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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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I think this is the end game of our modern equity and hedonism mania. Unless everyone is exactly equal and exactly the same and has access to the same luxuries, remove the luxuries until everyone is miserable. For whatever reason Americans just cannot accept that some people have what others don’t. Most often it’s at least partly by choice— you’re not getting into college on merit because you didn’t actually do the work and now you can’t have the nice things that getting into a good school means. Or you chose not to have a traditional family. Fine, you do you. But that also means that you’re not going to easily find representation of whatever you chose to do instead because most people get married and have kids and businesses cater to the majority. Or maybe you want to Quiet Quit. Okay, but if I work and start doing better than you, you chose that.

I think the opposite needs to happen. Rewards should go to people making and doing useful things. More inventors more great students, more scholarship, more opportunities. And I think it will encourage more people to put in the effort to accomplish something meaningful and useful.

But that also means that you’re not going to easily find representation of whatever you chose to do instead

And the job of someone who is doing something unconventional is to not resent that fact, and not resent people who want that.

You're already blessed to not have to suffer from what most of the population suffers from (i.e. that condition where traditional ways are actually best for them); so that population is naturally going to be jealous and resentful. The assurance they're normal is all they have left, and it's wrong to insist it be taken from them.

(Correspondingly, it's the job of the traditionalist to understand that people who aren't them actually exist and aren't just lying to get out of the obligations traditionalism demands, which is their theory of mind for liberals.)