this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024

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Playground bullies do prosper – and go on to earn more in middle age (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 7 months ago by rah@feddit.uk to c/philosophy@lemmy.world

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[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 51 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Because childhood bullies have psychopathic tendencies and lack empathy, a great set of traits that are rewarded in a capitalistic system when they become adults. Capitalism tends to reward the worst of our species with the greatest amount of power and wealth.

[+] Demigod787@lemmy.world -23 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Sadly that's untrue, it's simply human nature. Bullies are usually in the popular, social, etc group. And when they pick targets they usually pick people with weaker mentality, personality, or are odd and unusual. One such personality are people who are unempathatic, lack social skills. In a sense they target people that don't fit in.

Kids who grew up as bullies get rewarded later in life because they're simply more social and more likely to start businesses.

Obviously we can't speak with broad strokes in all cases however it's a common observation.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I base it on life experience and the people I've known in my life.

I've watched countless empathetic people do good for others and they never grew any wealthier than when they were 20.

I've also seen lots of people completely disregard others, take advantage of as many as possible and as often as they can and got rewarded at every step to the point they became enormously wealthy.

The lack of empathy for others directly correlated to the amount of wealth a person has. You have to be a certain kind of mentality to believe that you can own outrageous amounts of money while others are struggling around you.

You have to be psychopathic to want to own enough money to last a thousand lifetimes to live in a world where you know others are starving and dying because they have nothing .... and often because of ones insatiable need to want to own the entire world.

[–] MonkRome@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

How is that proof of it being capitalism specifically that causes that. While I generally think you are probably right to at least some degree that capitalism makes it worse... It's hard to prove. Nearly all systems reward those that seek power, with power. It's not unique to capitalism. If we were under any other political and economic system, those systems would also reward those that seek power.

The problem is that in any system, those that act only in their own interest, and have the intelligence/skills to do so, will operate in such a way to effectuate the best possible outcome for themselves. Even in such a system that only rewards communally beneficial acts, those that seek power would find a way to game that system to their benefit. The problem is that those who seek power are those that most often obtain it. You can't win the lottery without buying a ticket...

[–] winterayars@sh.itjust.works 7 points 7 months ago

It's really not. That's capitalist propaganda.

For example, you can have counterculture groups where that kind of behavior is discouraged rather than embraced. Which is not to say that it's impossible for something like this to happen in those groups (for someone with authoritarian desires to get what they want) but the fact that they're consistently rewarded for it in our modern world is not human nature. It's the world we built.

See: psychopathic/antisocial (in the modern, psychological diagnostic sense) tendencies being overrepresented at the top of authority structures.

As long as we, as a society, highly value those authoritarian modes of organization we're going to be rewarding people for this behavior.

[–] stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Source?

[–] Demigod787@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

The article itself, and the study it references.

[–] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

You’re a bully.

[–] Tolstoshev@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Where do you think managers come from?

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 4 points 7 months ago

You mean upper management

[–] stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Someone rename this guardian article to:

Kids with traumatic childhoods tend to carry that with them forward in life affecting their day to day

Bullies enabled by parents and environment to continue bullying shockingly continue this behavior into their careers where “dogs” are more valued than free thinking/diverse individuals.

Biiiiiig shocker but let’s keep ignoring the effects of systemic problems and just Stockholm ourselves into thinking that this is actually just reality

Capitalism is so cool and effective at bringing the best out of society let’s keep it around forever

[–] Obonga@feddit.de 6 points 7 months ago

Frustrating. Makes me want to downvote but it is not the articles fault 😮‍💨

[–] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Hypothetically, if there was an omnipotent way to be sure of who is a bully vs who is being bullied and completely segregated them, would the bullied ones have a better chance? Would the two segregated groups then split into bullies and bullied again?

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 months ago

I don't think so. I was bullied a lot at school by a few people. But at home I had a great group of friends and we got along really well. There were no bullies. And if anyone got out of line they were quickly put in their place.

[–] winterayars@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago

It depends on what metric you're measuring by. If you want to know who will make the most money it'll probably be the bully group. If you want to know who will be less likely to end the world in nuclear fire it will be the non-bully group.