"The best we can do is bring out the best in them and make it easy to be different in the future." - a friend’s recent conclusion about dealing with the troublesomeness of some people. I would reply:
It's an extremely valuable, precious, and civilization-affording approach to have honesty, sincerity, and reliability. I've had my failings there, but I know that it matters. Without it, and without modeling that it matters in your own choices, the world is left to its own entropy and decay. Establishing 'enclaves of meaning' is a victory in and of itself, as some guy once said. Even yes, against the predators and those who will seek to be sociopathic about their own aims. Having boundaries for yourself, and not rewarding their behavior, while rewarding those who support actual meaning and mattering, yes, that is the task, basically, that affords the future.
It is maintaining the structural integrity of the project of life itself, basically.
PS: I think unfettered and pragmatists stereotypes need an updated PR from supervillain worship traits, into realizing that if you are actually focused on the most important goals purely, these derivatives and downstream influences are just as important to that alignment, and if you can't understand why, then you are not having a holistic enough picture to see what the real challenges are.
Some Guy was Norbert Wiener, btw