I am in my late twenties, and I have traveled all around the world. I have met all types of people, and I have noticed that it’s the smart, cunning, and selfish, ones who achieve the most in life. They know how to play the game just right. They know that your public image matters more than who you really are.
They seek powerful and useful connections and know how exploit other people. They don’t believe in honesty and honor. Only power and money. It’s not just my social circles, but the rest of the world as well. Politicians, businessmen, actors, religious figures; all have a good public image which doesn’t reflect who they are in real life.
I am wondering, if people like them achieve so much in life and live their lives without any guilt, then why, in our society, we teach children to be good and honest, in the books for children, or in any other media targeted at them. My mom raised me to have a strong moral compass; she taught me to be kind and understanding. Unfortunately, these traits sometimes have done me more than good. I have learned to raise my defense against people that want to exploit me, but it took many trials and lots of pain to realize the need for it.
So my question is why do we encourage these objectively good moral traits if actually being such a person will do you more harm than good?
37 comments
Good people make for a better society.
Because why would we encourage children to be bad 🤦🏽♀️. For one, that makes them harder to control, for two, society would b an even shittier shithole
The world needs balance. Everything can be 100% good or 100% bad. Can you imagine a living in a world where everybody was smart, Cunning and selfish?
Because if everybody is bad, nobody wins. There always will be a few very bad people against a majority of “normal/good” people but since they use all the means a their disposal, they can get more than the others.
In my opinion, I don’t really care that those guys exist as long as I don’t know them personnally. I just focus on my little life and try to do the best around me.
Because kindness is necessary. You can act smart and cunning professionally but you need to be a good person to those close to you.
I’ve thought about this a lot of times too. I’ve always been kind and nice but I’ve also been exploited and called weak. I think that what we should teach them is that being kind is a very rare trait and that’s why we should never give up on it, but we should also learn to defend ourselves as needed so that we never feel “weak” in social situations.
About business, it’s already competitive in its nature. These people who you say have “no regrets” when they leave their house; who have come to that extend, in my opinion are sick. Yes money is nice to have, but you don’t need to destroy your whole ethics for it, nor get all of it.
you said it yourself…it’s CONNECTIONS which lead to success. making connections is in our selfish interests and there are limits to how selfish and mean you can be to actually keep and maintain connections.
Right? because if someone cannot make other people feel safe enough to keep their connections they will fail at life. the truth is, the most selfish thing you can do is be good at connecting people, and the way to be good at connecting people is actually to be at least a little bit nice. the best way to be a good connection is actually not, to exploit, too much. someone who exploits is a bad connection
a good mix of standing up for people and making people feel safe or included or whatever. the truth is, the type of pure individualism or selfishness which pushes other people away is actually self destructive. if we exclude people from who we can work together with, those limitations will hold us back
this is something we do not understand yet at a societal level but it’s true. the reason we don’t understand it is because so many of us are traumatized and dissociated but maybe someday we’ll see it, stop punishing ourselves, and let the world bloom and grow. we are afraid of our own love and compassion, we often feel like we don’t deserve it due to social conditioning, and so we push people away self destructively. we are afraid of real success
I think this begs the question of what you consider to be “achieving the most in life”. The pursuit of power and money gets you to certain outcomes, while honesty and caring for those around you gets you to different outcomes. Sometimes you can achieve material success with either or both. And there are plenty of dishonest, sh*tty people that are not successful at all, not for lack of being selfish or trying to project a certain image.
Teaching children to pursue moral values early in life is part of an upbringing that teaches that there are more important things in life than money, fame or power. Certainly not all children are taught that way, and some grow up to disagree and become honest folks and some succumb and live their whole lives trying to scam or hurt others. It’s programmed into human nature to decide for yourself which method is the most fulfilling. There’s something to be said for having street smarts and being cautious of people who are dishonest, but being overly skeptical can also suck the joy out of life. It’s a fine line.
That being said, again, any individual’s definition of success is what’s going to drive their motivations. All wealth is not made of gold.
Achieve what?
Money and power?
There are other achievements that your myopic view of the world has overlooked.
Imagine traveling all over the world and arriving at this view of achievement.
Some successful people are like you described,but the majority of successful individuals are sound people and they got to that position because they are good people and other people supported them. We teach children to be honest and seek good because that s how they have higher chances of being successful and happy in life. The people that get to be successful by making a pact with the devil are the ones who end up shooting themselves in big empty mansions or who’s kids end up hating them. The happiest people are the ones whose success comes as a byproduct of being an exceptional individual ,not as an obsessive goal.
Its about where one puts ones values. Money is worthless, most chase money but in fact they chase what money can buy. Good example: lots of singers are famous because someone else wrote their songs, their beats. A singer values fame and money(fast cars, new girls every week, drugs), a writer values creation and a quiet life, giving something to the world. Im not stating facts as A and B, there can be loads of different values in an individual. I quite often ask people where do they want to reach in life and majority has said: “I like having a routine of work, less worries etc…” – stability as value. The word “selfish” is actually survival instinct, do you want to live? If I give all away and take nothing back, how long will I survive?
You can’t have too many dishonest people, it will degrade society. You need kind and honest people to make society function properly.
Even the people who get ahead… they know they still have to put up a front of kindness and hide their skeleton’s very well.
And yeah, I have had to deal with people who have exploited me as well, and you have to learn to sniff them out and put it in their mind that if they mess with you, there will be hell too pay.
I don’t believe in good or bad. I believe that people do whatever they feel is in their best interest. The true distinction comes from what we are willing to do to achieve what we want.
I want to be rich, but I’m not willing to sell heroine to become rich, so i don’t sell heroine. The only difference between i and a heroine dealer is that they are able to morally justify selling heroine and I’m not.
being a moral person does not automatically mean that you fall behind or fall prey to the immorals.
you can lead a happy fulfilling life without exploiting or otherwise harming anyone and at the same time not being exploited by anyone.
you can stay outside the rat race. this is the message parents try to instill in their children when they raise them to be good.
if you were raised to be good but decided to enter and compete in the rat race anyway, then yes, you are at a disadvantage; but that’s the way it is, life is not a fair game. you will have to learn new “skills” later in life. your parents couldn’t have prepared you for this kind of life even if they wanted to.
one last thing: parents teaching their children to be good does not, or at least should not, mean that they teach them that others are also good. children should be thought to keep their defenses up.
This is not true success. It is just greed. We may over do it with pushing honesty and goodness, but I would not trade my good character for anything.
Because as a society, being good to each other advances the society further down the road than being assholes.
Because life isn’t all about getting ahead because once you get ahead then what?
Those who cut in a queue benefit from existence of the queue and others following it. If all start cutting, no queue exist, thus no one benefits.
The enforcer of the queue would want to punish all that cut the queue and will try to do so but the main aim to make sure people know there are consequences to being caught.
A conman can con as by default people trust other people and follow the golden rule.
When I lie on my death bed I want a mind that isn’t full of guilt, sadness and regret that is why I choose to attempt to be good, kind, compassionate person. I could do all the things you talk about to get ahead but that would actually make me very lonely and unhappy so makes no sense to do 🤷🏼♀️
How does it get you ahead in life.
If you see societies goals as the goals to strive for, you might have a bad time
Your question has two flawed premises:
1) the assumption of what a society is meant to do. It sounds like you’re assuming society “wants” to teach/shape as many individual people as possible into millionaires or something.
2) the assumption that you can identify specific metrics for what it means to be “far ahead” in life.
Because your two assumptions aren’t necessarily true, the apparent contradiction you see is only actually a contradiction until you change your viewpoint on 1) how a society works, and 2) what it means to be “successful” for an individual person.
This is a bit of simplification, but imagine a group of 10 people. If everyone cares for everyone else equally, then each person will have 9 people caring about them. If one person decides to be selfish and only care about themselves, then that person will have 10 people caring about them, and everyone else will have 8. That person will have an advantage, while everyone else will still be fine, though worse off.
Now lets say 2 people decided to be selfish. Those people will have 9 people caring about them (themselves plus the 8 non-selfish people), and everyone else will be left 7 people caring about them.
At 3 selfish people, those 3 have 8 people caring about them, and the non-selfish people only have 6, and now everyone worse off than if no one was selfish, and it only gets worse the more selfish people you get.
The same reason they teach kids about Martin Luther King JR and his “I have a dream” speech about positivity and unity instead of Malcolm X’s speech of “by any means necessary.”
If everyone is selfish we are all doom. People need to be selfless to make the world work. Is it better for the individual to be selfish, yes, but that’s being selfish. Being selfless means you’re not focusing on yourself. Your not being self centered.
Moreover, there are many, many kids who are being raised to be selfish. Just because your Mom raised you to be selfless doesn’t mean everyone is. And, if you’re talking about school books it’s because of what you said, public image.
I hate to spoil it for people but a lot of teachers are teaching kids what they want to teach kids. They’ll do the required material and then do the material they want to teach. They will share the politically correct material because of public image.
Point being, people encourage kids these good moral traits because it looks better for their public image and kids are also taught “bad” moras all the time. Kids learn the most from witnessing than listening. Kids are exposed to a lot of dark aspects of our world as they always have. [+]
People such as that are fundamentally alone. Genuine and mutual connection with others leads to happiness far deeper and more enduring than big houses and fast cars. When selfish people become weak they are devoured, not helped. Also, most people are not clever enough to avoid a reputation for betrayal and selfishness. It is common for a person’s treachery to come home to roost, sometimes brutally. Hurting others without guilt is not something you can teach, also–you’re either born lacking that element of human nature or you aren’t, and most have no choice but to feel guilt.
It seems that your idea of “far ahead in life” is determined by the accumulation of money or material wealth. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, although like you said, playing nice will somewhat stem the flow.
Humans are inherently selfish, as are most forms of life, it is just survival instinct. True altruistic behaviour is seldom seen in nature. Everything we do is to benefit the self. Even giving to others. I occasionally buy a lottery ticket and dream of what id do with a few million dollars. All i can think of is how awesome it would be to be able to buy my whole family new cars, surprise my friends or a girl I like with a six month holiday to paradise, or just give unexpected wads of cash to people in my life who need and would appreciate it. On the surface this may appear to be selfless or altruistic behaviour, but really, im doing it for me. Im doing it because it makes me feel good. Im doing it to impress those around me and then bask in the warm glow of appreciation and wantedness.
To be human, to be alive, is to be selfish. Its unavoidable. You just have to strike a balance, and I think that being taught from a young age that sharing is caring, and to be a good person, helps achieve that balance.
Because mutual cooperation leads to better outcomes over time with playing Tit for Tat against selfish cheaters who deviate constantly.
There are a lot of experiments on this in Game Theory and the Japanese drama Liar Game has a very interesting way of showing this too, with the main character being extremely naive and trying to cooperate while her partner punishes those who try to take advantage of that.
you can be successful & be a good person, you just have to be rly smart & trust no one. 😉
It might seem smart but it isn’t truly smart in the long run. It’s smarter for people to be kind, caring, helpful, and so on. We wouldn’t have a society with so much to offer if people weren’t working together and being kind. If everyone acted like those people, we would have an awful living conditions overall.
On the other hand, the world wouldn’t really be the same without these shitty people either. A lot of progress is often based on egoism. People become innovative because they want more. If you look at a lot of the peaceful tribes that exist today, they don’t really progress because they don’t really need to. You have so much cool research being done by good scientists. But where does their funding come from? Selfish people who want money. Somehow we just seem to work well better when working together.
Also, a lot of people don’t teach children to be good and honest. A lot of parents are proud of their kids for being bullies because they want them to get the most out of everything and game the system. However, if you want to get philosophical about why children’s books and media is PURELY about being the good guy and stuff and being nice. I would wager that it’s because kids NEED goodness to survive, at least the first few years. They need love from their parents and kindness. Because they are dependents. Like unless you want to raise a serial killer I guess, there is really no benefit to showing them horror and violence in books and media while they’re young. Traumatizing children is pointless. A lot of those stories teaches them to survive in the world by adapting to society. And society expects you to be good.
There are also PLENTY of super successful GOOD people. You can network and make connections with other good successful people. The near-famous titles you are talking about, are just generally harder to achieve as being good because it involves having to cater to so many bad people. And if there is already too many bad people in an industry, it’s difficult to clear that up.
Also, as the world is complicated, the higher you go, the more difficult the dilemmas, and thus you kind of need shitty evil people to make the Sophie’s Choice decisions you aren’t willing to make. An evil person knows how to solve the trolley dilemma because they think about what is most profitable.
Game theory.
We will punish injustice even at a cost to ourselves.
Cunning and selfish behavior only succeeds when all eventualities and are considered and no unintended consequences catch up…
Good morals are a very big part of a functioning society. If everyone was taught bad morals, the society would be full of backstabbing people only looking to exploit others. This would ultimately lead to downfall because human society is built on and advanced by hard work and cooperation, not trying to “play the system” and exploit others. Also, such a society would be a very shitty place to live, believe me.
I also think that you’re conflating two things. Having good morals doesn’t mean that you have to be vulnerable to being exploited. Those are two different things. Moral does not equal naive. It’s entirely possible (and recommended) to be both a moral person and being able to spot foul play quickly. Also, you should be grateful to your mom for teaching you good morals, that’s one of the best things a parent can do for their child.
Is t it obvious? They don’t want competition
“Far ahead in life” isn’t what you think it is. We sometimes have a skewed view of what it means to win at all costs, that is, selfishly. Even though people may outwardly express how happy they are to have achieved it, winning selfishly is a trap. Because you don’t feel deep down that you deserve it, yet the people around you are oblivious to your sadness, and your frustration that you still don’t feel satisfied with your victory. Ultimately the people you have around you respect you for your winnings, but not your person, and so they emulate you (not having compassion) even though you know that what you did isn’t worthy of being emulated.
And all the while you smile and wave because if you don’t, people will call you ungrateful, or will take advantage of your honesty.
In this sense, kindness, and goodness, are a shield. Yes, popular culture sometimes “cringes” at “good” behaviour because popular culture is in itself a machine that glorifies every selfish aspect of our society. But by ignoring outside influences and focusing on what you believe to be a better way to be, you are like an explorer in the dark, seeking a way out of a horrible cycle of exploitation and fear. People who are obsessed with “goodness” tend to fight with sadness because of their goals, but in the long run this makes them smarter about emotions than your average, impulsive, greedy person.
It is not true that pursuing kindness causes harm. You can’t know the dangers that you have avoided by being “cringe”. Think of all the selfish, judgemental people that don’t give kindness a second thought. They literally look the other way.
But in the meanwhile the kind person is quietly plotting their revenge. They know there is a reason for them to be this way. But instead of exploiting every opportunity to get ahead, they bide their time. Eventually, their preparation will come in handy. Because somebody will look at them and say “this is what I need right now”, and instead of worrying that you will be selfish, or unreliable, they will look at you and feel at ease. It’s good to be kind.
Because selfishness works short term, to have long lasting relationships with people and a more fulfilling life being generous and considerate of others is the way to go. Nice guys finish last but strong essentially, the best thing to do is to pursue something to benefit others whenever possible never worrying about getting things in return then you can prioritize the ones that do in the future. Being generous never means that you need to help everyone all the time just means that you share with those around you and you get to choose that over time. I would rather have a modest life with close friends than a selfish life with money and popularity.
Would you rather be an awful person and rich, with nothing but fake relationships? Or an honest, good person, who may not be wealthy but actually has meaningful connections?
(Disclaimer: I do think there is a middle ground. There are ways to be cunning, as well as ways to put yourself first, without being an entirely fake, immoral person.)
You’re not crazy to notice this. It is my honest belief that everyone is motivated only by self interest. If you take a look at just about any “selfless act” you can think of, try to press yourself to answer the question “If this were motivated by self interest, what could that interest be?” It could be many things: to be liked, to be regarded as a “good person,” to save the life of someone because they desire their company, affection, or admiration, or even because they desire those of someone else who will hear the story.
Following that same logical path, I believe that people try to train (teach the young, shame the older) people to “be good” so that they can manipulate their behavior for their own benefit. Many of those benefits are at least held in high regard, for example “Because that’s the kind of world I want to live in.” But even that, if you notice, is about “what I want.” That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to teach or shame, I am merely trying to attribute it to what I claim it’s motive to be. Manipulating people for the benefit of society as a whole is not in any way regarded as a negative thing, but we shouldn’t be shy about calling it what it is. We teach a kid not to shit on the floor because we don’t want to clean it up every time or get nasty looks from people in the grocery store, it’s selfishly motivated and no one would call that a bad thing.
It is extremely important not to be so “good” that you allow others to trample over you. You have to know when to say “I don’t care about what you want, my desire takes precedent.” Because if you don’t, someone else will do that to you. Your job is not to be everyone else’s stepping stone. So you really have to balance everything.
Help others, it’s okay if it’s for selfish reasons. Don’t let others profit from your intelligence while you live in filth, and if you’re not careful that happens to a great number of us. Be motivated by self interest, it’s okay to be. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you aware of why you do things, that’s all. Those things are very often for mutual benefit, that’s not a bad thing.
The best person you can be is simply to not trample on someone, for your own benefit, who did not deserve it. You will have to hurt people in life because there will be others who will hurt you if you don’t (I’m not referring to physical harm but I suppose nothing is ever ruled out). Balance your desire to be considered a good person with your desire to succeed in life, and then you will be “a good person.”
That is if you value power and money more than anything else. People with power or money may also be miserable. Everyone goal is different. So why not instill good morals of you can choose?
The same reason I teach my students about nutrition and then stop to get a pint of ice cream on the way home. 😂 We want kids to become better than we are!
I really wanna jump in the conversation because I feel the exact same, and have been saying this for sometime now.
I’ve noticed the most selfish and self-centered people seem to be the most popular and well liked people on the planet. From childhood we’re told to be selfless and kind to others, but I’ve noticed just how untrue this is in the real world. Everyone who I’ve ever know who’s self-centered is doing extremely well in life. Make lots of money, has a lot of friends (+followers on social media) it’s really bizarre. I thought I was the only one who noticed this oddity.