A society in which it’s everyone for themselves, that refuses to care for one another, is no society at all. Then everyone acts shocked and horrified at someone who understandably snaps, like modern western culture doesn’t run entirely on schadenfreude.
That was the crux of the idea of a social contract, which is long dead in the US. Now people line up to revel in the suffering of their fellow citizens with “well you were stupid to do xyz in life, so you deserve your suffering haha.”
While I agree nobody is technically OBLIGATED to aspire to be better, empathetic, etc…: how is this fundamentally different from the view of a Jeff Bezos or an Elon Musk? At the very least, it seems you can’t simultaneously complain that things are shitty AND actively decide to live completely selfishly.
Being the punching bag doing the right thing won’t fix our perverse incentive structures.
Look at Obama, spent two terms trying to combat sociopathic hate and greed with love and compromise. Legislatively, he got his ass handed to him for his troubles.
This society has institutionally set perverse incentive structures that has bled into to the culture. Greed is literally aspirational. Empathy as a career leads to poverty. It is wrong. Very wrong. I hesitate to say evil because evil is subjective but it fits my definition of it.
It will never improve when we reward people who do the opposite, the Musks and Bezoses as you say, and actively punish those that give of themselves and empathize in more than words with their neighbors.
My point is, we have a lot of people with nothing, who will never have anything by design, who will always be hurt more by our system as it is by trying to be the change they want to see in the world.
If we all decided to treat society with the same disdain the Musks and every other billionaire does, at the very least society would collapse and thered be the possibility to MAYBE make a better one, instead of propagating this miserable, exploitative chain of suffering in perpetuity.
As it is, we have our owner class telling us to play by the same self-serving rules they and their ilk bribed their middle managers in Washington to enact. Playing their game by the rules they set but don’t themselves follow will just lead to generation after generation of suffering underclasses.
The people being hurt need to stop enabling their own oppressors and break the machines they’re paid almost nothing to run, or their children and their children’s children will suffer even worse.
Realized while writing that it is spurring me into a textual diaherrhia so please note wall of text ahead, which probably veers off into a rant.
If I had to surmmarise into tldr:
The system™ feels exploitative, and unless you partake in the exploiting then one must feel like their value systems are useless because it is not bringing in value.
Also rant about personal country government that seem to be failing upwards
End tldr
I read what was written and somehow felt a need to express, so apologies upfront.
I am not an American, but I have lived a life trying to do what I thought is the right or correct thing. It has left me with more regret and resentment. And as an observer I think it is more a societal problem.
I mean doing whatever the fuck you want and not only getting away with it but be rewarded seems to be in the loop of positive feedback. Like why suffer and do the right thing when you can take advantage of another and get rewarded.
The whole corporate monopoly-type culture isn’t only an American problem, just have to look at the world where a narrative or agenda causes so much suffering.
Lets just take my country for example. South African, we have been sitting with a electricity issue for going on almost 20 years because there is only 1 power supplier and that is government mandated monopoly. The power issue concerns were addressed to government before it was an issue and they figuritively sat and twiddled their thumbs until it got to a point where they needed to stick their thumbs just a bit out their asses.
Added to that, we had an ex-president that is mired is so much scandal to the point where one( of many) of his great " achievements " is participating in state capture by selling sub-substandard/ ghost electrical supply contracts to special interest individuals for personal gain.
And to this day is playing the lawyer-long game to avoid any consequence add to that you get politicians saying we should leave him alone he is an old man.
So in essence it feels like a big : fuck the country, i got my own, you people deal with the shit I profitted off, not my problem.
And although I cannot equate to the struggles of minorities, I can relate a bit as I live with the a country that enforces quotas and it is shit feeling knowing no matter how hard you work or how well you do you cannot advance when a company is pushing government agenda in a bid to say " Look we are doing the thing, we are empowering"
I mean things had to be done with the history of our country, I wish it could have been done with a broader and more encompassing economical structure to ensure that the majority could actually be empowered and be able to uplift the country to allow it to flourish to allow it to open opportunities for all. But unfortunately the current economic system and structure has it sitting in a country with 32 % unemployment.
I mean maybe the goverment is trying, but they have piss poor accountability as there is constant news of corruption, mafia-like intimidation, mismanagement, incompetence, never-ending joke of broken promises and lately seems a constant rise in prices - which seems to be a world problem too. I am honestly surprised the country holds itself together, I suppose that is because of the taxman is a functioning government entity that collects its due and guess there is enough competent people trying to keep the boat afloat in the background
It is like if you don’t know someone or have some influence you are stuck to the whims of the system and I personally feel there is an attitude that those above will personally do as little as possible and rely on those below to pick up the slack. I don’t want to harp about ‘oh woe is me’ just feel that almost everywhere there are problems and unfortunately the structure of power demands that those in power must exert power or coerce others to maintain it.
This is probably coming from someone who has been broken by a system coming in with naivete, so please take it as such, I am relatively fortunate to have what I have because of help of family so I cannot be a total victim to the system. But I still feel disillusioned by it and human nature because it is exploitative by design and I am too pigheaded to want to become a unfeeling husk and give into that base nature completely.