Conversation

Reflecting on a couple of decades of watching various culture wars, it strikes me that fault lines are always in 2 key places: 1) divide between “paying your dues” vs “unfair” gains 2) within the unfair gains camp, between privilege-based and non-privilege-based unfairness
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One camp of people is always those who have invested hard work and time playing by the rules when a wave of hacking or flouting rules occurs. They identify the morality of the game with their own sunk costs within it. This is generally career institutionalists of some sort.
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On the “unfair” side you have 3 kinds of people: 1. clever people whose ways to hack rules with low risk and do so 2. Dumb lucky people who happen to be in the right place at the right time 3. Privileged people who get “lucky” in predictable ways through wealth, class, etc.
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These 3 types can blur, though they are all mutually exclusive re strict “pay your dues” people. For example you can be both a trustee and a clever rule hacker But useful to consider the 3 pure types: hacker lottery winner, failson grifter
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So that’s the 4 pure archetypes of any culture war: dues-payer, hacker, lottery winner, failson grifter. Eigenvectors. You can usually decompose any individual along these 4, after stripping away layers of denial, rationalization, guilt, projection, self-mythologizing etc
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Example of a calculus pattern: failsons full of moral self-doubt/guilt larping an undemanding dues paying career to ally with those paying much bigger dues and enjoying much firmer moral high ground. A kind of moral birging.
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If I write up this theory, gonna steal this mapping to the Beatles. Though it sounds slightly unfair to McCartney.
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I'm all 4 😀 and most artists have to be all 4 Also Lennon= Hacker McCartney=Fail-son Grifter Harrison=Dues payer Ringo=Lottery winner twitter.com/vgr/status/147…
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Replying to
Absolutely yes, super-gifted but theres room for the metaphor of somehow never living up to his early songwriting (this is bordering uncharitable 😬 but true enough)
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