Who Pays For Your Shortcuts?
The moment we hear the phrase "climbing the ladder," we begin forming opinions about that person. We inherently believe that climbing the ladder legitimately, with ethics intact, is impossible. While that may be true, this belief reveals more about us than about the person in question. The race to become someone important has been both the primary driver of human progress and the precursor to all forms of cunningness.
In politics and in corporations, climbing the ladder comes with a price. This price is especially steep in low-trust societies, where who you know matters more than what you know. In such environments, connections offer significant advantages, so people go to any length to not only know someone worthy but also to become someone worth remembering.
I vehemently oppose this behavior, regardless of the society we live in. Of course it has advantages—it elevates your status and accelerates your financial progress—but it comes at a heavy cost I'm unwilling to pay. When someone climbs the ladder through genuine effort, they learn the ways of life and the tricks of their trade, making their rise appear as natural evolution. Through the challenges of learning and mastering their craft, their minds evolve to a point where they can mentor others.
In contrast, when someone rises simply by knowing the right people, they tend to remain stuck in a survival mindset. They cannot create because they've never been rewarded for building something; they were rewarded simply for playing a part. Whether through sycophancy or greasing palms, it was never about actual work. What happens when such a person gets the opportunity to mentor others? They ruin younger people who are seeking a genuine path forward.
This is why politicians are so despised—they promote and embody such behavior, having risen to the top through these very means. You can observe these behavioral traits in virtually every arena where there's a ladder to climb. So what should you do if you're stuck on the lower rungs? Find your tribe and refuse to compromise on ethics. When you compromise, you may win temporarily, but you'll be contributing to the world's ruin.
Every person's goal should be to elevate themselves while elevating their society, community, and family. The values you choose to exhibit are precisely the values that get passed down. People follow what they see, not what they hear. At the risk of sounding professorial, nothing in this world has meaning if it comes at the cost of moral decay. Someone, eventually, pays the price for your moral compromises.