4 ms·

This is such an important lesson. The high order bit in any success is the decision to go for it. Determination is more important then anything. I worry greatl

This is such an important lesson. The high order bit in any success is the decision to go for it. Determination is more important then anything. I worry greatly, about how young people today are thought, that's the world is stacked against them and especially for minorities and women. Its true that the world is a very unfair place, but to change it we need encouragement, not horror stories.

inglor_cz 6y ago
This is something I think of fairly often. Telling young people that the world is ruled by a clique of powerful old white men who conspire to keep them oppressed must be crushing, especially if done incessantly. A cynical part of me says: see, sowing and cultivating frustration is precisely what some politicians need to reap power. They might not gain as much power if their voters had more self-esteem.
- bitwize 6y ago
  > Telling young people that the world is ruled by a clique of powerful old white men who conspire to keep them oppressed must be crushing, especially if done incessantly. If you're a young white man with a fighting chance of becoming one of the next generation of powerful old white men, I can understand where you might find that unnecessarily demoralizing. But for everybody else, it's the bitter truth they nevertheless need to know. And the only way to change this is at the systemic, political level.
  - itronitron 6y ago
    Reminds me of reading a story someone wrote about the epiphany they had when their therapist finally told them "the world does not wake up in the morning to fuck you"
    - fjeifisjf 6y ago
      Many of live in a country with a long history of laws written explicitly for that purpose.
      - inglor_cz 6y ago
        Running a demoralization campaign on youngsters is unlikely to improve things, though. Would there be an Israel today if Jewish people convinced themselves that the world is forever going to hate and subjugate them and that they are powerless to change it? They could have done so, after all, the Holocaust was an unspeakable evil. But they chose the path of constructive defiance.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      If I were a therapist, I'd probably have that made in vinyl and put on the ceiling over the couch.
    - drewcoo 6y ago
      That person must have been married to the world for a while already, then.
  - bluefirebrand 6y ago
    > If you're a young white man with a fighting chance of becoming one of the next generation of powerful old white men, I can understand where you might find that unnecessarily demoralizing. Is this really the only situation where you think this is demoralizing? Not for women or minorities who are told they will never have a chance of making it anywhere because they're not white men? Personally I think that's pretty discouraging.
    - drewcoo 6y ago
      Parent quotes the grandparent saying "unnecessarily demoralizing" then proceeds to drop the modifier, thus changing the claim, and then doubts the newly-created straw man.
covid5throw 6y ago
I think white men are more oppressed than minorities and women. We are underrepresented in silicon valley companies [0], in higher education [1], asians and jews far out perform us in salary and acceptance into top universities compared to their relative demographic proportion [2]. I think it is about time to start talking about asian privilege and how white people are oppressed. I'm sure I'm going to get downvoted, but I am completely serious in this. [0] https://gigaom.com/2014/08/21/eight-charts-that-put-tech-companies-diversity-stats-into-perspective/ https://gigaom.com/2014/08/21/eight-charts-that-put-tech-com... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/the-degrees-of-separation-between-the-genders-in-college-keeps-growing/2019/10/25/8b2e5094-f2ab-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/the-degrees-o... [2] https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2019/06/22/are-the-doors-to-elite-universities-still-open-to-jewish-students/ https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2019/06/22/are-the-doors-to...
yowlingcat 6y ago
> Determination is more important then anything. No, it's really not. If what you were saying was true, everyone who wanted to be a financially successful artist would be. The truth is there are such things as supply, demand, process, practice, mastery and logistics. To over-anthropomorphize these things based on "determination" is naive and hyperbolic. The truth is that consistency matters a lot more. I stopped listening to people like you who think there's anything wrong with thinking the world is stacked against me, and especially for minorities and women. I stopped listening to people like you, who think we need encouragement, not horror stories. I used to listen to folks like you, but then I stopped. Instead, I listened to those horror stories. Shrank not away from them, held space for them and held fidelity to reality first and foremost. And once I focused on the realism, I began to see things clearly. A lot more clearly than you. That's when my career began to take off and I began to make better art. Isn't that odd? -- The problem is that to you, the youth are vehicle for your own hopes and aspirations. You don't stop and consider what they think from behind their own two eyes, you project your own parochial assumptions unto them. You forget that once upon a time, you were their age, and you would have found it patronizing to be treated with kid gloves. You don't treat them as equals. You treat them like a pet dog. I think that's wrong. Young people these days are a lot more capable than you think. And they face a really challenging world. It's immensely disrespectful to not treat them as equals, to presume they need "encouragement" -- let me ask you this, have you asked them what they need? Maybe you would be surprised. I don't treat any of my friends or colleagues with kid gloves, certainly not the ones younger than me. They tell me about the state of the world and how unfair it is, and I listen. I ask them what /they/ need. Some of them need encouragement, but that's rarer than you'd think. Most of them want information. They want experience. Strategies. They want to be challenged, motivated, given interesting threads to explore and follow, collaborated with. They want to know what I did when I was in their shoes and went through the same pains, even if it's not exactly the same thing. Sometimes they want to work together on something cool so they can see how I operate. Maybe they just want an ear to listen to. But they don't want to be condescended to, or patronizingly told that their problem is that they think the world is stacked against them when they need to think happy thoughts. And of course they wouldn't want that -- because to be told that is something that serves the person doing the telling, not the person who is listening. So if you're saying anything like this to young people, I think you need to take a long hard look in the mirror. You are out of touch.

inglor_cz 6y ago

This is something I think of fairly often. Telling young people that the world is ruled by a clique of powerful old white men who conspire to keep them oppressed must be crushing, especially if done incessantly. A cynical part of me says: see, sowing and cultivating frustration is precisely what some politicians need to reap power. They might not gain as much power if their voters had more self-esteem.

bitwize 6y ago
> Telling young people that the world is ruled by a clique of powerful old white men who conspire to keep them oppressed must be crushing, especially if done incessantly. If you're a young white man with a fighting chance of becoming one of the next generation of powerful old white men, I can understand where you might find that unnecessarily demoralizing. But for everybody else, it's the bitter truth they nevertheless need to know. And the only way to change this is at the systemic, political level.
- itronitron 6y ago
  Reminds me of reading a story someone wrote about the epiphany they had when their therapist finally told them "the world does not wake up in the morning to fuck you"
  - fjeifisjf 6y ago
    Many of live in a country with a long history of laws written explicitly for that purpose.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      Running a demoralization campaign on youngsters is unlikely to improve things, though. Would there be an Israel today if Jewish people convinced themselves that the world is forever going to hate and subjugate them and that they are powerless to change it? They could have done so, after all, the Holocaust was an unspeakable evil. But they chose the path of constructive defiance.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    If I were a therapist, I'd probably have that made in vinyl and put on the ceiling over the couch.
  - drewcoo 6y ago
    That person must have been married to the world for a while already, then.
- bluefirebrand 6y ago
  > If you're a young white man with a fighting chance of becoming one of the next generation of powerful old white men, I can understand where you might find that unnecessarily demoralizing. Is this really the only situation where you think this is demoralizing? Not for women or minorities who are told they will never have a chance of making it anywhere because they're not white men? Personally I think that's pretty discouraging.
  - drewcoo 6y ago
    Parent quotes the grandparent saying "unnecessarily demoralizing" then proceeds to drop the modifier, thus changing the claim, and then doubts the newly-created straw man.

covid5throw 6y ago

I think white men are more oppressed than minorities and women. We are underrepresented in silicon valley companies [0], in higher education [1], asians and jews far out perform us in salary and acceptance into top universities compared to their relative demographic proportion [2]. I think it is about time to start talking about asian privilege and how white people are oppressed. I'm sure I'm going to get downvoted, but I am completely serious in this. [0] https://gigaom.com/2014/08/21/eight-charts-that-put-tech-companies-diversity-stats-into-perspective/ https://gigaom.com/2014/08/21/eight-charts-that-put-tech-com... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/the-degrees-of-separation-between-the-genders-in-college-keeps-growing/2019/10/25/8b2e5094-f2ab-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/the-degrees-o... [2] https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2019/06/22/are-the-doors-to-elite-universities-still-open-to-jewish-students/ https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2019/06/22/are-the-doors-to...

yowlingcat 6y ago

> Determination is more important then anything. No, it's really not. If what you were saying was true, everyone who wanted to be a financially successful artist would be. The truth is there are such things as supply, demand, process, practice, mastery and logistics. To over-anthropomorphize these things based on "determination" is naive and hyperbolic. The truth is that consistency matters a lot more. I stopped listening to people like you who think there's anything wrong with thinking the world is stacked against me, and especially for minorities and women. I stopped listening to people like you, who think we need encouragement, not horror stories. I used to listen to folks like you, but then I stopped. Instead, I listened to those horror stories. Shrank not away from them, held space for them and held fidelity to reality first and foremost. And once I focused on the realism, I began to see things clearly. A lot more clearly than you. That's when my career began to take off and I began to make better art. Isn't that odd? -- The problem is that to you, the youth are vehicle for your own hopes and aspirations. You don't stop and consider what they think from behind their own two eyes, you project your own parochial assumptions unto them. You forget that once upon a time, you were their age, and you would have found it patronizing to be treated with kid gloves. You don't treat them as equals. You treat them like a pet dog. I think that's wrong. Young people these days are a lot more capable than you think. And they face a really challenging world. It's immensely disrespectful to not treat them as equals, to presume they need "encouragement" -- let me ask you this, have you asked them what they need? Maybe you would be surprised. I don't treat any of my friends or colleagues with kid gloves, certainly not the ones younger than me. They tell me about the state of the world and how unfair it is, and I listen. I ask them what /they/ need. Some of them need encouragement, but that's rarer than you'd think. Most of them want information. They want experience. Strategies. They want to be challenged, motivated, given interesting threads to explore and follow, collaborated with. They want to know what I did when I was in their shoes and went through the same pains, even if it's not exactly the same thing. Sometimes they want to work together on something cool so they can see how I operate. Maybe they just want an ear to listen to. But they don't want to be condescended to, or patronizingly told that their problem is that they think the world is stacked against them when they need to think happy thoughts. And of course they wouldn't want that -- because to be told that is something that serves the person doing the telling, not the person who is listening. So if you're saying anything like this to young people, I think you need to take a long hard look in the mirror. You are out of touch.