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The only thing I'm suggesting is that freedom doesn't spare you from mediocrity. Real oppression, an experience the US professional middle class is largely spa

by boh 6y ago

The only thing I'm suggesting is that freedom doesn't spare you from mediocrity. Real oppression, an experience the US professional middle class is largely spared of, the type experienced by the citizens of Venezuela or the people currently being held in Xinjiang re-education camps, is truly insurmountable and requires large macro shifts to institute change. To suggest individual bullying, harassment and isolation are counted as so insurmountable to a person's theoretical "potential" that the environment must change first to prompt it, is an illustration of the deep self-absorption very few people have the privilege to experience. Nothing is right or just in this context.

ResearchCode 6y ago
I thought it was about becoming the next Steve Jobs, as in billionaire founder. They tend to grow up with great privilege. Evidently there are great obstacles for the middle class, such as favoritism for the already affluent. As in any country, it has little to with actual capability. Surely Venezuela could have less social mobility, but it isn't actually that great in the west.
claudeganon 6y ago
By your thesis, there shouldn’t then be people who, having achieved greatness, fall from it because of a negative experience. But of course every field is littered with these examples, great people crippled by the loss of someone they love, an injury, or simply being unable to cope with some awful thing that happened to them in childhood. It’s practically a cliche. Really, your argument is a fairly irrelevant appeal - because worse circumstances exist in the world (something so inevitably true as to be pointless to state), there is nothing to complain about. While it’s good to have perspective about where one is more fortunate than others, people deal with their own circumstances and not those of others, so it’s functionally meaningless to raise this point. Someone being abused by their spouse or grieving over the loss of a child can maybe take intellectual comfort in the fact that their lot is better than someone in a prison camp, but this kind of diversion does absolutely nothing to alleviate their circumstances.

by boh 6y ago

ResearchCode 6y ago

I thought it was about becoming the next Steve Jobs, as in billionaire founder. They tend to grow up with great privilege. Evidently there are great obstacles for the middle class, such as favoritism for the already affluent. As in any country, it has little to with actual capability. Surely Venezuela could have less social mobility, but it isn't actually that great in the west.

claudeganon 6y ago

By your thesis, there shouldn’t then be people who, having achieved greatness, fall from it because of a negative experience. But of course every field is littered with these examples, great people crippled by the loss of someone they love, an injury, or simply being unable to cope with some awful thing that happened to them in childhood. It’s practically a cliche. Really, your argument is a fairly irrelevant appeal - because worse circumstances exist in the world (something so inevitably true as to be pointless to state), there is nothing to complain about. While it’s good to have perspective about where one is more fortunate than others, people deal with their own circumstances and not those of others, so it’s functionally meaningless to raise this point. Someone being abused by their spouse or grieving over the loss of a child can maybe take intellectual comfort in the fact that their lot is better than someone in a prison camp, but this kind of diversion does absolutely nothing to alleviate their circumstances.