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If you grow up privileged but don't pursue normative career success, you are basically abandoning the culture and society in which you were raised. There's immense social pressure to conform.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On January 25 2013 15:38 sam!zdat wrote:
If you grow up privileged but don't pursue normative career success, you are basically abandoning the culture and society in which you were raised. There's immense social pressure to conform.
I think you've summed it up the best for me.
It's a sad state of affairs.
I don't claim to be immune myself.
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On January 25 2013 15:31 thedeadhaji wrote:I agree that one needs to take care of basic needs first. And you are right, my views are skewed due to my admittedly privileged upbringing and training. But if you look around, those with the material means to 'not' have to focus solely on their career success are exactly the ones who climb an endless mountain of "success" beyond what any person could need in their lifetime. You'd expect the privileged to be the ones who are best equipped to take risks, stand up for causes, and live as they wish to. And yet we find that the ones with the luxury to be different, are the ones who become the most prototypical. There seems to be something very broken in the way we are brought up and taught to live. The 'better' one adhered to the system's teachings, the more perverse the situation seems to become. P.S. Ack, I am jealous 
I don't mean to take away from the fact that the "privileged" who are not going down the one path they are supposed to go down (in an almost 1984-esque sense of the word 'supposed to') are under immense social pressure. A lot of people seem to think that money makes all one's problems go away, and those people need a reality check.
However, I will point out that a lot of people who are a lot less noteworthy who deal with a ton of social pressure AND a ton of financial pressure. While those of us who spent at least a portion of our childhood in trailer parks were not constantly pressed to perform and to earn, there are other things we were pressured to do. Doing well in school, or being interested in athletics, or even something like 'being straight'. Social norms are everywhere, and tremendous pressure follows those who do not or cannot live up to them. I have the utmost of sympathy for anyone who doesn't fit with those norms (and I'm probably one of them).
It's also worth noting, though, that there are those who suffer just as much pressure socially - but also have no money.
What you're hitting on, though, is the fundamental question - why is society set up like this? The poor aren't happy. The rich aren't happy. So why are things the way they are? Unfortunately, the answer to this question is more of a history lesson than an ideological explanation, and one you likely wouldn't find interesting. As for why we can't move forward from here to someplace where maybe more than some slim minority of people among any class can possibly be happy? Simple. We disagree about the means we need to use to get there - and our disagreements are being used to stagnate the means any individual has to affect social change.
It's a tragic society we live in - and it really isn't any wonder why it's easy to look up to someone who hangs his hat on something as simple as laughing. I'll tip my hat to Mr. Wozniak for that.
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Love your blogs haji, I've recently started living my life entirely for my passions and this is easily the best period I've ever had in my life. Because of this though my life has changed drastically in every aspect one can imagine that matters, location, love, occupation, etc. But man the rewards are worth all the stress and problems needed to get there. Anecdotal support for your post all the way!
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On January 26 2013 04:12 Treehead wrote:
more of a history lesson than an ideological explanation
no such difference 
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I'm not totally clear what the OP is about (especially when OP mentions "society"). Resisting hyper-consumerism? Living a totally authentic and individual life? If so, it is too much of a dichotomy to me. Most of us, at least to me, seem to exist in the middle zone and try our best to negotiate the pressures of reality without necessarily having to feel compromised by doing so.
There may be nothing worthwhile about seeking wealth and possessions for their own sake without reflecting on one's self and one's life. But, there is also nothing worthwhile about living in poverty, not meeting your responsibilities towards self and kin, and being dependent on others (especially in old age). I see no glory in this kind of life, either. Nor anything to laugh about.
If Wozniak is able to do so, it may be because he has the (good) fortune to be able to afford to be carefree and laugh.
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I also think people would have responded differently to this blog 5 years ago than they do now. In hard times, it's difficult for anyone living stressful lives financially to not respond negatively to an article highlighting good qualities in someone who does not have most people's financial burdens.
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EPT
