Philosophically, I think the pursuit of truth and the exercise of compassion are worthwhile endeavors.

But when that’s too abstract, I remind myself that I have people who rely on me and benefit from my presence in their life. I work to make the world around me better than it was before, so that others can immediately, and in the future, have better lives.

Thanks for responding, I appreciate it. What you’re saying makes sense.

When you say that about her being mentally ill with no empathy, what exactly do you mean? I’m asking because it’s easy to draw a lot of different conclusions from that statement, and I’m trying to make fewer assumptions when I don’t know people well.

Part of the problem is that sufficient wealth seems to destroy people’s understanding of consequence. They don’t experience them very often, and so reach a point where they can simply pursue whatever their feelings tell them to do and the world magically restructures itself to allow them to do so.

Combine this with how the incentives of the social system result in the people who are most likely to pursue a selfish course being the most financially successful- you get a recipe for short-sighted, ignorant and self-important nonsense.