Well, the higher-ups (in all organizations) do, indeed, have a greater cultural influence on the group's ideals, attitudes, and behaviors. The especially problematic aspect of this is that we often reward the least compassionate with greater responsibility. That is backward thinking from backward-facing people.

If a person wants more power so they can enjoy such "fruits" (more money, control over other people, more pleasures, ...), then they will support people who exemplify those negative characteristics. Believe me when I say that despots don't gain power without significant support from other low-virue folks. That is really the story of human history.

But, no, it is each person's personal responsibility to seek and attain some measure of spiritual growth, with humility, honesty, perseverance, and study. Just like a CEO with bad personality traits will cause negative downstream effects, any individual with those traits will poison the teams they work on or whose work they affect.

As to competition among humans, that is just our common delusion, whereby we are fearfully convinced that we are merely mammals competing for scarce resources, instead of human beings who are capable of cooperation, generosity, compassion, and selfless service for the benefit of the whole, including future generations.

What we are witnessing across the Earth's societies is nothing less than the apotheosis of the masses' majorities exercising their free will to choose ignorance over wisdom in how we treat each other and what we will allow our organizations (such as corps and govts) to produce. A human life committed to selfish competition against other groups is a life wasted on mammalian idiocy, and always results in degradation of the whole.

Why are we not all humanitarians? Because most people reject our highest possible ideals, attitudes, and behaviors. Their reasons are numerous, but none hold any weight, for none will bring them peace and happiness, because only by making other people happy can we be happy. And we can only make other people happy by giving of our selves selflessly and compassionately.

> What we are witnessing across the Earth's societies is nothing less than the apotheosis of the masses' majorities exercising their free will to choose ignorance over wisdom

There is a mismatch between your observations about humans as a whole, and the appeal to individuals and their individual values.

I am all for individual ethics, but half the people on the planet could have great ethics, and things could still devolve.

The way to scalable net-positive gains starts with oneself, but also requires finding ways to pull others into net-positive arrangements, in a way that generates value back to you. Then repeat on larger scales.

If a fraction of the planet worked hard from that standpoint, things would improve markedly. Even a lot of failures and a few successes would make a lot of positive difference.

Applying game theory, psychology and local conditions toward scaling up positive sum games, is another form of engineering.

Perhaps the highest form.

There is no mismatch, friend. "Pulling others in", as you put it, requires two ends of the leveling-up: first, the initiate explains how to begin the self-evolution, and second, the newcomer accepts the challenge and begins their own path to self-evolution.

For those who invite, we are to do so with loving kindness, because the result is wholly dependent upon the receiver opening and then walking through the door we present. There is no compulsion in religion, and we must understand and remember that it is everyone's choice, and we cannot be negative about their declination. No badgering, no negativity whatsoever, period. We are to keep being kind with the hope that they will catch on eventually, as the events of their lives surface the negativity that they, themselves, have sown into the world via their willful ignorance. Perhaps they will reach a point where they've had enough of ignorance and are willing to give the Path of Love a try.

And this is no game, though systems theory is the proper model of our situation, where there in an intrinsic gravity we each face to the idea of overcoming our intrinsic negative traits (the vices of the heart/mind). Now, construct the model with cooperating verses competing individuals in the population, positive contributors verses negative contributors. Of course, you already correctly intuit the fact that the more of us that viewed our aggregate impact upon the Earth (and each other) this way (that we can actually change things by being a part of the positive force), things could improve quite rapidly. The fact is that we are moving in such a diametrically opposite direction to cooperative compassion that we are literally destroying the Earth for our future generations.

And it is our choice, each of us, individually, but with billions of us aggregating into a miserable mass of selfish f_cks who are causing unnecessary strife, unhappiness, and destruction via our willful ignorance of what is possible for us both individually and collectively.

Thanks for the rebuttle.

You are right, I stand corrected - I think both approaches make sense for spreading change.

Yours on an every day basis, the viewpoint I gave requires opportunity, but matters too.

The thing with game theory, is it’s the right way to think of social structures that scale.

I think a lot of people’s behavior responds strongly to their incentives. All those people you (and I) are cynical about.

And ethics really are the positive sum “games”. Keeping one’s word, safety nets, helping our neighbors, win-win transactions and relationships - we adopt them as individuals for the immediate good it does, for us and who we interact with. And knowing if everyone did that we would all be better off. Even the self-isolating rich since society as a whole would run better.

Bottom up or top down encouragement are both with it.

Well said, my friend. Thank you very much.

Yes, changing incentives is the easiest way to provide a proper carrot to help people choose a better way.

And let's not forget that disincentivizing our leaders from being corrupt bastards is the proper use of the stick as well.