No Free Tickets

The Didact, in an article picked up at MOTW, looks at the costs of taking the ticket. I can't add much to it, and any excerpt would be worthless standing on its own.

I will say this. I am not sure, looking back, when this happened. There was a time I would have gone along to get along, and made the compromises he speaks of. Over time, though, I had heard far too much of what moral compromises were made by those who succeeded, even well before Weinstein and his potted plant fetishes. I'd also learned how predators groom their prey after run-ins with a severe borderline case, one small step at a time.

And realized even then, at some gut level, the eventual cost in broken lives and relationships, to hold that kind of power, to have that glamour and "success", required a cost or sociopathy I simply wasn't willing to pay or embrace.