Not too many people get to the core of it, but there's been a public attitude shift about capitalism and money. It happened after I started getting very critical vocally - years after (I know, probably a silly hipster attitude). For me, harm to the biosphere was the central proof that something is wrong with the system. There's a lot of analysis, but I don't think you can get around that. This system the free marketeers believe in so strongly seems inextricably linked with degradation of the habitability of Earth for most of its species, including humans.

That was in the public consciousness, but many voices denied the link, even though when you look at the data, it punches you in the face over and over and over. You can't miss the connection if you look with an open mind, and it's difficult to refute in clear intellectual/scientific conscience. Even countries that are doing really well (it seems, environmentally) show this same link between money flow and degradation.

Then some studies came out. A different kind of study. Results that had been lurking in smaller studies got citations and more attention.

There's a link between having a less understanding, more mean-spirited personality and making money. And on the other hand, there's a link between empathy and making less money. Maybe we all kind of knew this in the backs of our minds, but it's easy to half-know something and move on. Maybe it wasn't true. Maybe it was a trick of the light. Maybe we were flattering ourselves, or on the other side of the fence, maybe people were just jealous or weak.

Except that's a robust finding. Agreeableness is closely linked with empathy, helping professions, lower income, etc. And low agreeableness is linked with higher income.

A spate of articles came out declaring capitalism to be the most empathetic of all systems. Some might have been fooled by the pleas, but to someone aware of this research thread, the motivation behind - and the sophistry used in - the articles was crystal clear. This was apologism and a subtle form of gaslighting, or else it was just plain delusional projection from people who were good at arguing and writing, and could make these maneuvers and contortions seem legitimate and reasonable. No, free market capitalism is not ultra-empathetic. Face evidence, don't contort it.

Other findings were coming out around the same time about hubris syndrome - what one might call the toxic overconfidence of many leaders - and its close relative and likely its main underlying mechanism, a tendency for humans to lose empathy as they rise through the ranks of social hierarchy.

Not only was making lots of money associated with being a comparatively mean person, but gaining social status tended to make people meaner, or at least more insensitive.

These are associations, not unavoidable fates - it's possible to be a good person in a position of leadership, or to accumulate wealth in good ways - but experiments show there's a mechanism. It's something deep in human nature that we have to work to counteract.

It just doesn't make the traditional hierarchy look very good, does it? Any of it? Throw in the fact its ways seem deeply patriarchal and colonial. I may have just shot the notion of "the best of all possible systems" in the head, and it wasn't difficult (except it was, because scientists spend careers asking questions and figuring out how to answer them reliably, and this little chat is a brief, breezy consolidation of many careers' worth of work).

But we still aren't all on the same page yet, nor are we clear on how to fix the fundamental interactions of capitalism, ie, of economic life.

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There were other events and forces. The Great Recession, the popularity of Bernie Sanders, the election of Trump, and the pandemic all put arrows in the chest of the traditional creed - the idea that freewheeling capitalism is wonderful and we all just need to suck it up, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and go from rags to riches if we don't like what we see or experience.

But as with full acceptance of LGBTQIA+ people (definitively a natural variation, not a choice), legal cannabis (much less harmful than believed, enforcement was ineffective and racist), etc, science worked in the background to update what was known, and then public opinion slowly caught on.

You can know before other people if you take an interest in new science.

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I do have some thoughts about how to fix the basic interactions, and I wish I were part of a community working on this. 

The problem with controversy is that people think you're a bad person for making an argument on any side that isn't theirs. You're automatically suspicious for not simply falling in line and making arguments that ADVANCE their cause. If you aren't ADVANCING whatever a person feels their cause is, they will likely see you as the OPPOSITION.

Most people even think this is the right way to be. This is how you get things done. You pick a side and argue for that side. That's the game you play.

Except it's the game that makes people groupthinky and eventually prejudicial. Fight hate with hate? Fight prejudice with prejudice? That seems to be the usual thinking.

If you're the kind of person who makes arguments for (and against) every side or idea in a debate, you quickly notice this weird neuroticism that causes people to be unable to argue for anything but their chosen cause.

That isn't how you think well. That's a way to get delusional.

There are few things stranger than being called presumptuous or conceited for saying what's true.

Of course, I think we have to agree that not everything that's true is appropriate, useful, or even safe to say at all times to all people. But I really try to give everyone truth points. If it's true, it doesn't matter how much I don't like it or wish you could have said it better or at a better time - you get points for saying something true.

I'll even give you some points for spouting utter bullshit, as long as it really seems to me that you believe what you're saying.

I'm not sure what's difficult or weird about this. If you try it, you might like it.

I don't believe someone's confidence gives an accurate measure of their value, and I also don't believe that it's only their responsibility. People who are marginalized or abused will typically suffer a blow to their confidence. To put that on them and rate them as worthless (or worth less) is primitive and disgusting.

How did we get to the point where caring about other people's thoughts regarding us equates to inauthenticity? It doesn't.

I care what you think, and that doesn't make me dishonest or pathetic. Actually, I just balance it another way. I care, but you're not going to push me around (without my agreement), because I have a solid reality check and I know manipulation and delusionality when I see it.

I think many people protect themselves by "not caring what anyone thinks" (kind of a lie, but they're free to lie to themselves or take a breather or keep things private). But you don't have to protect yourself on that level. You can manage any fallout another way - by using your reason.

I guess if your sense of reason is weaker, it can really help sometimes not to care. But if you have a strong enough sense of reason, you can care - you just apply a reality check and make your own decisions as you have every right to do.

I think my problem is I run on hope, and whenever that runs out, I'm hopeless. And I'm very disinclined to lie to myself even for the sake of hope and running.

So it's hope or nothing, but the hope has to really be believable, or it's nothing.

I think ever since turning 40, I have felt vaguely yet definitely more than before as if I am leaving this world. You grow up thinking there's all this stuff out there, all this future for you. Over time, you can start to realize you will never have a future. The future you were going to have is behind you, and before you, there is nothing - almost like leaving Earth behind you on an endless voyage. You were attached to this place, but there is only so much you will ever see, and that horizon is diminishing, now, not growing.

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To make it concrete, what is the point of learning things? Now when I forget, I wonder whether I'll ever bother to remember again. Will I need that information after all? Maybe I have spent my life learning things I will never use. I have hoarded all this material, and it is beginning to rot inside me, without having seen any use.

Sometimes I wonder if empathy is less about some basic biological facility involving others and more about a simple kind of imagination. Can I imagine that that would be me?

If you lack imagination, you find a bunch of reasons that isn't you, and so your brain doesn't really engage.

If on the other hand you find it easy to imagine that it could be you, then your brain absorbs more about the situation, more of the signals and cues, and spends more time reconstructing what that might feel like and how one might get there or get out from there.

Sometimes I wonder if people who lack empathy aren't just... rejecting the possibility that they could be someone else. And since they don't see it as possible, their brain doesn't waste time on building the experience.

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For all I know, I could have another life in which I go through every experience you have. We might all live each other's lives. These are the sorts of hypotheticals I find it easy to imagine. I cannot say with 100% certainty that I - my window of subjectivity - will never experience what it's like to be over there, where you are, in your brain, this moment.

When I empathize with someone else, it's a little like humoring the possibility that I'm looking at myself in the future. I can do that with anyone. I'm able to suspend disbelief.

Now, I do also feel things without making an effort to imagine. But it's much less. I specifically imagine what it must be like for others, and if I didn't, I could only go on their immediate facial expressions and tone and so on, and how those make me feel, what flavor they seem to have.

Updates await

Sometimes it's important to believe that breakthroughs are possible. How else do you make one?

And it's important to see that they are common. Personal and societal breakthroughs happen all the time around us. To disbelieve in the possibility of a breakthrough is a little unfounded. I think we should assume that problems can be solved eventually, even if we have no idea how, currently.

To me, this is an improvement on the classic idea of faith.

What is truer?

Personally I think the secret of true love is that it's friendship. If you truly love someone, you will care about them however they decide to spend their life, whoever with, etc. It doesn't have to be some great extravagant caring. It can just be caring. If your caring is unconditional, then I see that as true love.

Their loss, too!

I've never liked the expression "Their loss!" Now of course, fair enough - you have every right to use harmless words you like, and it's a frame of mind, but... it's still pretty presumptuous, isn't it? Saying this is such obvious persuasion, I can't be fooled by it. The expression doesn't work on me. At all.

It feels egotistical and try-hard to say "Their loss!"

But eventually I realized I have no problem with "Their loss, too!" At least that admits the premise, which is that you feel a sense of loss. Trying to put all of that on the other person, as if it's only their loss (which they might not feel at all) and not at all yours, seems ridiculous. But "Their loss, too!" passes my filter.

Peacekeeping

There are times when it's useful to yell, useful to insult, even useful to fight. If your philosophy is "never express anger" or "never offend anyone" or "never cause any harm," then that might possibly work for you, but it is not a complete philosophy that can or should be followed by everyone.

Peacekeeping interventions can include real fighting. Maybe it's *usually* true that "the best defense is not to offend," but sometimes that is not enough, and at such a moment either you need to defend yourself actively or someone else needs to step in for you.

Most people are not particularly trained to win at debate or physical combat. I think the normal approach is to be confidently assertive, avoid unnecessary confontation or offense, and then use emotional (or eventually social and legal) warfare if trust is broken enough. That's what I observe a lot.

Normal people do try to debate, but they aren't good at it. Especially where logic and evidence and uncertainty enter the picture, people tend to fall off a cliff; instead of working with hypotheses and evidence, they just get opinionated, repetitive, defensive, emotional, etc. So because they aren't very good at the logical/evidentiary/epistemological/dialectic game of debate, they'll stick to just sharing or venting, and if they feel that's failing, they'll then fall into yelling, insulting (mocking, ridiculing, etc), or, eventually, if it goes that far, threatening (legally, etc) or physically fighting.

Yet people aren't really trained to fight physically (or legally or logically), so they have more than one reason not to want to go there. The threat/risk of harsh eventualities, though, works under the surface to make people more emotional.

To put it another way - the fact I'm pretty sure I could knock most people out if we got into a fight, I believe, has a tendency to keep me calmer in a debate. I do not want to have to knock you out. Really, I do not. And I am not physically threatened by your anger, etc. At least... I think those are somewhat true statements, and probably more than for many other people.

I believe that if we follow a good debate process, one or both of us will arrive at the right answer, or a better answer than before; I trust that system and that process. Meanwhile, I have the experience to say that I would probably win in a physical fight with most people. So that's another kind of trust. These are two threats many people feel that I mostly do not feel. Logical debate is not threatening to me. Physical fighting is not that threatening, in some sense, either (in the relative sense that I have experience from martial arts).

So... I stick to the debate process as much as the other person is willing and I have time and energy for. Where discussions turn into fights (heated arguments, I mean), usually the other person is getting too emotional and reactive. They've decided that ad hominem attacks are appropriate; they're going after my character, trying to make me feel bad. I might have sounded condescending, impatient, or annoyed about something, and it's understandable that this might upset them, but then they will tend to go into this escalation. They'll start attacking and insulting me, even though I actually did not do that - they just didn't like my tone. Sometimes I'm the first person to "use tone," sometimes the other person. But that should not lead to an escalation. It's only human that we sometimes get emotional. That shouldn't be generalized too much or too readily into an insult that calls for emotional retaliation.

One core skill of good debate is filtering out tone, more or less - you monitor it as a clue, say, as to whether someone might be biased, unwilling to change their mind right now, passionate, or maybe just not ready to continue talking about this. An unpleasant tone is a good reason to step away from a conversation, when it makes you uncomfortable. It is not a good reason to attack someone. Not at all. That's the mistake so many people make.

Just avoiding that one mistake would prevent many heated arguments.

I guess I'm just trying to point out some very common misapprehensions people make in discussions, arguments, and other conflict.

Sometimes anger and fighting *are* necessary, but actually, I do not think most people get this right (ie, the when and how). I think people misuse yelling, threats, emotionality, and physical force. Those all have their place. And as I'm trying to indicate, I have quite a bit of training and practice as to where that place might be. It is not that I'm so accepting of people and so compassionate, etc, because I cannot fight. I am very capable of fighting verbally or physically. But most of the time when people want to shift into fighting like that, it is not called for.

They feel it is, and they are getting carried away so they also think it is, but it is not. The escalation is not called for.

My confidence that I could win in a fight, oddly enough - knowing that I could really hurt someone - seems to make me even less interested in hurting them emotionally. Hurting someone emotionally is a power play. It's often an expression of insecurity - I feel threatened by you, am not sure I could really beat you - so I am going to hurt you, emotionally, to let us both know that I am not just a pushover.

That's how people use emotional hurt. And sometimes it is even called for. Most of the time, though, I believe it is not, and people are enacting a kind of insecurity.

As a kid and teenager, I did martial arts—Taekwondo and a little Hapkido—with my brother. Class would start with a ritual and a meditation, then basically a set of stretches that have something in common with yoga. And then all the exercises, drills, forms, sparring, etc—we'd do this two or three times a week for about ten years.

Something happens on days when I'm more connected with my body—if I stretch, move, sweat. I like the idea my body is getting stronger, more practiced, more agile. When I forget about all this, my mind suffers somehow and I don't even know why. It's this weird unsolveable problem. What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me is that I'm not using my body. I'm letting my body rot as if I have some additional lifetime for it, just around the corner—a corner faster approaching because of this attitude.

I don't know why it's so difficult for me to remember this when I need to, but when my mood is crashing severely and I'm seeing no value in continuing to live, I'm usually going to feel better and more purposeful than usual after the bounce. But in the moment it feels eternal and incorrigible. It's a sort of spontaneous pre-inspiration Hell.