When I was younger and so fucking broke I felt helpless, pissed off at the world. When I got my feet under me and started earning okay money, then really good money… money quickly lost its importance to me. I finally had the capacity to do things for other people. I took my friends out on the town, on me, tried to do random acts of kindness for people. Bought gifts for my partner.
I’d always thought when I could live above subsistence level that it would be me that I’d get the most satisfaction out of spending money on, but it was doing things for others that actually made me happy.
I just don’t understand why money has the opposite effect on people. How do you have wealth and fame and just not give a fuck about anyone but yourself, and turn it into a whole political philosophy?
There are 2 kinds of people: those who were born with empathy and those who learned to mimic it. You live among the descendents of nature’s most extreme survivalists. The transactionalist is simply wired to act in best interest, which sometimes means feigning empathy.
Religion seems to be an answer for these types of people. It’s an escape from real and true empathy, a justification for acts that otherwise would be unacceptable.
I don’t understand people.
When I was younger and so fucking broke I felt helpless, pissed off at the world. When I got my feet under me and started earning okay money, then really good money… money quickly lost its importance to me. I finally had the capacity to do things for other people. I took my friends out on the town, on me, tried to do random acts of kindness for people. Bought gifts for my partner.
I’d always thought when I could live above subsistence level that it would be me that I’d get the most satisfaction out of spending money on, but it was doing things for others that actually made me happy.
I just don’t understand why money has the opposite effect on people. How do you have wealth and fame and just not give a fuck about anyone but yourself, and turn it into a whole political philosophy?
There are 2 kinds of people: those who were born with empathy and those who learned to mimic it. You live among the descendents of nature’s most extreme survivalists. The transactionalist is simply wired to act in best interest, which sometimes means feigning empathy.
Religion seems to be an answer for these types of people. It’s an escape from real and true empathy, a justification for acts that otherwise would be unacceptable.
When I was broke I had zero empathy, really. I didn’t mimic it. It just wasn’t there. I was angry at the world that everything was so hard.
Empathy came much later in life for me than others, I think, but did come. I couldn’t understand other people until I better understood myself.
That was just my own path through life but I fall into neither camp.