How Dark Managers Can Exploit Their Victims Using False Prides

In general, true pride is mainly about what helps your self-actualization, while false pride is mainly about what seems to do so as well but actually pushes you away from it. As self-actualization, which is driven by love rather than fear, can only be done by legitimately benefiting and contributing to the others, in which you can manifest your unique true value to the others and be true to yourselves, activities that are mostly motivated by love and primarily give positive things from yourselves to the others or take negative things from the others to yourselves are probably true prides, while those mostly motivated by fear and primarily give negative things from yourselves to the others or take positive things from the others to yourselves are probably false prides, which will make you become further and further away from what you really are.

For instance, if you’re a doctor and the majority of your sense of pride comes from the fact that you’ve saved hundreds of invaluable lives who would’ve died and you’ll continue to save more and more in the rest of your career, while being an authentic and popular role model to foster the love and respect towards the patients from the fellows in the healthcare industries, then what you’re pursuing is likely a true pride, because you love legitimately benefiting your patients and contributing to the industries, and you’re manifesting your unique true value of being an altruistic and caring professional thorough your highly valued career. If the majority of your sense of your pride comes from the fact that you’ve secured a highly worshiped professional status which lets you earn way over 500k USD per year with the sense of entitlement that you’re qualified to put down 99% of the rest of the people in the world, while you hate to have to keep pretending to love and respect your patients when you just treat them as troubles that constantly give you an insanely high amount of unnecessary stress during work, then what you’re pursuing is likely a false pride, because you’re just treating your loathed career as a necessary evil to acquire your apparent social respect rather than enjoying the process of genuinely helping others deep within your heart, and you’re afraid of losing what you’ve gained while at the same time fear that such a massive pressure from your job will eventually tear you into many little pieces, causing you to be never able to even partially recover.

Clearly, the problem with false pride is that, because it’s about giving your negatives to the others while taking the positives from them, it’ll all too easily lead to disproportional and unhealthy comparisons and competitions, meaning that the endgame can quickly become zero-sum or even negative-sum. Also, since false pride is based on fear rather than love, and fear will lead to unnecessary defensiveness, which can lead to even more baseless fear, the more false pride you’ve, the more difficult you can let go of acquiring even more false pride, so in extreme cases, false pride can become as destructive as highly addictive drugs, and it won’t be surprising to see someone to be in an irreversible path of total self-destruction because of that.

How Can Dark Managers Exploit False Prides

Simply put, to exploit false prides from the victims in order to maximize the self interest of dark managers, the following approximation needs to be largely hold:

Amount of false prides gained by the victims = Amount of self interest gained by the dark managers from those victims

At least in most places within the modern world, the primary measurement of self interest of the dark managers is money, so that of false prides of their victims also has to be money, meaning that the dark managers need to make their victims feel proud of earning lots of money with the need to spend tons of them, and of course those victims earned so much money because they helped those dark managers to earn even more money, with those money spent by those victims benefiting those dark managers at the end as well.

For those who’re addicted to gaining more and more false prides, the dark managers can simply let their victims earn even more money(but still far less than what they deserve) and give them even more good-looking titles, in exchange for those victims working for maximizing the self interest of those dark managers, even when those victims can feel that they’re being exploited by someone. As long as those victims don’t know that it’s those dark managers who’re exploiting them, even when one day those victims become totally used up and become complete goners, the dark managers can simply replace them with new victims that are going to repeat the same history.

For those who keep trying hard to stay away from false prides as much as possible, the dark managers can’t simply use money, good-looking title or similar seemingly tangible benefits to lure them into the vicious cycle, because to those people, they’re not interested in having way more than what they need when it comes to stuffs that are just to sustain their lives. Instead, the dark managers need to powerfully portrait those having tons of false prides as respectable winners and those having almost no false prides as selfish losers, so the whole society will form a culture that will help those dark managers to force those trying to have as little false prides as possible to submit into this toxic reality, otherwise it’d be hard for those dark managers to exploit such people, thus not maximizing the self interest of those dark managers.

Societies Full Of False Prides

To foster a false sense of the need of false prides, the society needs to highly encourage and recommend the “winner takes all” mindset to its population, otherwise if everyone could just live their own lives without putting down the others somehow, it’d be hard to incite their fear that they’ve to keep winning that way in order to survive in this society. To ensure that such fear will be permanent, the society needs to keep enforcing an imminent sense of scarcity over essential resources for survival, and money is usually the best choice of this, so it’d be advantageous for the dark managers to let the others feel that they always need even more money to survive, therefore consumerism is very, very ideal for this purpose, due to the fact that it systematically incites people to think that they need way more than what they actually need, causing much more consumers to spend much more money to be earned by those dark managers, who don’t have to care about the fact that the prosperity from consumerism is just excessively damaging the earth and overdrawing the future generations in a totally unsustainable manner, because those dark managers in the current generation would’ve died long before the point of no return.

To spread out such fear even faster, the society on one hand needs to emphasize the importance of being fiercely competitive to stop living horribly miserable lives, and on the other hand needs to acquiesce the mindset of putting down those having less false prides by those having more, like applying the “customer is the king” mantra when the customers are of high social statuses and the providers are of low ones, and treating customers like dirt when the social statuses between them is the other way around. Similarly, because the boss in a company is supposed to have the most false prides there and the boss can mostly control the amount of false prides gained by the employees in the company, “boss is always right” is another unspoken dogma that only very capable and well-known employees in their industries can openly oppose that without digging their own early graves.

When one loses a competition for false prides, that person will be even more afraid of not having enough resources needed for survival deep down, so that person will work even harder and focus even more on being even more competitive for gaining and protecting false prides; When one wins such competitions, that person will soon face even more competitive opponents, so it’d be even harder for that person to win the next competitions which are even more fierce, and thus the fear of losing the previously gained false prides will be even greater, meaning that that person will also put forth even more effort and sacrifice even more to keep winning. Therefore, no matter losing or winning, as long as one keeps competing just for false prides and aren’t even close to the top of the food chain of false prides, the fear of that person will only increase over time, and the false prides will become more and more indispensable for that person, so dark managers will become easier and easier when trying to exploit the fear and addiction of such person for maximizing their self interests.

The Food Chain Of False Prides

We all know what an “emotional food chain” is like — A customer unreasonably scold the boss of a company because he’s extremely unhappy about her daughter being bullied by her classmate in school, then that boss unreasonably scold an employee there because of the bad mood, and that employee then unreasonably scold his wife as his emotional trash can being financially dependent to that employee, after that his wife unreasonably scold her son as she feels justified to use her son that way, finally her son becomes so angry that he violently bullies his classmate which is the daughter of that customer at the very beginning, so the whole vicious cycle can continue to no end. The food chain of false prides is very similar, except that there can rarely be cycles, meaning that there will usually be bottoms of such food chains, and those being on the bottoms may have to resort to anonymity and be ones similar to extraordinary internet trolls who unreasonably scold just about anything that can give them some attractions for a short time, and thus a temporary sense of false prides that they desperately need.

As for why the food chain of false prides can exist but is hard to have cycles, it’s because false prides are based on what positives you’ve over the others and what negatives others have over you, so gaining false prides normally demands you to take the positives from the others and gives the negatives from you to the others, with the fact that the ones with the most false prides are those most capable of returning the negatives given to them from the others and preventing the others from taking the positives from them, meaning that the food chain of false prides does heavily manifest the well-known Matthew effect. So while those at the very top of the food chain can take whatever positives from the others within their reach and give whatever negatives to them, those at the lower ends of the food chain won’t be that relaxed, so when their positives are being taken by the higher ranks who gives them negatives, these lower ranks, who still want to gain even more false prides to ascend in the food chain, have to take the positives from the even lower ranks and give the negatives to them, and this continues until the very bottom is reached, where those of the lowest caliber can only use anonymity to pretend to be at very high ranks in order to maintain a sense of false pride by being attention-seeking internet trolls or similar roles.

For example, a doctor scolds a nurse over nothing because the doctor subconsciously feels that he’s above the nurse due to having higher social status and so he has to right to do so, then the nurse scold her husband over nothing because he’s financially dependent to her and thus the same reason applies, and when that husband tries to scold another doctor over nothing things suddenly don’t work, because that doctor knows that that patient is of much lower social status, and so that doctor feels justified to overtly blame that patient even harder as a way to fight back, so that patient has to resort to be an anonymous internet troll starting malicious rumors about that doctor, to hope that the internet will heavily punish that doctor for that patient. Unlike emotional food chain, where it’s actually not uncommon to form cycles, it’s rather hard for one with lower social status to take positives from one with higher social status or give negatives to that person, so the society’s used to have some people having to tolerate more and more negatives and having less and less positives to support them, and it’s all too easy for the society to look the other way, because to the society it’s the norm and it’s indeed hard to have any sustainable alternatives in the foreseeable future.

How This Food Chain Balances Itself

As those being on the absolute lowest of the food chain of false prides tolerate more and more negatives from the others and have less and less positives not taken by the others yet, eventually they’ll have so many negatives and so few positives that they’ll feel like pathetic losers when it comes to false prides, and it’s all too easy for them to feel that they’ve little to lose and do something desperate, like committing suicide or serious crimes as retaliation. In either case, they’ll become effectively isolated from the society and thus the food chain of false prides at least for a while, and so do the negatives forced onto them, meaning that the total amount of negatives in the society will be somehow temporarily lowered this way, before there are too much such negatives for the society to keep holding itself together.

To further make use of such chances to reduce the amount of negatives in the whole system even more, the others can simply make use of the just world hypothesis to blame those people as selfish losers who’re pathetic scums rather than respected contributors to the society, and they’ll most likely feel much better after making such criticisms instead of even trying to understand what took those being blamed into such irreversible paths. It’s because on one hand, to them it means that at least they’re nowhere as miserable as those being scolded, so they can gain some positives that way, and on the other hand, this gives them ideal targets to vent their long-suppressed negative emotions so they can feel that at least some of their negatives are forced onto those committed suicide or crimes, therefore the increases of positives and decreases of negatives can cause a perceived increase of false prides.

Another aspect contributing to this balance is that, when it’s so clear that the society is unconditionally against committing suicide and crimes so strongly, those being on the lowest of the food chain of false prides will hesitate even more before making those irreversible moves, so they’ll have the incentive to look for better alternatives, like seeking prolonged professional psychological supports. With good therapists really helping them to become willing and able to know what’s really going on in their lives and how can they overcome their problems themselves so they can eventually become independent from those therapists, or bad therapist subtly hinting their patients that it’s all their fault and directly telling them how to fix the symptoms without addressing the root causes so those patients will rely more and more on those therapists to keep those patients from committing suicide or crimes, the food chain of false prides will appear to be much more sustainable than what it actually is, otherwise the number of cases involving committing suicide or crimes could become so high that more and more people previously being addicted to false pride would realize just how broken this food chain of false pride, which is going to be rotten to the core if not stopped, really is.

How Dark Managers Can Enhance This Food Chain

First, the whole society needs to establish new systems and convert existing norms to support the food chain of false prides, like emphasizing competence in education systems and the importance of cram schools that actually just treat students as stupid cash cows, helping books and courses focusing on secular success to have larger and larger market share, and passing regulations that favor those employers who just treat employees as disposable tools to boost the competence of the companies while punishing co-operations for viewing employees as who they really are. This is to ensure that some of the most powerful stakeholders of maintaining the rules of the society to keep benefiting from the food chain of false prides, so these highest ranks can just use the Matthew effect to sustain themselves, until the food chain of false prides become so twisted that things will have to be violently reset, perhaps via brutal revolutions, but by then those victors should have all died for a long time and thus these aftermaths will be none of their businesses.

Second, those dark managers should utilize globalization, which essentially removes all the watertight compartments previously installed in an insanely colossal ship, to spread imposter syndromes like wildfire, so their victims will feel that they’ve to frequently compete with the best of the world in many aspects of their career, and thus they’ll be motivated to work even harder to gain even more false prides to feel still barely having a toppling place in such a fiercely competitive world. For the same reason, while globalization makes the problem of “winner takes all” much worse than what it already is, those dark managers should further exploit this issue as long as they can remain being one of the few winners in the world, so more people will have to help those dark managers gain more self interest in order for those people to have more false prides.

Third, those dark managers should treat the trend that the world is moving faster and faster as a heaven blessing, because that means more old industries and professions become eliminated faster, more old experience and knowledge become obsolete more quickly, and more old activities and techniques become useless more swiftly, and all these changes cause more people to become even more anxious when trying to adapt to such a speedy world, thus increasing their amount of fear and hence the addiction of having more false prides, with the bonus that they’ll have less and less time to reflect on whether they really know what they’ve been truly doing, and so more and more unable to think clearly anymore. Among all things that move so fast, the advance of technologies is especially advantageous, because nowadays some technologies and their products evolve so quickly that they change from benefiting the mankind to be some means to eliminate those who’re too unfit to adapt to the world with such a fast pace, by making use of the fact that people need time to adapt to new products and technologies before they can enjoy those benefits, and some people are so slow in adapting such things that those previously new products and technologies already become irrelevant even before those people finished such adaptations.

Why Dark Managers Need To Suppress True Prides

First, because normally the greater the amount of the fear their victims are, the easier they’re kept controlled by the dark managers as long as those dark managers know how to exploit those fears, and so false prides, which will usually generate even more fear, should be regularly fed to those victims to keep their addictions. On the other hand, as true prides generate love that will push away fear, those fear of those victims will eventually become so weak that those dark managers can no longer use those weaknesses to manipulate their victims.

Second, with their victims having more love and less fear, they’ll begin to be able to think more and more clearly, thus being easier and easier to discover the truth behind the whole food chain of false prides, and hence endanger the sustainability of the dark management benefiting the dark managers. Once all those dark management practices are exposed, those dark managers will suddenly become much more vulnerable than before, and that’s exactly not those dark management want, since being hidden in the dark is the main power source of those dark managers.

In order for the dark managers to maintain their dark management when most of their victims have way more true prides than false prides, those dark managers will have no choice but be forced to evolve into the best dark managers, who can easily align the self interests of their victims with those of themselves, thus utilizing the true prides of those victims in the favor of those dark managers. However, being one of the best dark managers is just so hard that tons of talents and decades of dedicated hard work will be needed in order to even have a reasonable chance to be there for a short time, so at the end of the day most dark managers will still want to suppress true prides in order to keep the food chain of false prides, with those dark managers keeping at the top of course.

How Dark Managers Can Suppress True Prides

First, dark managers can demonize knowledge and techniques that can help people strive for true prides and be rid of the addiction of false prides, like those from philosophy and psychology, so those victims suffering from the addiction of false prides will be more likely to be cut off from both external and internal help. Such demonizing can be as simple as claiming that such professions are much worse than useless and thus are inexcusable wastes of the precious resources from the society, or as evil as nurturing completely corrupt philosophers and psychologists who seriously contaminate the relevant industries so the society will have more and more severe trust crisis towards the professionalism within these fields.

Second, dark managers can make independent thinking skills more and more underrated, and then strongly advertise their victims to follow some seemingly highly successful role models that are advantageous to those dark managers, so those victims will replace independent thinking skills with blindly following whatever those role models do and say. This can be done by showing how easy, simple and small the life struggles will become if one always try their best to closely follow the path of those role models that seem to have immense success from gaining tons of false prides, while at the same time exaggerating how failing lives will be and how damaging to the society such failures are if one insists to foster their independent thinking skills, since it’s indeed a great risk for those to take this path to become more and more futilely rebellious towards the society, all due to the fact that they can clearly see just how dirty and ugly this food chain of false prides is and how hopelessly deep it’s built into the society.

Finally, dark managers can indirectly portrait those having tons of true prides and little false prides as ill-disguised pathetic scums and pretentious selfish losers in the society, or at least make the others think that they’ve utterly malicious plans and ulterior motives behind their altruistic behaviors and benevolent contributions, so the victims of those dark managers will be even harder to believe that striving for true prides is really better than keep being addicted to false prides in the long term. The goal is to make those victims convince themselves that true prides are either unsustainable or are just cover-ups for paths that are much more irreversibly evil than being openly addicted to false prides, so those victims can feel apparently justified for such addictions and smear those fighting against such widespread addictions in the society, meaning that those dark managers can just let their victims fight for them against their enemies while exploiting those victims to maximize their self interests without those victims knowing that those dark managers are the real marauders.

When Love Becomes Scarce Resources Under Fierce Competitions

Because love, being the basis of true prides, is the primary threat to this food chain of false prides, and thus the self interests of those dark managers, they can’t afford to let this society to be flooded by love, so they need to make love scarce resources that have to be fiercely competed in order to be acquired, or soon the society will have less and less fear to be exploited by them. The simplest way for them to turn love from being abundant to be seriously lacking is to convince as many people in the society that, love can only come from the outside and has to be earned, so those people will fail to realize that love is actually something coming from within themselves, and loving themselves can be taken as granted as long as what they’re doing are giving them true prides.

That’s 1 reason why a society full of fear and false prides will have pathetic competitions on the pity from the others, so when someone said that he/she’s so pitiful that he/she really wants the others to feel pity for him/her, someone else, thinking that he/she’s even much more pitiful, will instead fiercely blame the former person for stealing sympathies from the others, when the latter person feels that he/she deserves those sympathies instead. Simply put, the underlying insane logic is that, if the much more pitiful people don’t get the scarce sympathies they deserve, than those being much less pitiful have no grounds to compete for sympathies from the others either, otherwise it’d be unfair to the former people, especially when the latter people are “marauding” attentions given by the others from the former people, meaning that rent dissipation is actually taking place when it comes to this kind of unhealthy competition for sympathies, which is a form of love, from the others(because being pitiful as the cost of this competition becomes ridiculously high).

Similarly, in a society having a deeply ingrained food chain of false prides, the majority of love from most people will point to those having the most false prides and thus at the top of the food chain, because the former people will think that the latter people have earned their place in the competition and thus deserve to be admired and praised, otherwise both will feel that it’s unfair for those having sacrificed so much for ascending in the food chain, so they turned love from unconditional, which would be common goods, to conditional, which is private goods(and many of those in the lower ranks having those love will exclude themselves but instead give those love to those in the higher ranks when the latter use their ownership of sufficient amount of false prides as the form of meeting the restrictions). Although such view of love as scarce resources will only strengthen the Matthew effect and thus harm most people in such society, they’ll still want to be the higher ranks there no matter what, and this “winner takes all” mindset in the competition of love will only further motivate them to put down the others, and try to take all the love they desperately want from the society, without knowing that they’re just the best cash cows to maximize the self interests of those dark managers.