Comment by lo_zamoyski
Comment by lo_zamoyski 13 hours ago
It's not about feelings. It's about making human life possible, as we are social animals. We develop through relationships.
Loyalty is a commitment to the objective good of the other, of skin in the game. Loyalty is hierarchical and the particular variety and its entailed commitments depends on the particular nature of the relationship.
In a hyperindividualist liberal society, the presumption is basically Hobbesian; life is taken to be intrinsically and thoroughly adversarial and exploitative, and relationships are taken to be basically instrumental and transactional. (This even informs scientific interpretation, as science is downstream of culture.) Society is taken to be intrinsically a matter of "contract" or a kind of Mexican standoff. Loyalty is a quaint and anachronistic notion, a passing emotion that expires the moment the landscape of opportunities shifts. Provisional and temporary.
Loyalty develops naturally in a good relationship. It's a fruit to be cherished, but it's not a goal that you should pursue for its own sake.
There's no point in asking first, whether employers should be loyal to their employers or vice versa. The important question is whether they are good to one another. If they are, you might also find loyalty among them, but that's not where the focus should be.
Someone who gets obsessed with loyalty too much, I think, is likely to have sinister intentions. They probably want you to be loyal to them but don't plan on being good to you.