RE: The Capitalism In Our Relationships
Alain de Botton has a great talk about how Romanticism has failed us. I agree with much of what you said here, but since you seem to value quarrel and conflict so highly, I'll just mention the things I take issue with. ;)
and someone is bound to fail for someone else to succeed.
I call bullshit. This zero-sum game thinking does not fit reality. As we innovate, the pie grows and cooperation far exceeds competition as far as increasing human wellbeing.
Everyone has brought smiles, shaking hands, trying to appear as positive as possible even if they world is burning. Everyone has to appear "professional" and handle any given situation surgically even if it all goes to shit. There are strict rules much like computer programming and if one violates them then they are discarded much like we do to a bug.
If so, that's a potentially dysfunctional company (IMO). Read books like the 5 dysfunctions of a team or many other professional management books to realize successful companies do not usually operate this way in the boardroom. They'll have full blown yelling fights in their meetings but leave the room on the same page and working towards a shared goal because all sides were heard and passionately debated. Avoiding things or playing nice is not effective. (I've run my own company for 10 years with a business partner so I also have some personal experience in this area).
In the same respect, we enjoy hurting others that might threaten our values.
Don't count me in that "we" at all. I think determinism requires of us a level of understanding towards others which has no room for guilt, shame, or (worse) enjoyment at the pain of other conscious beings. We could have been them. There are other ways to deal with conflict such as NVC.
I agree "altruism" (philosophically speaking) isn't much more than selfishly creating the world someone prefers to live in, but I'm not sure the "capitalist" language is ideal because relational capital is different than currency. Humans are not objects and if we treat them as such, it creates relational friction which hinders authenticity. The balance, I think, is recognizing how people benefit us and how we benefit others, use accurate language for those interactions, and still not treat people as things to be bought and sold.
You know me. Always looking for a challenge.
I completely agree about the zero game thing. The zero game fallacy has been debunked over and over again. Nonetheless, what i mean in my statement is that, at least momentarily and on specific domains one will have to fail and another will succeed. This is best illustrated with the fact that today 2/3 of the world do not have shelter, food and water on a daily basis but due to recent developments capitalism, they are better of compared to 100 years ago. Even though they are used extensively from western development, within their societies they prosper competing on their "level". The loser is this case is algorithmically defined from our level but this does not apply in their own level.
As far as company cultures go, most of them operate on that rule. It is not the exception. Its all good in theory with seminars and all but in practise is extremely hard to apply due to the high volatility of human nature
When i said " we enjoy hurting others" i meant that in a given situation where our values are threatened ( e.g children) we will enjoy the act of defensive killing of those who threaten them due to the transference of our emotion into something as pure as defending children. This is exactly how all atrocities take place. They are acts of presumed benevolent defence but in the neutral eye they appear horrific.