this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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Gotcha. So would you rank yourself as mostly unhappy, destitute and unwell?
Can you think of anyone in our society who's doing alright within the confines of a broken system, or do you think that everyone's existence is inseperable from the context of that existence, even if the means of changing it or it's impact are outside of their reach? Somewhere in the middle?
I met a guy who helps manage a homeless shelter and food bank. Stand-up guy. Makes ends meet, is doing what he can where he can. Generally happy guy with a family. Pretty twisted right? Or my former coworker who let his gardening hobby get out of hand and ended up running a community garden that retrofitted two houses to donate to families in need.
People exist in their circumstances, but they're not defined by them. How you react to those circumstances speaks to your character, not that you exist in them.
The implicit level of privilege here should not go unacknowledged. It's a hint at the full story. That's a fundamental part of the problem regardless of how the individual feels about it or reacts.
Perhaps more importantly these are extremely niche/cherry-picked versions of succeeding. In USA it almost always means the same evil bullshit.
You're not wrong, the guy did have a lot of privilege in his life. He's well educated, has a demeanor people trust and enough money to have a backyard garden in a house in a not ideal part of town. He opted to use that privilege to get his neighbors to join their backyards together to have a community garden, and then used a city/state program to use their pooled money to buy an empty lot and an unoccupied house to finish the block. Instead of selling the house for profit, they opted to give it to someone in need.
I'm not sure what full story you're looking for. Dudes a community college astronomy professor who spent some time maintaining billing software.
My point isn't "oh my God, everyone in the US is a saint!” it's that the notion that "because the US has fundamental structural problems, anyone who isn't a miserable failure is inherently evil" is just profoundly misguided.
Either your definition of success is setup such that it says more about you than other people, or you just fundamentally haven't encountered many people.
What's your definition of "success"? How many Americans do you think are engaged in "evil bullshit"?
Being able to ignore the bigger picture because you can change your own privileged surroundings IS the problematic reaction that speaks for your character
Gotcha, so doing good where you can makes you evil unless you're mired in torment over things beyond your control? By that metric everyone in the world is evil.
I can't fathom an ethical system that requires you to be unhappy about things beyond your control once you've done the good that you can.
What constitutes "good character" to you? What constitutes "success"?
Yes it is called empathy, it's nothing you can buy yourself out of by doing good things. If you are somehow interested in the well being of the people it just doesn't magically disappear after helping some of them. It doesn't make you evil but it's certainly not a good sign to weigh these things against each other. The ability to feel good while seeing the world suffer seems to me problematic.
Gotcha. So when was the last time you were happy? I take it you simply do not do things you enjoy?
And when did I say anything even remotely like not feeling empathy for suffering, or that caring for people disappears after doing a good deed? Empathy isn't an ethical system.
I'm actually curious what behavior you think would be non-problematic, and if any human actually does that.
You're the only one talking about abstract ethical systems. The original discussion is about being a good catch for doing good in life. And doing good in terms of being generally happy (your interpretation) while seeing the world suffer is the opposite of being empathic. Because empathy is a valuable good in relationships. So this is in my view not the best catch but there are levels to this.
You brought up being successful in a broken system being bad. I pointed out how one can do good in a system that's broken, acknowledge that which they can't fix, and not get hung up on it and find happiness. You seemed to take that as an ethical issue, which is why I brought up ethics.
I can't think of an ethical system that requires one to be unhappy while doing good where they can simply because there still exists suffering.
Are you mistaking the word "good" for "well"? Are you thinking I'm saying it's okay to smile at misery? Because what you said was my interpretation doesn't even parse right.
If someone has done everything they can to help those it's in their power to help, and they've done stuff to make a living like "teach astronomy", I don't know how you can say it's worrisome that this person plays with their children at a park, or enjoys a birthday party. I'm not talking specific feelings of happiness at specific moments when contemplating specific news items or aspects of reality, I'm talking general life satisfaction.
The EU drowning thousands of refugees isn't cause for me to have clinical depression. I'm sad when I think about it, but it's beyond my control entirely.
You've still never given any actual examples of not problematic behavior by your metrics, or clarified if you've ever felt happiness.
Now we are so far down that discussion that your first point of the 10% ghouls is also valid for my position. Your examples are cherry picked examples of saints so yeah it could be possible doing well in life in a fucked up society while being no asshole. But do you think your examples are the norm if you consider the population as a whole, since the original poster chose this as his metric to identify good partners? I think there is big correlation between somebody that is doing well in a fucked up society and assholes. Since the being happy part in most people I know comes from ignorance, missing empathy or missing education. And doing well financially comes from the same three plus exploitation or inheritance.
And for the rest:
Things like
doesn't sound fitting. Like there are people who build a community garden center because they like gardening and people who report from war zones. And I don't think it has something to do with them liking war so much.
So yeah maybe you should have clinical depression because the EU drowning thousands of refugees if that leads to action against this. Since more garden centers won't change the world.
I will keep ignoring the last two questions because I have the feeling they will just get us further away from the original post.