5 ms·

> If you really do look down on your old friends and acquaintances like that (so that you see their posts as all about being poorer and less articulate than you

by lsc 9y ago

> If you really do look down on your old friends and acquaintances like that (so that you see their posts as all about being poorer and less articulate than you), then you're probably the one making posts that depress them. Sometimes, yes, and that is the cause of some negative self-reflection on my part, but I think that there's another factor at work... I think that especially the "racist memes with spelling mistakes' crowd just values different things from what I value. For many of them, they see education as a negative attribute except to the extent that it intersects with income, (this attitude is creeping into HN, I think) and even then... you have to understand that unlike most of the people I work with now, I went to a school where scholastic aptitude was something you hid, if you were smart. >Imagine yourself as if you went to highschool in the society where you now work (so that now, the people you used to know are twice as educated and lots of them are far more wealthy) I've wondered what this would have been like. I mean, arrogance has always been with me; and I think I am a lot more aware of my own arrogance than other people are? But a big part of that is that for so many of my friends now, I am 'normal' or maybe even below average - just because they went to really exclusive schools then worked at prestigious places. They have a completely different view of what is normal. What if I always existed in a world where I wasn't "special"? I imagine I'd be a better person, socially. But maybe not? I dunno. >or perhaps imagine what it would be like to have stayed in your old town while someone else went to SV! I... did move back to my hometown for a while. It was... not an experience I care to repeat.

whatshisface 9y ago
>I went to a school where scholastic aptitude was something you hid, if you were smart. That's a very common experience I'm actually surprised to hear that it's ever any other way. To go a bit historical materialist on you, I think that if you took the kids at your old school and made them ten times better at thinking and ten times worse at everything else, their values would re-adjust so that they felt valuable again. People balance their values between the need to have a target to work towards and the desire to not feel terrible all the time - if you're very bad at something you're unlikely to find it an appropriate goal or a comfortable self-measure.
- lsc 9y ago
  >People balance their values between the need to have a target to work towards and the desire to not feel terrible all the time Yes. This is something I do consciously... but also poorly. It would not surprise me at all if most people do something like that, consciously or not.
- rorykoehler 9y ago
  >That's a very common experience I'm actually surprised to hear that it's ever any other way. That's a western thing. In the east being smart is cool.
  - lsc 9y ago
    >That's a western thing. In the east being smart is cool. I thought it was an exclusive school thing. The Americans I know who went to exclusive high schools seem to have had very different experiences. I even know several people (who went to a 'special' highschool for 'gifted' children) who claimed that they enjoyed high school more than college.
    - madaxe_again 9y ago
      Nope. I was educated mostly at public (private) school in the UK, and spent a year at a private school in the US. I was ruthlessly mocked until I learned to dissemble, to not put my hand up to answer a question, to be publicly told off by teachers for not handing in work. The reason is simple - if you make others feel inferior, by being better at anything in any way than them, they hate and envy you.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - lsc 9y ago
        >The reason is simple - if you make others feel inferior, by being better at anything in any way than them, they hate and envy you. If that were true, the sports stars would not have been popular
sheepmullet 9y ago
> For many of them, they see education as a negative attribute Yes it's an unfortunate byproduct of the link between education and left wing ideology. We often joked that people who go away to college come back dumber than when they left. As an example when my daughter was in college she came to visit us and was talking about how I was contributing to the patriarchy and enabling the oppression of women and how women have it so much worse. And I'm sitting there thinking what happened to my sweet girl and why am I working a stressful job with long hours to help pay for her to learn this kind of crap.
- bambataa 9y ago
  It must have been discomforting that your sweet girl had become a woman with thoughts and opinions differed to yours.
  - sheepmullet 9y ago
    > had become a woman with thoughts and opinions differed to yours. If your daughter came home from college a neo-nazi would you say the same? What if lots of your neighbors sons and daughters were also coming home from college neo-nazis? I'm not so sure you would agree that they had grown up and developed their own opinions.
    - Can_Not 9y ago
      Yeah but there's a difference between going to college and becoming leftist and going to a trailer park and becoming a neo-nazi.
      - sheepmullet 9y ago
        > Yeah but there's a difference between going to college and becoming leftist There is a difference between becoming leftist and becoming consumed with hatred and rage towards people who disagree with you politically. Especially when those people have worked tremendously hard to support and care for you.

by lsc 9y ago

whatshisface 9y ago

>I went to a school where scholastic aptitude was something you hid, if you were smart. That's a very common experience I'm actually surprised to hear that it's ever any other way. To go a bit historical materialist on you, I think that if you took the kids at your old school and made them ten times better at thinking and ten times worse at everything else, their values would re-adjust so that they felt valuable again. People balance their values between the need to have a target to work towards and the desire to not feel terrible all the time - if you're very bad at something you're unlikely to find it an appropriate goal or a comfortable self-measure.

lsc 9y ago
>People balance their values between the need to have a target to work towards and the desire to not feel terrible all the time Yes. This is something I do consciously... but also poorly. It would not surprise me at all if most people do something like that, consciously or not.
rorykoehler 9y ago
>That's a very common experience I'm actually surprised to hear that it's ever any other way. That's a western thing. In the east being smart is cool.
- lsc 9y ago
  >That's a western thing. In the east being smart is cool. I thought it was an exclusive school thing. The Americans I know who went to exclusive high schools seem to have had very different experiences. I even know several people (who went to a 'special' highschool for 'gifted' children) who claimed that they enjoyed high school more than college.
  - madaxe_again 9y ago
    Nope. I was educated mostly at public (private) school in the UK, and spent a year at a private school in the US. I was ruthlessly mocked until I learned to dissemble, to not put my hand up to answer a question, to be publicly told off by teachers for not handing in work. The reason is simple - if you make others feel inferior, by being better at anything in any way than them, they hate and envy you.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - lsc 9y ago
      >The reason is simple - if you make others feel inferior, by being better at anything in any way than them, they hate and envy you. If that were true, the sports stars would not have been popular

sheepmullet 9y ago

> For many of them, they see education as a negative attribute Yes it's an unfortunate byproduct of the link between education and left wing ideology. We often joked that people who go away to college come back dumber than when they left. As an example when my daughter was in college she came to visit us and was talking about how I was contributing to the patriarchy and enabling the oppression of women and how women have it so much worse. And I'm sitting there thinking what happened to my sweet girl and why am I working a stressful job with long hours to help pay for her to learn this kind of crap.

bambataa 9y ago
It must have been discomforting that your sweet girl had become a woman with thoughts and opinions differed to yours.
- sheepmullet 9y ago
  > had become a woman with thoughts and opinions differed to yours. If your daughter came home from college a neo-nazi would you say the same? What if lots of your neighbors sons and daughters were also coming home from college neo-nazis? I'm not so sure you would agree that they had grown up and developed their own opinions.
  - Can_Not 9y ago
    Yeah but there's a difference between going to college and becoming leftist and going to a trailer park and becoming a neo-nazi.
    - sheepmullet 9y ago
      > Yeah but there's a difference between going to college and becoming leftist There is a difference between becoming leftist and becoming consumed with hatred and rage towards people who disagree with you politically. Especially when those people have worked tremendously hard to support and care for you.