alt Hacker News> Have people completely lost their humanity? Is winning at whatever you’re doing that important we can’t be equally obligated to show each other decency?
Pretty much, I found some very helpful words and perspectives on this from Michael Sandel - Tyranny of Merit. The winners begin to think there success is their own doing, forgetting the luck, good fortune, and many people who helped them along the way. They grow arrogant and full of hubris, looking down on and belittling others.
The question is then, how do we get out of this mess? Sandel offers some interesting foundations, along with Acemoglu.
Links to brain food:
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datakan • today at 6:32 PM
People stand on the shoulders of giants and bitch about the view
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I think it also has to be that the more powerful you are, the more likely you are to attract and retain sycophants who do nothing but compliment you and tell you how great your ideas are. It's a tale as old as time since the days of kings and emperors.
Some of the best moments of growth that I've experienced have happened during adversity, when something I said or did was laid bare for me from another perspective, with all of the problems with my approach pointed out. Those moments are intensely uncomfortable in that moment but so valuable for long-run growth (provided you have enough of a check on your own ego and developed enough insight to learn from such experiences).
My guess is that this trend to sycophancy will happen in every hierarchical organization where individuals at the top are able to reshape their social environment to avoid uncomfortable moments that they don't wish to have. I think it takes someone truly exceptional to avoid creating that kind of reality for themselves, and why it's oh-so-common to see hyperinflated egos from the most powerful individuals.
That said, I would read the hell out of a non-fictional expose covering specifically just the sycophants around some of our most notoriously unhinged powerful people, ones that showed exactly who are applauding these Emperors Nero who play their citharas while their world burns.