high school was a lie. My bullies can afford a mattress to sleep on.
  
  Put on your Machiavellian goggles and look at what success is and how to min/max or find an exploit before it's patched. Evil people do all the time. The question becomes - is the system rigged against being good? Is being good the expectation and so a way to herd rule followers? At this point. What is evil? The most selfish people seem to find their way to the top because they treat every connection as a transaction to further themselves. The take away is that true social relationships are economic friction which slows and traps us in our socioeconomic position. Without the encumbrance of pathos and community a person can get further in life.
  The only government factor to this is that a group of people, a community, can work together to thwart the selfish individual. Times like these it sure seems that the rift between our communities is a way to distract us from stopping truly selfish people.

Maybe they succeed, but are you sure they are happier than you?
What is your definition of success? And while you are thinking about it, where does it come from? Is it valid?
- My definition of success is getting to sleep on a bed and not needin to drink to sleep
  
  Your definition sounds very reasonable and I am really sorry it is not met. I would just invite you to reflect on the fact that many "evil" successful-looking people may have a nice bed, but still drink themselves to sleep.

Honesty and kindness have nothing to do with "doing better" one way or the other. So you may as well be honest and kind and at least not mess with anybody else's day.
You don't do those things to get a reward. That's Christian nonsense. There's no god to give you treats for not being an asshole.
It's still better to not be an asshole, though. It feels nice, and there's no advantage to assholeyness, either. I'd be slightly worried about having the tendency to think that assholes being successful means you get successful by being an asshole. Not only are you just as likely to fail (probably a bit more, becasue nobody likes an asshole, so it's harder to get people to help you or be nice to you), but then you'd be an asshole and have to deal with the emotional fallout from that.
In all seriousness, plenty of people out there justify their own self-centered tendencies with this exact train of thought. It's broken and bad and demontrably not true. Don't be an asshole. And that includes both to stop expecting a cosmic reward for being nice and to stop thinking that being nice precludes you from having to find effective, ethical strategies to get what you need or want.
That make sense? I think it makes sense.
- I’m not expecting cosmic tit for tat.
  I’m just wanting to sleep on a fucking mattresss considering that I ve spent most of my life trying to help ofhers
  
  See, but that's not how that works.
  You expect to sleep in a mattress because that's a basic, common need for people that the entirety of society should be sorting out for everybody. You should have living and sleeping arrangements regardless of how much of an asshole you are. You spending life helping others has nothing to do with having a mattress to sleep on... and it shouldn't. It should be universal.
  So helping others and kindess and well-being has nothing to do with that. There are poor and destitute and homeless assholes as well, unfortunately. Plenty of perfectly nice people are doing just fine, or better than that. Being mad that the ways society or life failed you despite helping others is expecting cosmic tit for tat by definition.
  So my argument is to stop blaming the helping of others for the misfortune and start dealing with the misfortune directly. Which in you scenario sounds like it has more to do with society, how it's structured and how it should have helped you that with anything you did, if we're at the level of talking about not having a mattress to sleep on.
  For what it's worth, I don't know when your birthday is... but happy birthday. Whatever is keeping you down, materially or mentally I hope it gets better.

Spite
I really don't care about the universe any more. I just keep doing what I can, when I can, for as long as I can just to throw two middle fingers at eternity.
I do my best to help others, fight back on things when I can and donate and support others who are fighting.
And I'll do that for as long as I live.
- Spite would be fine if I had a fucking mattress and wasn’t in the position wher I might ha ve to sell myself to 80 years old again

The realities of life i think. Most likely why close knit communities are cherished, as those things can actually mean something. Im speaking as someone in the same boat, royally screwed over by the unscrupulous.
- My problem is that my family rejected me, so there really is no “community.” There’s never been a place where I’ve felt welcome or wanted.

Framing. That's all it is.
Evil will thrive for a time, good will thrive for a time, ultimately that's not up to you. What others do and how they are or are not rewarded is not up to you. What does it matter anyway? Those who successfully do evil will die and be forgotten anyway, their actions having as little consequence as anyone else alive today.
You say you do your best to do good things? Great, focus on that. Because that is up to you. Whether in poverty or in absurd wealth, what matters is what you do with what you have. Evil people do evil things, it's to be expected. Why would you frustrate yourself with ignorant people acting as expected? And though it may be unjust, why compound it with anger over what you can't control?
Afterall, wouldn't you rather be governed by your commitment to bringing what good you can into the world instead of being consumed with frustration of evil acting like itself?
- I want to be able to sleep comfortably and eat
  
  Of course, but it's never truly guaranteed for anyone, is it? I've been in poverty before, starved and homeless. Today I'm a Punk that got lucky, and I recognize I could just as easily lose it all tomorrow. Ultimately, it's not up to me what life throws at me at any given moment. I only have control over my reaction. I can tell you from personal experience that material security is not what primarily builds up stability of the mind.
  I'm not some jackass that's going to tell you that basic necessities don't matter at all, rather that you've got to accept that they're never guaranteed. I won't spew some bullshit that evil people doing evil things isn't really all that bad, but rather that you need to accept the reality we all share. Life will throw bullshit after bullshit at you, but it will never dictate how you react to the bullshit. Your material conditions are forever a slave to circumstance, but your mind cannot be conquered by anyone but you.

I don't think they really do. Narcissist's and sociopath's are eat overrepresented in prison. Most of the people who succeed are just terrorist regular ass people. While "dark triad" types may be overrepresented in the C-suite it's not nearly on the level that ilthey are over represented in the cell block. Being nice, being interested and being dependable get you most of the way. The rest is just luck.
- None of it has ever gotten me anywhere lol.
  The people who have treated me like subhuman trash are happy. I sleep on the fucking floor.
  
  Being good or evil has nothing to do with affording ones basic needs.

i’ve been wondering that since being bullied in middle school.
seems like the jocks just come out on top in this timeline.
- I got bullied in middle school to the point I attempted and instead of getting help I got sent to a troubled teen place where I was sexually abused and the took the viola away from me
  
  jesus friend, i’m sorry that happened to you.
  i just got beat on hand had some clothes ruined.

Check out Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Volunteer, donate and speak up for people around you that would do the same for your community, without doing harm to other communities.

I don't believe they do that well. Whatever reasons someone has for consistently treating others badly are likely reasons for being fucked up internally too. Considering the most famously successful shitheads, there's really no way those people are having an especially good time.
Hard work, honesty, really any of those “positive” values seem to get you nowhere in life.
Materially sure, nothing guarantees it's fair or just. The bottom rung of material success trumps a lot of stuff for how your life is going to be. If you don't have that, I think you are entitled to be a little selfish for the sake of surviving and taking care of yourself. Past that, it's negative all around.

I get where you are coming from, but also, why would you want to accept this? Part of what keeps me going is knowing that I don't.
- Because I sleep on the floor Ina shitty apartment and dig out coins to get pasta so I can fucking eat

Understanding that life is not fair and that it isn't designed to give you anything. We designed it this way and therefore it's our fault. Accept the things you can change and things you can't or forever be obsessed with changing the impossible.

Im not so sure hard work is a positive value. I feel its part of a moral framework to trap people. Like the eternal pursuit of more. I think many of those evil people you see are in that trap. tRump put in kennedy who is stopping research into mrna techniques which given their age would likely benefit them more than most but seeing personal financial funny money numbers are to important to em. Heck tRump could have ended his life as a minor rich celebrity but instead will be massively infamous. These are not fates I would want for myself. I mean I might not want my own fate for myself but I know I would rather be Tom Anderson than elon musk.

You don't. You buy guns and genocide.
That was sarcasm, but honestly that's the only way to get rid of evil.
I don't think good people ever had the heart to try it though.
- I lost my right to buy guns recently, because reporting a troubled teen facility for physical abuse is “stalking.” Funny how a civil trial, where you have no right to a lawyer, means you lose your rights.
  
  I didn't say anything about rights... "Rights" are there as an illusion to keep people under a master.
  ...and look around... We know how masters treat humanity... Most of them didn't get where they are from being submissive and completely lawful. And they have gotten to positions to manipulate common people who have hearts. To the point they can make those common people be evil for them.
  Just understand it's a real hard game.
  
  Very frankly, there's no situation in which you'd lose your right to own firearms just by reporting credible allegations about a healthcare facility to law enforcement or regulatory authorities. We can only assume there's quite a bit more to this story

At the very bottom of every machination in society is "Which side is equipped to do violence for their goals and has the will to exercise it?" The people who would oppose you can't do that if they're dead. It's just math.

In nature, there is no good or evil. There is no morals. All that matters is what benefits growth and reproduction. And "evil" behavior does benefit growth and reproduction. So it's all just nature. Not only our nature but nature as a whole. Eat or get eaten.

When's you're birthday? If you don't mind giving out that kind of information

Throughout the 4 million-year history of mammalian evolution, those species and individuals who exhibited the greediest most selfish brazen behavior have been the ones to eat, survive, and breed. Generosity and other socially beneficial behaviors were not the norm. A sabre tooth tiger that gave his pray to another tiger didn't eat and didn't survive. It's only when there is a rampant surplus that organisms become philanthropic. But that was rarely the case, and certainly not the case in our current world.
It became such an important trait for survival that females of many species sought out the biggest and baddest mates to ensure survival of the offspring. There is still a little bit of that left over in us humans today: some women's desire for the "bad boy".
Your best bet is to make peace with the fact that honesty and kindness often bring no intrinsic reward other than how you feel about your own approach to life. When they taught you as a youngster that good always prevails and pious living gets you ahead, they were feeding you a load of horseshit. Living a life like Mr. Rogers may get you love and respect. But being an asshole gets you what you want and need. Think of the biggest assholes in the news daily; they're getting what they want (for the most part).
When you say you have nothing to show for it, that's not quite true. Maybe you have nothing tangible. But you have the satisfaction of knowing you have lived a kind life putting others before yourself.
The world is changing. It's heating up, and dying. Resources are dwindling. Those who have the means and the resources are grabbing all that they can. Ever see those news clips of frenzied people looting stores after a hurricane? That's what's happening now. The corporatists and oligarchs are squeezing and extracting as much value from the unwashed millions as they can before the whole system collapses. We are moving into a time of humanity where only the most driven will survive.
It's time for you to move into a 95/5 plan. That is where you spend at least 95% of your time working to your own benefit. Not someone else's. You don't have to be an asshole. But you can be a bit of a dick. Be a charmer. Pad up that resume with AI slop. Take advantage of every lead and opportunity. Barge your way through life and if you step on few toes in the process don't sweat it. Nice guys finish last.
The other 5% you can volunteer or be philanthropic, but never if it negatively affects your master 95% plan.
ps. happy birthday.

One source I've personally found that tries to tackle this subject is Psalm 73 from the Bible. Definitely a difficult topic.
- Frankly, and all due respect to people who find solace in religion, expecting a god to reward you for ethical behavior is how you get into this warped frame of mind in the first place. It's a lot easier to understand ethical behavior being a neutral, not-correlated thing to wellbeing without bringing a deity into it at all.
  Which then frees a surprising amount of mental and emotional bandwidth to wrap your head around all the very good reasons ethical behavior is still the better option, frankly.
  Even if there was a god, and even if it was the god of the bible this would hold up. Surely you're in a better position by Christianity's values if your ethics are unrelated to worldly rewards of any kind. Being rewarded postmortem sure sounds like a bit of a scam to me, but it seems to necessitate the exact same ethical framework as a world with no god. Which I don't think is accidental, but has the advantage that we don't need to agree on the existence of a god to agree on what ethical behavior looks like and why it's... well, ethical.
- I wish god would speak to me. I’ve sought him before, and the people who pretend to follow his words. I would love my shepherd to comfor me.

Then turn to the dark side. If your current way of life doesn't benefit you, then change it. Nothing wrong with being more egoistical. Life has shown you that karma isn't real, so you might as well profit like others do.

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