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Comment by aggregator-ios

Thank you for sharing this. I have a thing to say that may help. First, I'm glad to hear that your experience pushed you to the left, because a lot of people who experience this injustice tend to go hard right and keep going right.

I agree that extreme individualization in the last few decades has resulted in some really bad actions. We're starting to see Western societal decline because of this, whereas collectivist cultures are thriving. It takes tremendous emotional labor to care for the well being of your community, so it's easier to just worry about only yourself. This is unsustainable just like you mentioned that enablers of authoritarians are never protected. Leaning right and being selfish will eventually hurt that person. It may not hurt them now, or tomorrow, or until 1-2 generations from now, but that course will be corrected. They are prioritizing short term gains over long term benefits, and the good part about this is that a lot of smart hard working people are choosing the long term.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" -MLK

On another note: I wanted to shared something about the word "mediocre". I once made a comment to a coworker and friend that we are all just average mediocre people doing mediocre things at work and that is OK. During this same time, another coworker called me a superstar for solving his problem.

The original coworker I had made the mediocre comment to was so offended that they went home, designed a T-shirt and wore it work "Mediocre man. Because not everyone can be a superstar". I saw it. I felt bad and commented to him that I did not mean to call him mediocre or offend him, but the damage was already done. At this same time, I kept getting called superstar by everyone on the team, including by the manager of our team (in retrospect, yikes!). We had a (toxic) culture of nicknames, and this too was going to stick for a while.

At some point, the coworker who made the t-shirt had raised concerns with the manager and eventually the manager pulled us all aside and said "no more superstar, it ends today, we're done with that nickname". Ok, cool.

However, in subsequent conversations, the tshirt coworker would share some of his views of the world with me. He had a very difficult life growing up, so one of his takes was "why do black people get to say black lives matter, but why can't I say white lives matter, my life is difficult too, do I not matter?". I was shocked, but also unsurprised by this. I work in tech, and these kinds of takes are widely prevalent. I don't remember how I tried explaining to them, but I walked away disappointed that they had taken all of the injustice and difficulty of life and instead decided to take something away from a group of people who faced the same :(

Replies aggregator-ios · 2026-05-18
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