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

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.

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.

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.

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.