There’s the direct benefit we derive from a relationship — and indirect

a bit like kinetic energy vs potential

-direct benefit, kinetic energy, could be things you build together, boons you are able to provide for each other, etc.

-indirect benefits, potential energy, are things you may build together, boons you may be able to provide for each other, and ultimately the kind of values and society you nurture

 

Now, where does INFORMATION sit?

Or FONDNESS?

Or LOVE?

Or STATUS?

Or TRUST?

 

Clearly in both sets

Linked in intriguing ways

For instance: LOVE is a delightful experience which you are experiencing now

It is therefore direct,

However, you only experience it because the other person is so LOVELY to you

And what would lovely mean? It’s a collection of attributes that you both value, love tremendously — AND a collection of attributes which are very desirable, potentially useful and beneficial to you

It is therefore indirect

But indirect of course is rooted in what was once demonstrated, therefore once direct

You know that people and objects with those attributes can be directly useful

Therefore you want them in your life

Therefore you value them

 

And of course it can become quite abstract

There are IDEALS you value because you believe that deep down the line they benefit you, and everyone else

They can make your life much harder over short term and medium term and maybe even over your entire life,

But you are just so convinced that this is the right way of living — that you value them anyway, beyond direct gains

And it’s not irrational if it’s well though out

 

Indeed,

There will be cases when there’s really no love lost between you and someone else — but you quite need each other, depend on each other, simply stand to gain too much from one another,

And there will be cases when you quite adore someone’s company, you’re really quite impressed by someone, and quite find it hard to NOT like that someone — except you are also convinced that deep down the line the difference in values between the two of you is not merely noticeable, but DEAL-breaking

 

Indeed, when should you get rid of someone merely on the account of their views and values?

 

The answer is quite easy if someone is plainly an immoral rogue

Tolerating a rogue is creating a society where being a rogue is not disincentivised

Next thing you know a bunch of such rogues mob you in a dark alley, and beat you up into a cripple

Or maybe that very same rogue you’re so fond of will now be rogue to you, or your upright friends

Because that’s the property of being an immoral, unprincipled actor — that you do immoral, unprincipled things. You may not be doing that to “your” people, but it is what you do to others, therefore this is in aggregate your impact on society

 

I find it quite odd how we normalised blatant immorality, deceitfulness, injustice

Maybe the modern informational landscape is not serving the average folk so well

Maybe the tension between the tribal, the authoritative, the compelling and charismatic, the entertaining and intriguing, and the directly impacting us vs impacting someone else — maybe that tension got too out of whack

And we just don’t know what we value any more, what our fundamental values are

One day the rogue is in our team therefore we’re so proud of him

Other day someone else said something that jarred too much with our preciously held beliefs, so we took the easy way out and declared him a traitor, an immoral rogue truly

 

Now what do we do with those whose views we condemn?

Is it cute that we disagree with someone’s politics? Cute and irrelevant?

 

The intuition is that someone of particularly abhorrent views is simply rejected

Just like someone entirely useless to us is simply rejected

It becomes tricky however in the grey areas

What if someone benefits us TREMENDOUSLY — but we particularly disagree with their views or actions?

Or what if we merely find someone a little distasteful — but otherwise like to keep them in our lives?

Or what if the drift is more societal, where you find more and more people quite at variance with your beliefs, and you literally have to rethink your alliances altogether? Do you then TOE THE LINE yourself, or maybe massively compromise your boundaries and beliefs?

 

Oh and what about the tolerance, someone will say?

Isn’t it a wonderful thing, that we have such plurality?

Isn’t that the best friend who disagrees with you? Rather than echochamber of homogeneity?

 

I believe only an honest reflection like this one,

including mapping of the DIRECT AND INDIRECT benefits,

I believe only such reflection has a chance of addressing this problem

Because of course views are malleable and fluid

And so are values

There are more core values and less core values, there are people with no values, there are people with dogmatic values — but we really are born and die agnostic as to what the truth is

And the tapestry of incentives will of course take on fantastic shapes and sizes,

Everyone has a price, it’s just a question of how much

 

In complex times like those, simple tribal instincts, or moral oversimplifications straight from fucking hollywood, those will not do

Nor simple categorisations like “friend” and “enemy” and “like” and “dislike”,

Every relationship must be viewed in terms of direct and indirect benefits and values

AND viewed in terms of personal alignment of values

 

You must be honest with yourself what you WANT, and how you want to BENEFIT from given relationship

This is a good advice period

Then you must be honest with yourself what you BELIEVE

And then you must design quite a detailed gradient of your values

What you value the most

What you, in turn, condemn the most

What you’re more neutral about

And then you must be cognisant of the web of incentives, in which everyone, you included, are entangled

 

And in the modern world, the outcome of this calculation should be a complicated fucking mess

And this realisation should not propel you to compromise or abandon your values

NOR to double down on them with self-righteous fanaticism

It should only make you AWARE

 

Aware how perhaps people you love are perhaps also a net negative to society, at the time

Or maybe how those that should benefit you the most are also those you quite don’t like

Or maybe that in taking more EXTREME views you actually stand to simplify the network

Or maybe that in taking no views at all you solve that problem

Or maybe in waving in your views like a flag

Maybe have hard boundaries in regards to what kind of people you accept into your life

Or maybe no boundaries at all — only bidding for the best price

This is what awareness means

 

Why awareness, again?

Because I don’t think there is a clear solution

Sometimes incentives will take over… like merely surviving, living to fight another day

Sometimes values are worth dying for indeed

Sometimes happiness and simplicity and simple cooperation and friendship really are the answer

How the fuck would I tell you to abandon all your friends, and quit your job?

Or to turn down millions?

OR to just be a transactional sociopath playing only by his own rules?

 

World is obviously messy

So the best we can do is attempt to navigate this mess with more skill

The map will never be a straight line

But it doesn’t have to be a confused, self-contradictory mess

I believe we’re in a downward spiral of the latter,

The former, the straight line, was always bound to fail — there are no highways in the wild

But the latter is just a fucking chaos of roundabout, vicious, circling and meandering doodles

What we need is not more points on the map, more ideologies, more goals and prices, that we just randomly drop on it and then attempt to navigate to

We need a better meta-awareness, AWARENESS period, of how to NAVIGATE,

A compass

A true north

A number of steady landmarks

Which works no matter what nonsense you encounter,

And then some extra detail, gradually less stable,

With astute perception of this gradient of stability, accuracy

Knowing what is but a mirage, and what is an enduring feature of the landscape

 

Yeah in English:

Values and rules and principles exist. We don’t always know what they are. Some are worth dying for, some are worth changing on the fly,

Society exists and you work with the rest of society, no matter how distasteful you find it, or parts of it, at any given time

This is not new — but became more chaotic in our complex modern world of:

-very disparate moral and political tapestry

-and unprecedented number of different incentives, AND unprecedented gradient of intensity between those incentives

result being people act in even more confused ways, where it’s difficult to pin down their motivation, whether it’s ideological or self-interested, or both, in conflicting ways,

and this confusion is of course ultimately destructive, since values exist for a reason

So the goal is to navigate this chaos in just a little bit more skilful and intelligent way,

So that you don’t have to betray your values just for 30 pieces of silver

nor be a mad pariah who failed to coexist with the society altogether