To think that loyalty is overrated if it’s loyalty to a trash person?

[GutsyOpalPlayer]

Staying loyal to bad people isn’t a virtue.

Bizarre

Totally agree OP

Eh?

What exactly is a ‘trash person’?

Absolutely. Blind loyalty above critical thinking and moral judgement is just stupidity.

It's no coincidence that political regimes and companies which put a big premium on loyalty are more likely to be corrupt or incompetent.

Someone who consistently shows poor character - whether through selfishness, manipulation, cruelty, or a pattern of disrespect. Not someone who makes the occasional mistake but someone who repeatedly behaves in ways that hurt others and takes no accountability.

Loyalty to work is definately over rated

In a political context, the nature of representative democracy is that the country's government/ representatives should serve and be loyal to their people but the people have no such loyalty to them in return. The notion of loyalty to power is precisely what representative democracies with separation of powers have tried to do away with.

Then their behaviour means they’re highly unlikely to have anyone in their lives who professes loyalty to them, surely?

Absolutely agree with you. I have a brother who I've had no contact with for 15 years and I feel no loyalty towards him whatsoever.

Him and his girlfriend have had 10 children (really) who've been adopted or fostered shortly after birth. One baby every 14 months or so. Most of the kids have fetal alcohol syndrome because his girlfriend drinks heavily and takes drugs throughout the pregnancies.

My other brother and sister have contact with him, make excuses for his behaviour, help him out with money regularly and it sickens me. The amount of lifelong suffering these two are creating for those poor children is unimaginable and could be so easily prevented with a sterilisation or vasectomy but they refuse. They make no attempts to change their behaviour and get the children back, of course.

No loyalty for trash people like that, I agree.

I agree op. Blind or unconditional loyalty is not a virtue and people asking for unconditional loyalty don't have your best interests at heart.

(I make an exception for my kids. I have told them that I will always stand by them and try to help them no matter what they have done but even then it doesn't mean that I will blindly allow, encourage or enable them if they do some thing that I think will hurt them or others. )

You'd be surprised at what people tolerate out of loyalty, especially towards family. See my post above.

You’d think so, but no.

There are countless threads on here where women pride themselves on being ‘loyal’ to men who cheat on them, financially/physically/emotionally abuse them, awful fathers, cocklodgers, the works. It’s deeply depressing.

Not necessarily. In fact, quite the contrary, i think. Many people are quite good at manipulating or coercing others into feeling that they must be loyal to them. Groups, institutions and belief systems are brilliant at this.

We also see this with abused kids at times, don't we? Kids are primed to be loyal to their parents no matter how abusive they are.

i agree op…. It’s so bizarre… logically…. Emotions sadly are a whole other ball game and attachment/loyalty seem to be very persistent even in the face of awful behaviour….humans are social animals and perhaps this is the down side of the qualities that allow social cohesion?

I agree with you on belief systems, groupthink etc, but in general, an ordinary individual as consistently dreadful as the OP describes is going to have difficulty keeping anyone in their life for long enough for ‘loyalty’ to be an issue. It’s not a problem for them, because they just move on to the next set of people.

Apparently children have evolved to have strong dealings of loyalty and attachment to their parents presumably because that helps them to survive (in a healthy parent child relationship)

I remember reading about these experiments that someone did with baby monkeys isolated from their group (and their parents). They exposed them to these mechanical contraptions. One contraption was warm and soft but every once in a while squirted water at them or something and the other one was just plain metal or something but offered them food. Apparently the baby monkeys kept going back to the soft and cuddly ones because what they wanted more than anything else was that feeling of comfort even if it came with frequent unpleasantness. Very sad.

A non-binary binary man?

If anyone is interested the experiments on monkeys I mentioned above was carried out by harry Harlow:

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/obsonline/harlows-classic-studies-revealed-the-importance-of-maternal-contact.html

I can't find anything about the link between attachment and abuse though so maybe I (or the source i read it in originally) just made it up.

Whatever the context, loyalty is earned - and it is not earned once and for all but as a constant and mutual effort. Loyalty is earned, loyalty can be lost. Like respect.