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For eg, I was selected for being "smart" at 3-4 crucial junctures between 0-24 (being selected into schools, testing well) and it took a long time to figure out what exactly had set me up for passing those filters, and how to think about people who went down other filter chains
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My view of myself as "special" on the smart vector probably peaked at 18, but to climb down the hill on the other side, I had to make sense of all the vectors where I'd failed filter tests at various stages and been marked not-special (eg. athletic ability or musical talent)
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School is at least a legible part of everybody's story (including being home schooled or unschooled or not having good schooling opportunities at all). But everything works this way: caste/class membership, wealth at birth, geography, linguistic environment, cultural programming
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The entire damn environment of human life is nothing but filters. It's filters all the way in every direction. Up, down, sideways. Even crashing through on "failure" paths is a series of filter tests (you just swap out SAT testing on the way up for means-testing on the way down)
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The big secret they don't let you in on easily is that the more you connect to your ordinary side, the more weird-mediocre superpowers you unleash. Haven't yet fully formulated this thought yet, so don't bug me for examples rn.
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You are probably "ordinary" like me when it comes to going splat if you jump off a roof. Yet you're rarely aware of the ordinariness there. You are rarely reminded that you are NOT an Olympic athlete or a circus performer who could parkour around safely where you'd go splat
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99% of who you are is made up of such ordinary ways of being. If you choose to attend in some ways to those aspects of being too, your relationship with yourself starts to change. It's like growing roots into the soil of your own being, previously rejected as "not me"
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You don't have to invest in those aspects or sort yourself into "strengths" and "weaknesses" and shape yourself (eg: focus on strengths, mitigate weaknesses or the reverse to become "well-rounded"). But being aware of ordinary bits is an interesting thing to do.
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It's like a superstring theory view of yourself. Your "special" self is like the unwrapped 3 dimensions. The rest is like those 7 or 8 extra curled up dimensions. Degeneracies in the possibility metaverse of you :D
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I think my point is that specialness is not special to begin with, not worth as much of a premium focus in self-exploration at all. Focusing on your specialness is like being a tourist in your own psyche only visiting the Eiffel towers.