Why do so many people choose to take the villain route? I know there’s lots of reasons. Do they ever really know the true price they’re paying?
Discussion
🙋Money
Money is more often why people take the “give up your own personal passion and purpose” route. The villain route - one where you hurt or betray lots of others, seems filled with reasons such as fear, ego defence, jealousy, hatred/anger, laziness, hopelessness, and things along those lines.
I'd pick hopelessness as the main one there.
Its because of two things : pride, and they believe they're the good guys. Without humility, you can't see your errors.
I don’t buy that villains think they’re the good guys. I think they try to evade or rationalize their villainy, but their conscience knows what they’re up to.
I’m with you on pride though. That ego is a monster maker.
You start off the monster. Humility is learned when you fall in some way - ego death. Without that event, no humility is learned. But people trick themselves into believing they're good - if they emulate the right people, who are usually authority figures, then they think they must be good. That's just a copy, and usually a copy of a copy of a copy etc. To learn humility, they would have to it from the source, which is a hard knock. Thus, the people who wear their goodness like a garment are, in fact, the most monstrous. If they were good, then they wouldn't need the garment, and then the good appear to be evil to the evil ones, who put so much effort into the appearance of goodness. That's why the most pious people are the most hateful, and the people highest in authority are the furthest from the good. That's the trend, at least.
Very good points - especially the first one that our inexperienced selves can be monsters in need of taming.
We need to be childlike. Maybe that's taming... A child makes no assumptions about what they experience. The hardest people to teach are the ones that already "know" - if what they know is wrong, then they have to forget before they can learn. Its much better to be child-like, unknowing and receptive in nature instead of by decision. Only children in that sense are capable of experiencing reality.
evil people simply don't do "i'm not God"
Lack of self awareness. Plain and simple. This is why it feels at times as if we are “waking up”. One by one.
IMO Bitcoin is a beacon. A signal that calls us (in our own time) to study and evolve and then build on top of it. For all of humanity.
It’s hard for me too, but try and be patient and accepting. ESPECIALLY for those still “deep asleep”.
Lack of self awareness is widespread, I agree, but where that’s genuine you only see clumsiness and awkwardness instead of all out villainy as I define it and mean for it to be understood in my OP. I mean someone knowing there is wrong in what they do, and then doing it anyways.
Yea. I don’t see much of that….
And when I do, it seems to me to come from self-loathing….
Just my sense….
Self loathing may be the effect rather than the cause. But there may be a feedback loop involved here.
I think it begins with self-loathing. Nihilism. Often subconscious. But sometimes not. Then the ego cleverly uses that to justify all sorts of harmful, sociopathic behaviour towards others….
Once again. Just my sense.
Broadly, I attribute it to the genetics of scarcity. Which I sense we are mutating beyond as we speak. Possibly even in the next few generations. 🧬 🦋
The Gene Keys by Richard Rudd helped frame for me what I was already sensing intuitively.
Mixed bag:
I suspect some truly believe the world is unfair and they’re playing according to the “real” rules they learned. Ultimately they’re not courageous enough to maintain hope for themselves or humanity.
…And/or they get in way over their heads with what started with good intentions.
…And then there are just some straight up untreated psychopaths.
Yes. I think these are both true. The first is the slippery slope. The second I wonder about - and can never really know the answer to - are some people born without any conscience or does something allow them to compartmentalize it away someone?
Psychopathy is a whole interesting topic on its own- Not one I claim to understand fully.
My wife has studied it a lot more. They’re not necessarily bad people AFAIK but they don’t have empathy like most.
You will always be a villain in someone else’s story.
Separation... Just like the government can do readily and easily make decisions that hurt people, they don't know or they don't care if they do, because they are separated from the effect of those decisions and from the accountability.
Because -
The war is within.
Your ego, your pleasure and desires of the material world.
It is always easier to ignore the true self and bloat your ego in return of power, pleasure and materials of the world since antiquity.
A wise man once said - The people that are most susceptible to corruption are the people that seek power, and so the worst type of people you want to elect are the people who want to be elected.
(Chuckles - That's the irony)
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I wouldn’t assume that most of them feel like they’ve made an intentional choice. Personal responsibility is something heroes experience as a sense of innate duty. I’d expect that part of what makes someone a villain is their tendency to run away from that feeling rather than to embrace it.
Many villains are those who simply don’t take responsibility for their actions. This lack of accountability - and thus sovereignty - over themselves allows the lowest version of themselves to operate unchecked.