I think that empathy and sympathy are sorely lacking in people these days. I’m not sure why, if its violent media or something else that makes people inured to feeling the suffering of others, or even caring.
Also I think that the most kind people I’ve ever known were also among the most intelligent. It seems that one hallmark of intelligence is the ability to feel sympathy and to be kind to others. And that makes sense, since it’s also a way of assuring you get what you need out of the situation as well.
I blame our rigged, unrestrained market capitalist economy. You can’t tether at half or more of people’s waking hours to competing against each other to have their basic needs met and not expect that to infect the broader culture.
It stops us from being a society. It encourages us to be a bunch of rugged individuals at one another’s throats trying to beat each other over paper.
It MIGHT be rigged and certainly is a rampant capitalist economy, but having been to places in Mexico where people literally live under cardboard boxes and use open trenches for sewers, I can honestly say it isn’t entirely rigged in a bad way for most us here. I mean, we do see SOME trickle down benefits of being a capitalist country.
My older brother and his wife, on paper, have about $21 million in the bank. And they didn’t themselves exploit anyone but themselves to get there - my older brother got his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and went to work for a major U.S. firm, and so did his wife, and they earned well over six figures for several decades. But they also invested well along the way.
My cousin is very rich because he sort of accidentally invented a way to track packages and Fed Ex bought out his ideas. My other cousin owns the most productive cement plant in Colorado, so he has money up the wazoo also.
I’m only using those as examples because it shows that you CAN get ahead in a capitalist economy, even if it is often rigged in favor of those who already have money.
People do that here. There isn’t a population center here where there isn’t a massive tent city or cities within it.
In my opinion, a society where some people live in gluttony while others starve is worse than a nation where all struggle, because a society would divide resources equitably. We’re worse because we have more than enough to feed, cloth, and educate everyone, but a few thousand sociopath families want to live like modern Pharoahs, that makes us a lot worse than a nation ethically that simply doesn’t have enough food, homes, or educational resources, because impoverished nations don’t choose to have a massive underclass as we do.
Getting ahead in a capitalist economy is more about birth lottery than anything, a few get lucky ingratiating themselves to the sociopathic monsters that own this system that we should be dragging out into the streets and letting homeless encampments, their greatest victims, decide what to do with, but our brand is supposedly upward mobility, and we’re far from the top of that list in the world.
I think that empathy and sympathy are sorely lacking in people these days. I’m not sure why, if its violent media or something else that makes people inured to feeling the suffering of others, or even caring.
Also I think that the most kind people I’ve ever known were also among the most intelligent. It seems that one hallmark of intelligence is the ability to feel sympathy and to be kind to others. And that makes sense, since it’s also a way of assuring you get what you need out of the situation as well.
I blame our rigged, unrestrained market capitalist economy. You can’t tether at half or more of people’s waking hours to competing against each other to have their basic needs met and not expect that to infect the broader culture.
It stops us from being a society. It encourages us to be a bunch of rugged individuals at one another’s throats trying to beat each other over paper.
It MIGHT be rigged and certainly is a rampant capitalist economy, but having been to places in Mexico where people literally live under cardboard boxes and use open trenches for sewers, I can honestly say it isn’t entirely rigged in a bad way for most us here. I mean, we do see SOME trickle down benefits of being a capitalist country.
My older brother and his wife, on paper, have about $21 million in the bank. And they didn’t themselves exploit anyone but themselves to get there - my older brother got his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and went to work for a major U.S. firm, and so did his wife, and they earned well over six figures for several decades. But they also invested well along the way.
My cousin is very rich because he sort of accidentally invented a way to track packages and Fed Ex bought out his ideas. My other cousin owns the most productive cement plant in Colorado, so he has money up the wazoo also.
I’m only using those as examples because it shows that you CAN get ahead in a capitalist economy, even if it is often rigged in favor of those who already have money.
People do that here. There isn’t a population center here where there isn’t a massive tent city or cities within it.
In my opinion, a society where some people live in gluttony while others starve is worse than a nation where all struggle, because a society would divide resources equitably. We’re worse because we have more than enough to feed, cloth, and educate everyone, but a few thousand sociopath families want to live like modern Pharoahs, that makes us a lot worse than a nation ethically that simply doesn’t have enough food, homes, or educational resources, because impoverished nations don’t choose to have a massive underclass as we do.
Getting ahead in a capitalist economy is more about birth lottery than anything, a few get lucky ingratiating themselves to the sociopathic monsters that own this system that we should be dragging out into the streets and letting homeless encampments, their greatest victims, decide what to do with, but our brand is supposedly upward mobility, and we’re far from the top of that list in the world.