Status seeking and envy are absolutely at the heart of it all. Status seekers and flatterers are weak people, because their lives are very much about agreeable

Status seeking and envy are absolutely at the heart of it all. Status seekers and flatterers are weak people, because their lives are very much about agreeableness and approval seeking. Truth-seeking has always been at odds with "the world". You will know them by what they love. Dante hated flattery so much, he immersed flatterers in excrement in the 8th circle of hell, below murderers. A fitting image given how full of crap such people are in this life. In a riff on John Adams, no scientific enterprise will function in the absence of a moral people. You cannot have good scientists without first having virtuous men and women. You are wasting your time, and in fact, probably laying the groundwork for harm.