You Can Be a Creep or an Outcast - Depends on if You Do as We Say or Do as We Do

-I considered taking something that wasn't mine yesterday. I exercise at this playground and shoot basketball between sets. Someone left two basketballs on the court, and I considered taking them home, but decided against it. Instead, I sat them on a picnic table for the owner to grab when they came back, but someone else may have claimed them. That got me thinking. 

-There's a mile wide chasm between Christian ideals, and American behavior. A ton of conflict between what we are taught, and how we behave. I don't expect anyone to be perfect. We're all doing our best to be decent despite everything, and, out there in the world, people are overwhelmingly decent to one another.
-When we're little, we're taught that we shouldn't take things that aren't ours, yet we inevitably see adults lying, cheating, and stealing, and everything gets very confusing at that moment. If our parents were honest Americans, they'd tell us to only steal if we're certain we can get away with it.  

-We live in a culture that rewards liars, dishonest marketers, dishonest salespeople, cheaters, and thieves. But that's the price of capitalism, the price of progress. There's no solution to this problem. Everything's always a tradeoff. Our system rewards delusional, self absorbed, and self centered people with riches and power to fuel those dispositions infinitely. Yet we're taught to be humble, to practice humility, to forgive, and to give. That's a lot of dissonance all wrapped around western culture. 

-Its like everyone is saying "Do as I say, not as I do" which is the dumbest thing any parent could ever say. Kids learn from examples. Not words. Thankfully, some kids know to use their parents as inverse examples. Examples of what not to do.
-You could interpret the teaching of Christian ideals as: Let the people with power wield their power over you. Don't rock the boat and your life will be easier. Turn the other cheek. There's a solid argument to be made that Rome likely adopted Christianity in order to pump up their power over the populace. Not an alliteration amateur.

-But the problem with that line of thought is that Jesus flipped over tables and whipped the moneychangers out of the temple. There's still some conflict within Christianity on when to turn the other cheek and when to flip the table over and whip a banker's ass. His butt. Don't hurt his donkey. The donkey didn't do anything. I want a donkey. 

-This discord leaves us with two options: 

-You can be perceived as weak, and perceived as  an idiot, by being a decent person, choosing to give, and to help, and to be humble. But this also outcasts you from the American business system. 

-Or you can be perceived as strong, and step on the faces of everyone in your path and extract as much power from the world as you possibly can. 

-But its not black and white. Its not A or B. Jesus preached turn the other cheek, but he also flipped tables over and whipped greedy people doing business in a holy place.

-As far as I can tell, Christianity, and every other religion, is about softening the ego. Its about reigning in our animalistic nature for the sake of humanity as a whole. This is not an easy thing to do because, after all, we're just divine apes because we were gifted language. 

The problem with softening the ego is:
But we need our egos to survive.
But our egos often harm our relationships. 

But softening the ego conflicts with American values. 

-But that's not a problem! We've created prosperity churches to reconcile Christianity with capitalism! God wants you to be rich! All that stuff about it being easier to put the eye of a camel through a haystack made of needles than it is for a rich man to get into heaven no longer applies. Why look away from the dissonance when you can ride it? I'm teasing a little, but the prosperity churches are on the right track. Capitalism and our cultural focus on productivity have done a lot of good for the world. There's no more polio or smallpox. Mothers rarely die in childbirth. Babies rarely do too. No one in America is starving unless they're on a hunger strike to protest the new data center in their town while livestreaming it on Instagram. (They don't understand the irony of that.)

-As always, it's about balance. You have to have a certain amount of ego to be successful in life, and to help the people around you effectively. And some successful folks do remain private and quietly help others without making a show of it. This makes me hopeful. But overall, make money or die culture leaves a lot to be desired. 

-A quick aside: I worked in sales for a few years, and one of the owners actually said "Make money or die" multiple times. You won't be surprised to learn that he was the most miserable person I've ever met, and he later offed himself. But here I am talking about him. Assholes live forever. Another solid reason to lean into American greed and ego.
-So, don't lie, cheat, or steal, but people will reward you for those actions. Either you can be a creep that extracts as much money and power from the world as you can, or you can be an outcast who doesn't have any power, or you can take the middle road and try to find some balance between the two and be decent. C'est la vie.