What to do if those whom I respect and support do not respect and support me, and at the same time I do not respect and support those who respect (or pretend to respect) and support me?

In short: I am approved by dishonest people, while honest people dislike or hate me. This is very sad and makes life feel meaningless.

анонимный вопрос

Honest people are not obligated to respect and support other honest people. They are not necessarily intelligent, not necessarily far-sighted, and not necessarily have a material interest in supporting you; on the contrary, they may have a material interest in disapproving of you, they may be conformists, and they certainly do not possess all the information, because no one possesses all the information. In other words, the world is unfair.

Nevertheless, people are usually interested in creating a society where certain behavior is rewarded, and sometimes they even succeed in this. Behavior that is rewarded in such a society is called honest, and this standard of honesty, of course, does not have to coincide with the standard of honest behavior in another society. One society will value and respect a clever intriguer, another one someone prone to observing moral norms at the expense of material gain. Moreover, these two societies may even partially consist of the same people. In other words, people build their own little just worlds, and they do a pretty good job of it, but in this activity, there is a strong negative effect of scale that prevents the implementation of a single universal standard of justice.

You might admire some “honest scoundrel” who skillfully undermines his colleagues, and in an attempt to win his respect, you skillfully undermine his mother. That is when it will turn out that for the mother, the honest scoundrel follows different standards of honesty. You might admire the generosity of spirit of your colleague, only to find out that for work, he requires competence and adherence to instructions from you, and he would rather appreciate your generosity of spirit in a non-work setting. Or, conversely, you might demonstrate that very professional competence at work, yet be disliked in the office because you don’t wash your cup or you laugh at jokes at the wrong time.

The ability to understand what actions who expects from you and at what moment is called emotional intelligence. It seems to me that this is a combination of ordinary intelligence (the ability to analyze) plus empathy (the ability to sympathize). Mirror neurons in the brain are responsible for empathy, and where there is a neural network, there are techniques for training that neural network. Try copying other people’s manners, voice, movements, and intonations. Pay attention to the sensations that arise in you while doing this. Model other people’s behavior in your head, striving to make the model as close to reality as possible. Try copying the writing styles of different people. Over time, you will sharpen your perceptiveness.

Unfortunately, I cannot boast that I possess high emotional intelligence myself. I am the type of person who would rather pass a PE exam by writing a paper on running technique than run a hundred-meter dash for a grade. So, I won’t be able to inspire you with a personal example, but you weren’t looking for an example from me, but rather advice. I am good at giving advice.

Let’s get pumping!

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