Conversation

Modernity breaks the correlation between individual strength and collective well-being. The fates of societies often end up depending on the behaviors of weakling train wrecks with One Weird Trick, while strong people stand aground useless and frustrated.
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The correlation breaks at a fairly primitive level of societal evolution, which is why strong people often seem to favor primitivist social orders and get frustrated at how hard it is to actually rewind to such states.
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I’m talking mental strength too, not just physical. It would be nice if the mentally strong also just happened to possess the talents needed to fix some complicated mess, but life isn’t that clean. You might end up needing the special mind of a fragile savant.
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If you want individual strength to be determinative of individual outcomes, you have to work to unwind technological modernity. The more complex a society, the harder it is to predict what traits end up mattering in emergent dynamics.
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Confounding factor: it is easier to present as strong using conventional markers than actually act with strength, so a lot of strength idols have feet of clay and deep weaknesses that manifest invisibly. So they’re actually successful and critical weaklings who market strength
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