You do me a favor, I do you a favor; thants something I often heard growing up in New Jersey. It’s often a cliché reserved for mobsters, owing someone a favor, but the truth is that type of thinking and manner of relating with humans dominates our western society. Anywhere you look, at all levels, it is all about who you know, what you can get from them, and how you’ll eventually repay that favor. Sometimes it’s an honorable trade off used to reasonable means. But overall, I truely believe it’s alot of bullshit.
Think about it, you look at the whitehouse, and you see a sub-par lawyer get nominated to the supreme court by a sub-par president who has surrounded himself with unqualified people because they have been loyal to him. And he returns and rewards those favors, in oh so many ways.
But this isn’t purely political. You probably know a guy (more often a guy than a girl!) who has a sweet ass job, who is totally not qualified or simply does nothing. The thing is – he knew someone and maybe they owed him one. Cronies. Cronyism. I won’t bother looking it up in the dictionary, it’s all about giving people privledges simply because they have ingraciated themselves to you.
I can’t help but think if there were less of this in western culture, or generally, throughout the earth, the world would be a more fair and functional place.