Occasionally I meet people who are not serial killers, but who have decided for some reason that they ought to be only selfish, and therefore, should reject their own preference that other people be happy rather than sad. I wish I knew what sort of cognitive history leads into this state of mind. Ayn Rand? Aleister Crowley? How exactly do you get there? What Rubicons do you cross? It’s not the justifications I’m interested in, but the critical moments of thought.
Imagine that you are a genuinely humane person. You take joy in other peoples’ joy; you are saddened by other peoples’ sadness; you are pained by other peoples’ pain.
Then, imagine that your attempts to solace other peoples’ pain, to empathize with other peoples’ sadness, to share or even increase other peoples’ joy, are punished. Why? You don’t know. An objective outside view might notice that you are too low-status, or that you have a cognitive deficit, or that any number of path-dependent tragedies occurred to lock you into an “all the other reindeer” feedback loop.
But all you know is that, time after time, people punish you for trying to make them happy or ease their sorrow, and they punish you for trying to understand what you did wrong, and they punish you for trying to understand why they are punishing you.
Then you come across several legitimately successful people, who are being rewarded for making people sad, or inflicting pain, or for attaching a price to other peoples’ happiness.
But all you know is that, time after time, people punish you for trying to make them happy or ease their sorrow, and they punish you for trying to understand what you did wrong, and they punish you for trying to understand why they are punishing you.
This would just make me operate more covertly and avoid the worst cases of such folks, but some people might not see that as an option.
I think your explanation covers more a simple change in values rather than people taking their philosophies too seriously which it seems to me was what the gp had difficulty understanding. Perhaps the latter behavior doesn’t even exists and it just seems that way.
Imagine that you are a genuinely humane person. You take joy in other peoples’ joy; you are saddened by other peoples’ sadness; you are pained by other peoples’ pain.
Then, imagine that your attempts to solace other peoples’ pain, to empathize with other peoples’ sadness, to share or even increase other peoples’ joy, are punished. Why? You don’t know. An objective outside view might notice that you are too low-status, or that you have a cognitive deficit, or that any number of path-dependent tragedies occurred to lock you into an “all the other reindeer” feedback loop.
But all you know is that, time after time, people punish you for trying to make them happy or ease their sorrow, and they punish you for trying to understand what you did wrong, and they punish you for trying to understand why they are punishing you.
Then you come across several legitimately successful people, who are being rewarded for making people sad, or inflicting pain, or for attaching a price to other peoples’ happiness.
And then something clicks.
This would just make me operate more covertly and avoid the worst cases of such folks, but some people might not see that as an option.
I think your explanation covers more a simple change in values rather than people taking their philosophies too seriously which it seems to me was what the gp had difficulty understanding. Perhaps the latter behavior doesn’t even exists and it just seems that way.