This was roughly the popular premium mediocre life script, 1993-2015
Be the chosen one
If you can’t be chosen one
work at the It company
If you can’t do that
live in happening city
If not, at least the country it is in
If not, at least work in the sector that makes it exciting
Conversation
One of the best things universities do is give you 4 years to try to break out from dominant scripts in the zeitgeist. If it wasn’t for college, everybody in my high school class would have tried to be a programmer and 90% would have been terrible at it.
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Of course there are It universities too, but they tend to take centuries to build reputations and decades to lose it, so they tend to have stable narrative background roles over a couple of decades
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Emerging default script: you’re born chosen, doing the thing you were meant to do, in the place you were meant to do it, and already know the people you should do it with. And your family can tell you all you need to know. If you’re unhappy it’s the fault of outsiders.
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Replying to
Is premium mediocrity just the pursuit of high hype:difficulty(or anti-scarcity) ratio?
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I read this as an ideology of capturing and corralling individuals’ lives and interest in service to a social order. It was always a deeply incomplete story in several notable (structural) ways.
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