Mean People Fail

(November 2014)

Two years after that, one of the meanest people you can think of achieved an absolute pinnacle of American society. He failed -- barely -- to repeat it four years later, and then only because of a once-in-a-century crisis that happened to occur on his watch. He remains very popular and could well be back.

Perhaps it was different in 2014, but here in 2021, which of the founders of the FAANG is not thought of as "mean" by at least a fair percentage of HN?

I'm all for cooperation and kindness. They're very important to me. But I see little evidence that mean people fail. At least not in their own view.

This is good stuff, but it's not new. Meanness is ill will, a mental poison that will inevitably cause a person to harm others, but the very first victim is holder of the ill will. I think this was probably very well known even at the time of the Buddha 26 centuries ago. As I get older I seem to be realizing more and more how often we rediscover or reinvent ideas from the distant past. It may be unavoidable, because wisdom is hard to transmit via words.