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Comment by jcadam | Hacker News Reader

As I get older I find I care less and less about whether or not others like me.

Now, respect is another matter. If I had to choose, I'd rather be respected than loved.

Just to add my non-sociopathic agreement, a friendship based on mutual respect is probably stronger than one just based on strongly liking each other (which is what most people mean by love).

Without getting too philosophical, I would say mutual respect is a more sincere form of love, anyway, so there isn't much difference.

Or feared! Respected and feared.

You can't make this stuff up. You're even excited about it.

(See my response to the sibling comment on koolba for the discussion if you wondering what I am talking about)

Managers aren't there to be everybody's friend. They're there to motivate, focus, gather resources and direct effort. A little fear can be very motivating.

You're absolutely right on that. However, the topic here is friends. If you think people that fear you make good friends, you don't have any.

The topic can change quickly or slowly as a particular branch of a thread progresses. In any case, the topic is also orbiting work, so there is room to interpret the comment as applying more to work relationships than friendship, which puts it in a slightly different light. I think you've just been primed by some other comments to interpret this a specific way.

W Edwards Deming, one of the most famous and respected individuals in the business management and industrial engineering space, would firmly disagree with you.

Driving out fear (of colleagues, of management, etc) was one of his key principles in creating quality for the organization.

http://www.quality-assurance-solutions.com/Deming-Point-8.ht...

In my experience, being feared isn't great at all. People will hide the truth from you too often, if it isn't all rosy.

There are many degrees of fear. And I consider it relevant.

I agree with you, in the sense of "I respect him, he knows a lot, he's good at what he does, he's kind and faithful and so on".

And also fear. Some fear. Enough to make people think twice when they're planning on backstabbing you, pulling you from the cliff, etc.

> As I get older I find I care less and less about whether or not others like me.

I came to that conclusion around 13 or 14. It's been a very pleasant and if I had to put it one way or the other, I'd say most people do like me.

> Now, respect is another matter. If I had to choose, I'd rather be respected than loved.

Love is good, respect is great, but fear is the one that gets results!

Fear only gets results if you have people in a position where they can't leave.

Welcome to current capitalism where leaving a job is something only few can afford to do safely because there is no shortage of worker bees on almost all levels. It's one of my main arguments that the current system doesn't work because it doesn't allow these kinds of adjustments. Most people are stuck with bad bosses and bad organizations, or the best they can hope for is going to another equally dysfunctional one (lemon market, sort of). It should not just be customers who can let a business fail, employees should have that option too (by leaving). Customers decide about products - but employees decide about work place culture. We have a mostly working mechanism only for the first.

Do you know where you're posting?

How is that relevant? A person can be well off and want to improve things for those less well off.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

As long as it's not your suffering....

It's amazing to me the people that openly express sociopathic tendencies on HN.

> It's amazing to me the people that openly express sociopathic tendencies on HN.

It's more amazing that the majority of people, both online and in meatspace, prefer to sweep reality under the rug.

What's sociopathic about being able to recognize and deal with these types of situations as they come up in your life?

Reality doesn't prioritize fear over respect. That's your sociopathy distorting your view.

Caring more about getting things from people more than the actual people in your life (ie, using fear to get what you want) is the very definition of a sociopath.

What amazes me is that you are open about it. Most sociopaths try to hide that fact, because once people realize they are being manipulated you lose control.

> Caring more about getting things from people more than the actual people in your life (ie, using fear to get what you want) is the very definition of a sociopath.

> What amazes me is that you are open about it. Most sociopaths try to hide that fact, because once people realize they are being manipulated you lose control.

Ha! Who said I'm like that?

I'm talking abstractly. When your circle of friends intersects with a friends circle, you get to see a lot of interesting dynamics. One of those is fear and, speaking frankly, it's pretty disgusting. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

It's one thing to entertain that an idea may be true, it's another thing to actually live out that philosophy.

I'd give the parent commenter the benefit of the doubt that they're sharing an idea to debate (which we are), or just being facetious by quoting Machiavelli.

Is it as amazing as the people who feel like they're such incredible diagnosticians that they can proclaim sociopathy is present based on a few sentences in a forum?

I'll charitably presume you have a medical education and are qualified to make that diagnosis up close.

Saying a person is "expressing tendencies" is tremendously different than making a diagnoses of a disorder. I didn't say anything about the person actually being one.

It doesn't take special qualifications to make a basic observation.

I upvoted you because your comment adds to the discussion, not because I agree.

>Love is good, respect is great, but fear is the one that gets results!

The whole idea of having a good friend is that there are no "results". Its someone you know, that knows you, that you can feel comfortable hanging out with and spending time with, that you want nothing from and that wants nothing from you.

Well said! Unfortunately, the "nothing from and that wants nothing from you" aspects of friendship seem to be ignored by a lot of people these days. Too much phoniness and gaming.

Are we talking about fear of people or fear of the consequences? Because those two are completely different topics.

I understand it in the fear of consequences. In "think twice on what you'll do to that person, because there'll be consequences" :-)

Genuinely curious: what sorts of results have you achieved by employing fear?

> Genuinely curious: what sorts of results have you achieved by employing fear?

I don't think I've done anything of this sort. My comment is based on observations of the world around me. Not just me and my friends, but them and their friends, their interactions etc.

In the corporate world, I've seen fear be a very motivating factor. Whether it's keeping your job, keeping your bonus, being assigned to a team, or avoiding a crap assignment, fear is definitely a factor. You can see it people and it's not uniform.

In the social world, I've seen people extend invitations out to parties to people they genuinely cannot stand. Not because they want to, but because if they don't, they're afraid the person is going to talk shit about them.

Let us know how that works out for you by age 17.

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