I think a major contributing factor in almost all extremely unhealthy group dynamics is narcissism. Pathological narcissists have a high incentive to use the dynamics you describe to their advantage and are (as I have heard and have some anecdotical evidence, but can’t currently back up with facts) often found in leading positions in charities, religious cults, and all kinds of organizations. Since they hunger for being admired and are very good at manipulating people, they are attracted to charities and altruistic movements. Of course, a pathological narcissist is selfish by definition and completely unable to feel anything like compassion, so it’s the antithesis of an altruist.
The problem is made worse because there are two types of narcissists: “grandiose” types who are easily recognizable, like Trump, and “covert” ones who are almost impossible to detect because they are often extremely skilled at gaslighting. My mother-in-law is of the latter type; it took me more than 40 years to figure that out and even realize that my wife had a traumatic childhood (she didn’t realize this herself all that time, she just thought something was wrong with her). About 1-6% of adults are assumed to be narcisissts, with the real dangerous types probably making up only a small fraction of that. Still, it means that in any group of people there’s on average one narcissist for every 100 members, and I have personally met at least one of them in the EA community. They often end up in leading positions, which of course doesn’t mean that all leaders are narcissists. But if something goes badly wrong with an altruistic movement, narcissism is one of the possible reasons I’d look into first.
It’s difficult to tell from a distance, but for me, it looks like SBF may be a pathological narcissist as well. It would at least explain why he was so “generous” and supported EA so much with the money he embezzled.
Thank you for sharing this! It takes a lot of courage to talk about one’s “failures”, because we’re constantly bombarded with (often fake or incomplete) success stories. Social media tell us we’re not beautiful enough, not smart enough, not rich and successful enough. As a management consultant, I learned to pursue “best practice”, to learn from these success stories and apply their principles of success to my own projects. It took me a while to figure out that this is complete bogus and almost never works in real life.
Im 61 now, and my list of “failures” is far longer than yours: I founded four start-ups, none of which became successful. I wrote three novels, none of which got published. I invented more than a hundred board-games, none of which was played outside of the circle of my family and friends (who hate being my play-testers by now). I tried to become a musician, song-writer, and poet, and failed miserably at it. I developed a computer game which I published in one of my start-ups, but despite nice reviews we sold only about 5% of the games we produced (these were the 90s, when computer games came in paper boxes with a CD in it). We got lucky, though—the storage house of our distributor burned down and their insurarnce covered a part of the production costs. I launched a YouTube channel, posting a video every week for a year, getting me to 238 followers.
To me, all those failures aren’t things I wish I hadn’t done. They weren’t mistakes. They were tries that didn’t work out. But at least I did try, and that is a good thing—far better than just doing nothing because you’re afraid of failing. On our death bed, they say, we mostly regret the things we didn’t do, rather than our mistakes. So you should be as proud of your so-called “failures” as I am of mine. And, if you can overcome your depression, you should continue trying. Not because you have to, but because you want to—because it’s much nicer doing things you believe in than doing what some manager tells you to do.
By the way, my fourth novel got published when I was 47 and became a German bestseller. Today, I am a full-time writer with more than 50 books published (https://karl-olsberg.jimdo.com/english/). A lot of them are flops. Some are not.
Edit: Shortly after writing this, my publisher informed me that they weren’t publishing the 5th book of a children’s book series, which I had already finished and they had already paid me for, due to lack of success of the first four books, and because of the paper shortage. Well … I told them that I’m sorry to hear that and that I’ll try to think of a better idea for the next series, which is what I’m going to do.
I wish you all the best for recovery from your depression. Two of my sons had depressions, so I know it’s a serious burden, but I also know it can be overcome.