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Status:
"81 Years, NOT 91 Felonies"
(set 24 days ago)
Location: Dallas, TX
5,790 posts, read 3,595,865 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Luciano700
Interesting! I never heard of rankism so much in a post before.
What should I start off with reading?
There's the first three links, but in addition to it you have a long but rewarding reading list. Not ranked in order of preference.
Dan Fincke, professor of moral philosophy who posts at patheos.com blog. I can't even begin to summarize Fincke's posts about the importance of not looking down on people due to being non-competitive.
Moderation - Camels With Hammers is Fincke's response to numerous objections to his list, which is huge in and of itself. Pick the ones that first come to mind.
He specifically focuses on incivility in general, and especially use of the word "stupid" to mark someone of low intelligence - which is being mentally non-competitive, in essence. His points have implications rippling over into other spheres too if you think about it - low levels of strength, courage, social skills, and so forth).
Plus, Harald Ofstad's Our Contempt for Weakness: Nazi Norms and Values - and Our Own. He was professor of Applied Philosophy at Stockholm University in the mid to late 20th Century. He spent his young adulthood in Nazi-occupied Norway, with all that it implies for non-combatants (presumably the propaganda and general way of Nazi thinking). This is a rare book I'm lucky to even find.
James A. Michener's 1995 book This Noble Land: My Vision for America. This is a real eye-opener for me, particularly two chapters "Our Macho Society"* and "The Young Colonels".
Also, Richard Florida's "Creative Class Theory" of economic development. It's all over the internet. His most famous book is The Rise of the Creative Class. It may be a strange place to look, but he does argue (partially successfully, IMO) that tolerance of weirdness, oddity, eccentricity, and difference can be an economic advantage for a community - especially in the high-tech endeavors (in the early 2000s, high tech means information technology. As someone who read a lot of modern European history, I am convinced tolerance can be a make-or-break factor. You treat others like s**t, then those others are gonna go somewhere else - and take with them their talents, education, experience, etc. that generates economic and technological growth (France kicking out the Hugenots, E. European pogroms against Jews, 20th Century totalitarian nations treatment of Jews and anti-regime dissidents and scientists, etc).
*Full disclosure: I started a post in Politics and Other Controversies a few months ago with this very title, which draws heavily from that book's chapter.
After all, competition is what gets people to motivate and critically think for themselves it seems. Sure you could work on improving other areas of life, but I think competition is the biggest one. Is the biggest rewarding activity yet, we compete for stuff so it makes sense.
No. Wrong word.
Accomplishing goals is striving. I don't compete against myself. I wasn't raised in a home where I had to compete for my parent's attention. I didn't have to prove myself constantly.
I see it as making an outline, planning a course, setting goals, working, evaluating, reworking those goals, and being happy in your accomplishments. I don't see competition as the end goal because in that framework someone is a winner and someone is a loser. Life isn't a team sport. A lot of it is individual introspection, being kind to yourself, because at different points in your life, changes you. Changes your goals. What was once important isn't.
Some are motivated by money. By their good health. By fame. What motivates you to better yourself?
Google the infinite game and the finite game. Life by its nature is an "infinite" game. A game like baseball is finite, you compete someone wins and its over. Life and buisness is infinite, someone can simply outlast their "competition".
There's the first three links, but in addition to it you have a long but rewarding reading list. Not ranked in order of preference.
Dan Fincke, professor of moral philosophy who posts at patheos.com blog. I can't even begin to summarize Fincke's posts about the importance of not looking down on people due to being non-competitive.
Moderation - Camels With Hammers is Fincke's response to numerous objections to his list, which is huge in and of itself. Pick the ones that first come to mind.
He specifically focuses on incivility in general, and especially use of the word "stupid" to mark someone of low intelligence - which is being mentally non-competitive, in essence. His points have implications rippling over into other spheres too if you think about it - low levels of strength, courage, social skills, and so forth).
Plus, Harald Ofstad's Our Contempt for Weakness: Nazi Norms and Values - and Our Own. He was professor of Applied Philosophy at Stockholm University in the mid to late 20th Century. He spent his young adulthood in Nazi-occupied Norway, with all that it implies for non-combatants (presumably the propaganda and general way of Nazi thinking). This is a rare book I'm lucky to even find.
James A. Michener's 1995 book This Noble Land: My Vision for America. This is a real eye-opener for me, particularly two chapters "Our Macho Society"* and "The Young Colonels".
Also, Richard Florida's "Creative Class Theory" of economic development. It's all over the internet. His most famous book is The Rise of the Creative Class. It may be a strange place to look, but he does argue (partially successfully, IMO) that tolerance of weirdness, oddity, eccentricity, and difference can be an economic advantage for a community - especially in the high-tech endeavors (in the early 2000s, high tech means information technology. As someone who read a lot of modern European history, I am convinced tolerance can be a make-or-break factor. You treat others like s**t, then those others are gonna go somewhere else - and take with them their talents, education, experience, etc. that generates economic and technological growth (France kicking out the Hugenots, E. European pogroms against Jews, 20th Century totalitarian nations treatment of Jews and anti-regime dissidents and scientists, etc).
*Full disclosure: I started a post in Politics and Other Controversies a few months ago with this very title, which draws heavily from that book's chapter.
We are seeing it now where the USA is regressing back to treating engineers and scientists like MCD workers, extremely marginalized job opportunities. Treated like commodities, always at-will never able to take up tenured technical rolls within companies to build deep technical know how as they are always under threat of lay offs.
I am going to start trying my hand at applying in Europe and see what turns up, if they are interested, willing to give feed back on my skills, etc. My wife finally ok'ed it, so first application will be for CERN.
After all, competition is what gets people to motivate and critically think for themselves it seems. Sure you could work on improving other areas of life, but I think competition is the biggest one. Is the biggest rewarding activity yet, we compete for stuff so it makes sense.
First I'd like you to know that I don't feel hopeless with or without "competition", so I sure wouldn't feel "more hopeless" if there wasn't any.
I disagree that competition is something one needs to work on...not at all...it's not important.(unless of course you're competing for a job)
Competition is the LEAST rewarding area in life (I believe).
We all have skills...competition is just for lording the fact that you did what YOU're good at better....I can't see how that could help anyone...really.
First I'd like you to know that I don't feel hopeless with or without "competition", so I sure wouldn't feel "more hopeless" if there wasn't any.
I disagree that competition is something one needs to work on...not at all...it's not important.(unless of course you're competing for a job)
Competition is the LEAST rewarding area in life (I believe).
We all have skills...competition is just for lording the fact that you did what YOU're good at better....I can't see how that could help anyone...really.
Generally, when people are in a "healthy" competitive environment (one where people all want to do better) competition will elevate most everyone's 'game'. That's because its not a matter of making oneself stand out but the overall success of the group. Problems arise when a group member does not share the same values and lets down the group. Think college group projects and the inevitable sloth that doesn't get their portion of a project done nor taken with same degree of importance.
The larger problem is social systems tends to be unforgiving to those who don't have some talent nor ability to add to the commonwealth.
As for people feeling hopeless you need to illustrate some context here. Let me explain, the morals / values of what constitutes success and health in social constructs of different peoples, can have very different metrics. Some may feel hopeless others it may not matter at all.
An interesting parallel has to do with innovation. How many people would innovate for personal time gain and ease of living versus those who would innovate solely to make money?. For instance, if the innovator could not gain some form of benefit from his / her actions would they still pursue innovation?
After all, competition is what gets people to motivate and critically think for themselves it seems. Sure you could work on improving other areas of life, but I think competition is the biggest one. Is the biggest rewarding activity yet, we compete for stuff so it makes sense.
As a job seeker, I tend to think it would be the other way - it would feel much less hopeless if there weren't 200 other people applying for each position that I am!
The larger problem is social systems tends to be unforgiving to those who don't have some talent nor ability to add to the commonwealth.
I see what you're getting at, but just watching the evolution of YouTube over the past 13 years, I can definitely say, I've seen my fair share of people that have very little to no talent and ability to add to the commonwealth make 6, 7 and even 8 figures a year, case in point, Jake Paul!
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