value of ruthlessness in a winner take all world

[nannah]

IMHO we live in a world where ruthlessness pays off big time, especially in the arenas that lead to aquisition of money and power, like finance, energy, arms, to name a few. Smart or well connected people with sociopathic or narcissistic characters have an advantage in that they are willing to do damaging things to anyone to achieve their end. most people are not like that, which is why ruthlessness is such an advantage in the high stakes, winner take all world in which we live. Over and over through history, cultures begin to flourish and then explode from following the decisions of agressive, greedy, leaders. Sadly, a new dimension has entered this repetitive pattern...nuclear weapons, which have the ability to put a permanent end to the cycle.

Cheney's recent sword rattling on nuclear attack on Iran makes my heart sink. And I ask myself, where are these folks planning to go if they unleash nulcear war?

[nookiemonster]

1. Not to worry, Bush and Cheney will be bunkered.

As far as you and I....well...

[LiberalArkie]

2. Movie reflection day.

As I was pondering everything today. As bad as everything is getting. As the possabilities for things to get worse. I picked a DVD to watch.

It the story of one person against great tyranny. Of what a person can do.

Kevin Costner's The Postman.

[nookiemonster]

3. Never seen it, but I'll check it out.

BTW, Welcome to DU!!

:)

[mirandapriestly]

5. I saw that, it was good. nt

[porphyrian]

9. Good movies about nuclear war.

Miracle Mile - "...forget everything you just heard and go back to sleep."

The Day After - (made for TV)

Dr. Strangelove (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

If You Love This Planet - (documentary)

War and Peace in the Nuclear Age - (PBS documentary)

Deadly Decepton: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment - (won an Oscar)

I Nuovi Barbari - (released as Warriors of the Wasteland in US)

[newyawker99]

15. Hi LiberalArkie!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Casablanca]

4. "most people are not like that ..."

I think most people can be convinced to be that way, if the standard of ruthlessness is shown to be stronger. The fact that Pres. Wastrel has gotten away with far more than I suspect even he was expecting to sets a dangerous social standard around the world that crime does pay, and well.

It's good to see that you're looking at the macro patterns as well as the micro patterns, and that you're questioning the game itself, rather than just the tactics of the day.

[nannah]

7. When you think about the people you know

don't most of them act out of kindness and love most of the time? i mean this seriously. Consider your days, how often in each day are you treated with kindness and consideration by the people with whom you interact? Now, i acknowledge that we are more inclined to react to and remember the times we feel abused or dissed, but I think that is because it stands out because it is not the norm. IMHO I think most people value kindness in their interactions with each other. It frustrates me that the world is organized in such a way that the absence of humanity of a few has so much control over the many.

Before our monolithic culture attained control over much of the world, pockets of cultures with sustainable economies and organizational structures based on respect for one another existed for thousands of years. These groups tended to have cooperative economies.

It is not clear to me that we can't aspire toward a cooperative, sustainable world, but I sure don't see how. any ideas?????

[Casablanca]

13. How often a person is treated with kindness and compassion ...

... has mostly to do with the crowd they're in. For a Middle Eastern person living in New York on a subsistence wage and being harassed as a potential terrorist merely for the color of their skin, or because someone sees a political advantage to isolating them as a potential terrorist, I think the rare acts of kindness would stand out far more than the indefensible treatment they tolerate on a daily basis.

I don't agree that everyone values kindness in their interactions. I believe everyone values a relative lack of threat in their interactions, but valuing kindness requires a less threat-based/ego-based perception of human interaction. Kindness is more than just a lack of threat. Our 3-billion-year-old threat-based-programming that we've inherited from our evolution keeps us focused on the threats and operating solely based on the logic of threat - which is that everything is either a threat or an opportunity to threaten. In that mindset, kindness from one person will simply be used as an opportunity for exploitation in reducing the threat posed by others, rather than being valued for its own sake.

If there were no threat, there would be no cause for aggression. But threat-based programming causes people to see threats where there aren't any (easy to do in our hyperconnected society), and to create themselves as threats where none exists to gain power, so aggression in inevitable in that mindset.

There are people that, from nature, nurture, grace, or a combination of the three, see beyond the threat-based mindset, but they are in the minority.

[nannah]

17. to a degree few people recognize, we each perceive (feel) the world in

unique ways. within that construct, it is true that some people experience disproportionate amounts of cruelty and disrespect. But there is a within and without in most people's lives and their experience of kindness/respect may be different in each sector. For example, a vibrant youth from an abusive home may experience kindness without (outside his family) and cruelty within.... or the example you gave, that person may have immigrated with extended family and experience culturally typical levels of kindness, love, and respect within his family life. Another example of people who may get mixed responses in public are people with mental or physical disabilities that make them appear very different from others. Despite the cruelty inherent in the above situations, that these situations exist does not negate my main point which is that most people respond with respect/kindness to people in a variety of settings.

I know this sounds pollyanna, but I am speaking from my perspective, what I have observed about people, and years of reading about human culture, adventure, and animal behavior. I believe that when most people have an opportunity to behave in a way perceived as kind, they like to take it.

an experience that reinforced my opinion was a workshop given by Marshall Rosenberg on "Non Violent Communication". He asked the audience to remember something that had given them pleasure or made them feel good in the last 24 hours. Then he asked those for whom that memory involved doing something nice for someone else....most of the people in the room raised their hands! Mr. Rosenberg has established schools based on his beliefs in Palestine, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, and other areas where the children grow up embroiled in conflicts of longstanding duration.

Communication is a key advantage that has served humans well in surviving many environments. So how does the ability to talk separate us out from other species??? We have, ostensibly, the ability to work out cooperative ways to sustain life for a group/tribe and the abilty to resolve conflict among people.

I really think that if regular people had a role in negotiating conflicts, they would find it hard to justify the cruelty of killing. Regular people being those who don't rise to the top in a sociopathic, narcissistic winner take all world.

[GreenPartyVoter]

14. I spend a lot of time with conservative evangelicals. They are very kind

people for the most part. For example they are kind to people with a face. But when you start talking about a group of people (gays for instance) or the government (welfare is bad, charity is good) their faces become shuttered and it's almost like they change personalities or something.

And it's not just conservatives who do that. Any time a person dehumanizes a group or looks at people as just numbers or an ideology, then hatefulness comes out.

[mirandapriestly]

6. Most of the places I 've worked

those are the kind of people that do really well. Unfortunately. It is really frustrating.

[dogday]

8. The rich have their underground bunkers

as well as the politicians. It will be us, the working class people that will fry and get radiation sickness and will die.. It will be us that die, not them....

[nannah]

10. how extensive is the bunkering system?

i read about the bunker that was put under Cheney's home? is this common? are they under the walled communities?

[dogday]

11. They did a story about this a while back

and usually people are putting their bunkers in the ground in different places. Most want seclusion where people are not around, that is where you will see most of theirs, at the ranch house, in the country, a place like that.... Say there are a lot of underground bunkers in this country...

[nookiemonster]

12. It's hard telling where they could be. Probably right under our nose.

But they supposedly have facilities that handle all of Congress and the Senate.

That's pretty extensive!!

[wli]

16. yep, we're all going to die

While the billionaires etc. reimplement feudalism.