Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

The pyramid is mostly a question of incorrect perspective or viewpoint.

Of course there are fewer CEOs, managing directors or whatever your current fantasy is. But there are millions of them on the planet - it's not that small of a class.

- Many of which are in their 20s or 30s because they created their own business or joined a tiny team or found an employer with just the right yearning (which would be half their fault but also half yours for looking for it).

- Learning how the world works is a life's work. It's fine if you couldn't hierarchy in your 20s, there is still time to learn.

- "Not with that attitude, you won't". If you are still obsessed with anti-corporate political ideas (as a random example), just perhaps that won't help you. That will seriously constrain how or if you continue learning about how the world really works. If you find a different obsession as things go (like a family, say), there is nothing wrong with that - but don't blame it on the pyramid. "The world" is a complex dynamic system of billions of people, interactions and ideas. It has NOTHING to do with your current preconception.

- As you continue growing up, you might find very different interests: public interest, scientific, engineering prowess, family time again, a completely different career direction, self-employment, technical or management consulting, art or craft - and there is nothing wrong with any of these. Your yearning of "top 1% recognition" that you identified with in school - or wished you identified with in school - will have changed and that's fine.

And this is true for everyone in that specific pyramid that you think is in front of you. If the top - some top - is truly your purpose in life, very few people in that pyramid are truly your competitors in your own race.

But this is hard to internalize. Most schools do not train for this. And school was presenting you with convenient easy(? lol) hurdles which work life does NOT. In life after school, you have to manage your own scoreboard, year in year our, decade in decade out - and this can be wearing. And there again, you can find mentors who WILL help open your eyes - if you bother to (easy right? no still not - but feasible for the people who try.)

And this is triple true if you switched country during or after your studies. You are now in an environment that you didn't even grow up in and you have far more to learn. A very serious disadvantage that will take additional energy to overcome - but will also help open your eye to this idea that you do have a lot to learn about how the world works (while the natives assume they already know.)

440Hz is an A (and most people don't have perfect pitch anyway). Otherwise, I completely agree.

"no one is out to get you" yeah... no.

Says the 19 year old startup founder who drops out of college and has it made before most people even start thinking of what they want to do.

We’re all supposed to believe what? That the extremely rare 19 year old startup founders of the world believe the world is meritocratic? Uh, of course they do.

School in the last 50 years was never about education. It was about inducing a level of thought control and torturing the intelligent/competent to reduce their number to only those that can be controlled, and as systems of disadvantaging those that might create wealth, through economic warfare.

Hanlon's razor is also something that has been repeated so many times its not even funny anymore, and it originated as a joke in a joke book despite the revisionists trying to change that. It has no valid basis for the claims it makes.

Malice exists, and unfortunately quite a lot of people are malicious today and don't realize it. This is how evil works. It blinds the individual to the destructive consequences of their actions, and rhetoric designed to allow those people to continue in such delusions abound.

Gross Negligence coupled with loss is sufficient to show general intent which is need definitionally to show malice. If you are grossly negligent, and you caused loss, you are acting with malice even if you don't recognize that you are doing so. These are basic things that are no longer taught, that evil people take advantage of; unfortunately. The only way to not be evil is to always question from multiple perspectives, and don't repeat destructive actions when it may benefit you as an individual.

This article is also pushing for a narrative as soft propaganda. It seems like it might be worth listening to at a cursory level, but that's how influential propaganda works.

You can say something influential composed with certain elements, and still be completely wrong in what you are saying. Those that can't tell it for what it is, will be the victims, or they will find other victims to sacrifice in their place.