Morality and cynicism

[Turnevies]

It seems another typical distinction between me and most people seems to be the experience and practice of morality.

It seems like many people, when teenagers, all care about themselves being popular, getting success with the opposite sex and having expensive stuff. Therefore, bullying and small crimes. Then they grow older, 'learn from their mistakes' and get away with it.

When I used to be a child, I was more concerned with living a 'righteous' life than getting short-time pleasures. This may be related to the fact that I was raised as a catholic (though not really strictly), but I don't think that is the only reason. It was from getting older that I learned that in order to obtain something yourself you have to work for that specific thing while having the luck of being in the right position, there is no heaven and there is generally no reward for choosing ideologism over opportunism.

So I got rid of 'nice guy' behaviour (I've read the book by dr. Glover). Also, I started appreciating game theory. But I'm tending more to cynicism or even nihilism now. As in "Maybe starting a war as a leader is what you should do if you expect it will give you what you need and if you can cheat on people it is their own fault because they are stupid or weak. Who am I to judge whether Hitler was a bad person?"

Do you guys recognize this situation? And how do you find a proper balance in life? I don't want to turn into a rapist, but it is impossible to contribute to a better society without paying sufficient attention to my own needs.

My plan now is having some kind of delayed puberty now so I can can calm down afterwards.

 

[Minuend]

Well, before you go down the rapist career path, is using other people something that you would feel accomplished and satisfied with? For me, I guess it boils down to having no particular inclination to wanting to fuck people over, so I don't. That is, as long as that person wasn't aggressive in any way toward me or others first.

I don't see myself as a "nice guy" or a "asshole", I rather have an inner sense of what's reasonable or fair in a given situation and act according to that. If someone I like ask me for a favor, I will help. If some scumbag wants me to do something for him, I probably wont unless it benefits me in some way. So instead of asking whether it's moral or nice, I try to predict what the outcomes of my actions will be and which would be preferable, which I could live with or which are least bad. If you are very idealistic, I guess most of your choices will fall in the "least bad" category.

This "who am I to judge Hitler thing". Well, why can't you judge Hitler? Why can't you rely on your "subjective" judgment of values? I think I tended to think more like you when I was younger, but eventually I realized that reality is what it is and you have to act according to it. Trying to live in some philosophic reality where you judge noone while a group of people burn your house and family wont really accomplish anything. So I guess I've grown more pragmatic, and I've realized that some people and situations can't be sorted out with morality or philosophy. You can be the most moral person ever, but if the people around you don't behave according to your values, then you'll just end up getting the shorter end of the stick. So adapt to reality, and try to make the best of things, I guess. If you want to make things better, that is. I guess some of this was repeating what you wrote yourself.

Personally, I don't find the more pessimistic perspective on things helpful/ useful, so I've worked a lot with how I think to develop a bit more neutral perspective on things. I have tendency to cynicism and dislike of people, but I know I have a lot of flaws myself and that feeling annoyed or angry wont accomplish anything else but me feeling annoyed or angry. And that's useless to me most of the time, so I try to adapt a perspective that's more serene. I think for me, acceptance of things that are and working towards things that are better is some of what keeps me sane. That and humor/ making fun of myself.

I'm not sure if all this was entirely relevant to what you wrote, I'm a bit tired.

 

[Urcuchillay]

An interest in game theory means there's a potential fulcrum to work with here.

If our automatic response will likely be to reject these next few statements, I'll urge you to fight that. It seems like there are two sets of circumstances that can lead to your worldview as it currently stands, and they're not mutually exclusive: 1) you've never experienced true adversity 2) you've never been truly helped by someone of good moral character. I say this because these would be redefining experiences that would have prevented you from entering this state in the first place, at least in my subjective viewpoint.

How do your philosophical choices influence your own agency over time? To what extent do past actions and experiences influence your future actions and perceptions? Philosophy is essentially self-directed self-design, yet most people don't have the requisite amount of awareness to realize this, let alone the mindfulness and vigilance to perform it. I myself turned to nihilism as a means to explore and justify previous bad behavior undertaken without much of a philosophy at all.

Are living righteously and pleasure still dichotomous for you? Why? Because they aren't in reality. It's easy to get caught up in failure, whether it be your own or that of others whom you value or who are generally good people. Yet if you do, you become distracted and never realize your own potential.

When this happens, it reinforces a feedback loop, which is a trap. You likely have doubts about your ability to function in this world. You fear being incompetent and take refuge in the pursuit of knowledge as a means to compensate. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just what you do naturally. Yet when done in excess, it only reinforces your negative perceptions by denying you the opportunities to gain the experiences required to gain competence and thus confidence. Without confidence, you feel no sense of control, which leads to having bad thoughts. It's out of desperation.

For example, you mention rape. Are you really that unconfident that you don't believe you could achieve sex or a relationship through conventional means? If you never give the conventional way honest and persistent attempts because you're afraid of failure because of lack of competence, immersing yourself in things you're comfortable with (philosophy, math, books, *insert specialty here*) will not help you gain competence in sex, relationships, motivation, etc, and thus that void persists and merely becomes more warped and crippling.

It's noteworthy that many wrongly treat these philosophical problems as attitude problems: instead of changing the heuristic from the side of intent, they try to change it based on outcomes only. The PUA mindset is a good example. Yet this attitude shift itself has consequences upon one's agency, as it's little more than using one's voids as weapons instead of healing them.

So what does it mean to you to live a good life? I was recently in a discussion with a friend who argued that among health, knowledge, respect, competence, autonomy, inner peace, friendship, community, purpose, happiness, and creativity (all shamelessly stolen from the wiki page on positive criminology, which is an emerging field supporting the brand of philosophy I've put forth here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_criminology#Making_people_happy_is_the_best_crime_prevention ) all but happiness could be rejected and that all the others were specific to a given individual's criteria as opposed to necessary components; treating it as an outcome-based attitude problem. I argued that only happiness could be tossed because it's the natural product of having all of the others regardless of individual criteria. So again, what does it mean to live a good life?

Reading this post, you're facing Mooers' Law. What will you accept and what will you reject? Have you just experienced 2 from above?

https://youtu.be/2w8HXUZGSkw

 

[Turnevies]

These responses seem wise

I have felt adversity with a number of persons, but couldn't really 'live' this adversity due to circumstances: I had to cooperate with these persons, or we still had mutual friends.
And people have been willing to help me as well but, being used to being the smartest person in the room, I'm not good at accepting help from others because of having too much pride (this time I accept )

 

[Pyropyro]

Hahaha oh dear. I ACTUALLY went your path (yes even read that book) except that I was fundie Baptist rather than Catholic. I guess I can help you out since I'm a few meters ahead of you.

Morality:
Okay, the book was actually a deconstruction of that part of your personality and that's good (That's why you're locked with cynicism and nihilism, you stopped in this step). However, that's not the only step for building one's psyche. You now have to reconstruct your own personal creed/ moral compass based on what you have learned so far and from newer fields of study or philosophy.

Mr. Nice Guy, Game theory and all that jazz:
As much as the world of PUA and tail chasing is interesting, I think there's one thing that one should master before being able to get into serious relationships: doing good stuff without asking or expecting anything in return. I took me years to understand that principle and it has become quite useful in my life.

Social Circle:
As others have suggested, it's best to find a social circle that fits your moral compass and sense of justice. I'll only add the caveat that you shouldn't be exclusive to said group.

For example, I hang out with community developers, counselors, missionaries, pastors and other ministers and I'm rarely abused (if at all). However, I keep in touch with agnostics, atheists courtesy of INTPf to keep myself from going Pharisee and also with the science & humanities communities at my work and my gf's buddies (the girl has a bunch of PhD friends) respectively.

Adversity:
I find that it's best to leave toxic people in their toxicity. It's just hard at first but you can always get a better social circle. Also, like attracts like so you need to get yourself emotionally fixed up first before getting new friends or else the cycle of toxicity will just start over.

 

[EditorOne]

"I find that it's best to leave toxic people in their toxicity."

I'm with Pyro on this. It is difficult for thinking people to understand someone whose motivation is not to understand, but to destroy. You can "reason" with a toxic person 24-7 because they have an endless repertoire of tools and weapons to prolong the exchange so long as it is damaging you.

Like this.

Meanwhile, overall, I think it takes a bit more narcissistic sociopathy than most of us can muster to start a war just to get what you want. There's a total lack of empathy with other humans in that scenario.

Personally I act as if others are decent people until they prove by actions and words that they aren't. It's a sort of "noncynic with an asterisk" philosophy, the asterisk being that part of my personality that refuses to be surprised or dismayed by asshats but knows they are out there and occasionally must be overcome or bypassed or publicly horsewhipped. :-)

 

[Turnevies]

So, reconstructing a personality (that's technically called existentialism, right?). Maybe "The road to character" by D. Brooks could be a good guidance, I saw Bill Gates sharing this book a while ago. Ultimately, I must live life instead of reading books on it of course.

I don't really have a problem with doing good for others without expecting reward. Regarding the PUA scene, it can be fun but not really fulfilling. But I don't want too commit too soon, as I'm still in my early twenties (I've never understood how all those teenagers consider themselves to be in 'serious' relationships btw). Now, I want to lay good foundations to serious relationships when I'll be approaching 30. And I believe a little PUA helps to not fearing girls (used to have some issues with running away from them ) and forces you to have interactions. But of course, it is not enough on the long term.

On dealing with toxic people, I think EO's 'Noncynic with an asterix' philosophy will be indeed the way to go. I don't think it is a very good idea to be paranoid all the time either, as long as I'm a bit careful.