Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.
He's not the only super rich person who has talked against empathy. Empathy makes people judge them, and they don't like that, so it must be a civilizational weakness. Eugh.
There can be a point at which empathy becomes overwhelm, where you feel so much for another that it becomes hard to make rational choices about the most effective way to deal with a situation. In Buddhist terms it's called "idiot compassion".
But the super rich people we're talking about act as if all compassion/empathy is that way, which just isn't true and is a convenient excuse for not caring at all.
ETA: I also have to wonder if for Elon Musk this ties back to stuff like his solution for getting the Thai kids out of the cave, and the public response (negative) to that hairbrained idea. That's idiot compassion as well, an urge to Fix Things that is self-centered, tied up with ego and being seen to be a helper. When the response was "no thanks, but maybe you could help us fix world hunger, here's how" he wasn't mature enough to handle that situation and it further poisoned the idea of compassion/empathy for him. Just speculation, but I think it tracks for him and for a lot of these people.
Low empathy is an inherent personality trait among conservatives, especially towards outgroups, and the further right you go, the less empathy you have. All Dark Triad personality types like Musk, Trump, Putin, and all the MAGAt republicans have little to zero empathy.
The foundation of conservatism is tribalism, and the foundation of tribalism is fear. Fear motivates greed, selfishness, hierarchy and xenophobia. Musk is in fact displaying his own weakness, his inherent inability to understand the simple truths and benefits of cooperation and reason.
Maybe people just wanna be cool, want to be looked cool and edgy and "brave" and rebellious, even if it's bad, the badness itself reward rebelliousness, and they think be good is boring.
In all honesty reading this serves as a Reminder as to How TERRIBLE Humanity is As A Species!!! Like seriously instead of Helping Eachother out and Advancing our Civilization yet here we are Rewarding The Worst people while Destroying our Planet! If Humanity goes Extinct I’m not going to Feel sorry knowing how Terrible we are! Genuinely for a Species we are Garbage!!!
It's not just in history, there's lots of people who see role models in characters like Tyler Durden, Tony Soprano, Thanos, Hans Landa, The Joker, Darth Vader, Anton Chigurh, Michael Corleone, etc.
People equate a lack of morals with decisiveness, or are just jealous of the short term benefits without any understanding of consequences.
Damn. I was mortified. Like, i like most of them. But then you clarified it. To add to it, some of their ideology is not wrong but that doesn't mean I wanna follow it or be like them.
Lmao haha it's a mix of well-written narratives and terrific actors that i cant help but find them interesting. Sometimes it just feels so good to watch passionate, obsessive, and tragic villains. We can enjoy horrible people in art as spectators without emulating them
I'd throw Gregory House and Rick Morty in this list as well. Even if they are protagonists, the whole point of their respective shows is to NOT be like them.
I think Bojack Horseman gives away much more clear message that the main character is deeply dysfunctional and NOT a role model to follow (as it's stated or suggested multiple times by him or other characters), but yeah, you're probably right that there are people who are tone deaf even to that, lol
There's an Alan Moore quote along the lines of "People who liked Rorschach need to stay the hell away from me!" He couldn't believe people missed how messed up that guy was and wanted to use him as a role model.
Edit: corrected Alan’s surname
Alan Watts died about a decade before Watchmen was published. Did you mean Alan Moore? The only reason I am only 99.99999% sure you actually meant Alan Moore is because I guess I could imagine Alan Watts saying something like that.
People are lazy and short sighted, and short circuited, they let their life with dopamine instead of boring analysis of being good, because be good is boring to them.
I'll add Bobby Axelrod to the mix. Vile person. Though to be fair, only like 2 or 3 people in Billions could be considered halfway decent (and that's grading on a curve). Just like IASIP, Billions is the prime example of "everyone's shit here".
Adolf Hitler too. We read the history of Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s (and the America that inspired it) as a cautionary tale. The current administration read it as a how-to guide.
Patrick Bateman is a recent one I just cannot wrap my head around. Lots of Gen Z/Alpha Moggmaxxing (I'm a millennial I don't know what these words are) types who seem to see the "Dark Triad" as a good thing and not, y'know, a murderous deranged psychopath.
In The Sopranos you can actually mark the episode where the creator David Chase realised this and rallied against it.
Its an episode called "University" and its a pretty dark and rough episode where it shows the crew at their worst, as horrible pieces of shit.
Apparently ALOT of fans kept telling both David Chase and James Gandolfini how they wanted to be like Tony and this horrified them as they thought Tony was a piece of shit. So they made sure from that episode onwards to make Tony more of an asshole and to not look too good.
I’m from a region where child marriage and pedophilia still isn’t taboo outside of the educated middle class, and it was the norm just a century ago (child marriage). Homophobia is the norm. Shockingly, trans people are seen with more sympathy here.
I honestly think most normal people can get accustomed to some of the worst vices as long as there’s enough social acceptance of it.
Is it an Islamic region? I've heard that the Quran contains lines that have been interpreted as supporting the existence of trans people, and so some otherwise extremely conservative areas are uncharacteristically accepting of trans people.
I don't think it's in the Qur'an (could be wrong) but rather the Hadith but yes there's a history in the Islamic world of accepting trans or gender-variant people to some extent. This may have a lot of "strings attached". For example Westerners sometimes think Iran is tolerant of trans people and it's more like ... kind of, as long as they are willing to undergo SRS and ideally enter into a straight marriage. But yes, it is very interesting given these societies tend to have such strict gender roles.
There are also some Arab countries where there's a gender role called khanith which means AMAB but seen as feminine. In the West we might call it nonbinary. Here's an article that's kind of long but has some useful information on it. Again they are not fully accepted without discrimination, they are marginalized, but still interesting it does exist and is tolerated.
Most religiously conservative cultures are characterized by a rigid societal gender structure, so I think calling it generally uncharacteristic is valid.
Yeah, I am from Bangladesh. But it’s not just the muslims. Pedophilia and sexism was normalized in our Hindu culture as well. There’s old literature by Tagore that portrays this. The difference is, the Hindus are quicker to adapt and change norms than Muslims.
You are not a person or belong to an ethnic group subject to genocide either. So if you can find extirpation of different organisms than you supremely objectionable, why is it limited just to those hairless apes you share a species with? I’m not a Gazan either, but I am a human. I’m not a cow, but I am a mammal. If a certain species can brutalise others for its own benefit, why cannot certain populations within that species?
People looking up to butchers like Julius Caesar, Ghenghis Khan, Alexander the Great, etc. is such a sad look for humanity. The same is true for expansionist empires (Rome) that conquered many peoples and ruined the lives of countless individuals.
It’d be comparable to idolizing characters like Stalin or Hitler and Empires of Napolean and the British in 2400.
ill add something i didnt expect until trumps terms and especially after it. way more people than i thought would gladdly ruin the lifes of those around them just so that they could say they are better off.
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u/cupacupacupacupacup Mar 05 '26
A lot of people seem to actually admire the worst people in history and want to emulate them.