[HN Gopher] The benefits of not belonging
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The benefits of not belonging
Author : imartin2k
Score : 56 points
Date : 2021-11-15 10:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hardfork.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hardfork.substack.com)
| gumby wrote:
| I also find it valuable...it's part of the difference between an
| immigrant mentality and an ex pat mentality.
|
| The third culture insight explains a lot. My life, my mother's
| life...
|
| A couple of things didn't match my experience:
|
| > Then my move to San Francisco in 1999. Definitely an outsider
| without the Stanford or Berkeley or Ivy League
|
| I definitely don't understand this unless it's some weird sf
| thing. I live in the Vally and it's not like this.
|
| > "you'll never belong in Silicon Valley because you are way too
| international"
|
| Also feels weird to me. I'd guess that 2/3 of the adults in my
| Palo Alto neighborhood were, like me, born overseas and quite a
| few had a parapitetic background like the author (and me).
| legerdemain wrote:
| About half the people I know in leadership roles in Silicon
| Valley came from Stanford and Berkeley. About half of the
| senior designers I know came from the D School. Heck, basically
| all senior leads on Palantir's Gotham platform came from the
| same Stanford fraternity. Startups in Silicon Valley are
| profoundly parochial in their membership.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I was just wondering, are there disconnected internets that i can
| join? I d rather stay in a limited sector that is not
| overpopulated and oversaturated with the mainstream, even if it
| has huge downsides. Just like how biology uses membranes to build
| the useful stuff , i think we need harder borders between
| internet communities to increase the variance. Everyone moving
| around like a giant mob and lashing at each other in public
| platforms is not productive. I wonder what kind of techis needed
| to begin the great internet fragmentation.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| You just refuse to participate. If you want an exclusive club,
| leave the non-exclusive ones. Back to blogging instead of the
| social media mob. And much more actual face-to-face interaction
| instead of interacting via an online platform.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| online is important. Today's cities have become more
| impersonal and less cohesive than in the past. blogging is
| indeed a good idea
| jefurii wrote:
| I've always felt on the fringe of whatever group I was associated
| with. Honestly it doesn't feel that great. But certain times I
| realize I'm connected to a lot more people, and diverse people
| than those who are in the center of these various groups. I also
| feel like I have more integrity, don't have to sell my soul just
| to belong. YMMV
| npsimons wrote:
| > Honestly it doesn't feel that great.
|
| You get used to it. After a while, you prefer it, in no small
| part due to having that outside perspective that is all too
| valuable in realizing how bad groupthink is.
| npsimons wrote:
| > Social cues are overwhelming but most of the time the crowd is
| wrong or usually late.
|
| This alone speaks to why it's not just good for outsiders to be
| outside, but good for society as a whole.
| IAmWorried wrote:
| Honestly does anybody NOT feel alienated in our current society?
| The US is overly hostile, we imported the whole world and all its
| cultural hangups with it. I mean if you're white people are
| shitting on you, if you're black people are shitting on you, if
| you're male people are shitting on you, if you're female people
| are shitting on you... like what exactly is this country FOR?
| Does anybody REALLY feel like they belong in America? Maybe the
| rich?
| pedalpete wrote:
| I am not in the US, but I'm a white male in Australia, so very
| similar culturally, and no, I don't feel alienated in the
| least.
|
| So, I'm hoping you are not a white male, as I don't think we
| can have the tiniest inkling of what it feels like to be a
| minority. Even travelling in Asia, where we're clearly a
| minority, I feel like we know on a global scale that even
| though we may not be the majority of the population, we hold
| the majority of influence.
|
| So, I don't think we will ever know what it's like. I have
| curly hair, and I remember my young nieces and nephews being
| terrified of me. They had never seen curly hair before (well,
| not a huge afro like I've got). That was my tiny sliver of a
| taste of being different. But I know, that is nothing, and we
| still have no idea.
| echelon wrote:
| > if you're [...] people are shitting on you
|
| Only the identity police do. Most of us don't care.
|
| I'm not my race, sexuality, or gender. I'm what I aspire to,
| what I enjoy, what I dream about, and who I associate with.
|
| Turn off Twitter, social media, and the pessimistic news.
| They're toxic vortices that thrive off negativity and create a
| distorted, untrue picture of the world.
|
| America is still strongly individualistic.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| America is an alienating place but I don't think it's for the
| reasons you mention (they play a factor more recently, but
| alienation has been an American attribute for quite some time -
| See Bowling Alone by Putnam written in 2000.).
|
| What has driven alienation in America? You could make the case
| for hyper-individualism and that plays a big part. The way our
| cities are designed also plays a role - mostly they're designed
| around the automobile which doesn't afford us opportunities to
| run into people we might know as we walk around. Cars are
| privacy bubbles that allow us to be isolated as we travel
| around. Look at a European city. There are often people just
| chatting on a corner or in a piazza - interaction happens much
| more often in those contexts because those cities tend to be
| set up in such a way to allow it to happen.
|
| Finally, I think the American fetishization (for lack of a
| better word) of work plays a role. We Americans tend to define
| ourselves by the work we do to a larger degree than people in
| many other parts of the world.
|
| Given the isolation that was already there in American culture,
| along comes social media and initially it kind of looked like
| it was going to help be an antidote to that isolation - I think
| a lot of folks wanted out of the isolation and thought that was
| going to be a way out. But it ends up often making it even
| worse - and definitely exacerbates the division between tribal
| groups. Our alienation causes us to want to identify with these
| tribal groups for a feeling of belonging and these tribes end
| up "shitting on" other tribes not aligned with them.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I like America. I used to feel like a foreigner but now I have
| money and it turns out America likes that.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Turn off the TV and anti-social media, take a walk in the
| sunshine, and voila.
| cko wrote:
| I know that was a rhetorical question, but I think low-key rich
| escapes most of the getting shit on.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Just wait until the richer guy builds a better rocket, then
| you'll feel shat upon.
| francisofascii wrote:
| America is a big place. Being alive today allows us to be
| exposed to a multitude of diverse communities. If you select a
| particular place or community at random, chances are, you won't
| fit in. But there probably is a group you DO fit into. The
| situation today is much better than our ancestors, who were
| born into a tribe, and were probably stuck living within that
| tribe.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| This.
|
| I'm the only person in my extended family who has an
| artistic/creative personality. Fitting in in a small
| midwestern city was not an option. I find a few friends in
| college for a while but graduation separated us.
|
| Fortunately, the internet made finding a community to belong
| possible. Since joining the furry fandom, I haven't been
| wanting for a place to belong.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| You might feel confused if you think the alienation is random
| or a "culture war."
|
| But what is happening is that US Marxists are deliberately
| attempting to destroy the existing social order to seize power.
|
| Marxists always promise utopia to the masses, but the real goal
| of the leaders is to seize power (and amass wealth) on their
| backs.
|
| How many houses does Bernie Sanders own? At least 3.
|
| How many houses do the BLM parent organizers own? One of the
| leaders just bought 4 houses, worth $5 million to $10 million.
| (The downstream BLM chapters are ssking where the donation
| money went, since they're not getting any.)
|
| The ultimate irony is that US Marxist leaders love playing
| Monopoly.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| Not where I live, rural America.
|
| All the insanity is _literally_ in the big cities. There are
| minorities out here and we all get along just fine.
|
| It's political groups and the media that get people whipped up
| into hatred for each other, not individuals or communities.
|
| The times have changed, and the media and agitators (no better
| term?) that don't want to admit they are part of the problem.
| Svperstar wrote:
| >There are minorities out here and we all get along just
| fine.
|
| I wonder if we talked to minorities in rural communities if
| they would agree with your assessment.
| tejtm wrote:
| In my experience rural Americans tend to live in abject
| terror of just how fine they would feel were they treated
| as they treat minorities and it is compounded by a deep
| down understanding they are already the minority, it just
| has not arrived there yet.
|
| I wish I could alleviate their fear. Given the opportunity,
| people are people, good & bad do not stratify in any
| meaningful way along the arbitrary lines that get drawn.
| adamrezich wrote:
| it's difficult to imagine parts of the world being
| different than the part of the world you live in and/or the
| depiction of the world portrayed by the media.
| TimedToasts wrote:
| I am and I would.
| notriddle wrote:
| I used to live in rural America. I don't any more. _There
| are reasons for that._
|
| Cities usually kill people by ignoring them until they
| die. Exceptions are so rare that they become the stuff of
| history books.
|
| The big upside of cities is that nobody cares enough
| about you to actually hate you. If you're running away
| from something, that can be pretty inviting.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| That is a great idea.
|
| I have found that people that don't like being
| questioned/challenged have something to hide like a con-man
| or someone selling fake luxury goods.
| xvedejas wrote:
| I think they would, but mostly just because of selection
| effects. There aren't so many minorities in rural areas,
| and the ones that end up there probably had better-than-
| usual reasons to end up in rural parts.
| Stronico wrote:
| It can be nice in big cities too, maybe a little harder, but
| still pretty easy - all you have to do is remove social media
| and the clickbait/outrage web and life becomes pretty normal.
| Zababa wrote:
| I'm not sure it does. I see weird people in the subway most
| days, I see all the time people that look like they spend
| all their day being outside - doing nothing, there are
| people making noise at 2 am on a week night, there are
| people going at crazy speeds on the street, at night or
| during the day. I feel like lots of people have some kind
| of weight on their shoulder, and/or one or multiple things
| bothering them a lot. Sometimes the atmoshpere feels a bit
| tense and everyone seems a little crazy.
|
| I think it's a bit reductive to put all that on social
| media and the web. People are packed together in cities,
| sometimes you smell piss while going to and getting back
| from your job, sometimes people make noise when you want to
| sleep, it's hard to see nature, it's hard to be alone, it's
| hard to escape the noise and the light, public
| transportation can feel suffocating, the air isn't clean,
| it's very hard to have space to grow some food or practice
| some hobbies.
|
| Most of it is "normal" in that many people live like this.
| However, I feel like all that I mentionned has a negative
| impact on my mental health, and on the mental health of the
| people around me. One that could translate to people being
| more aggressive, more tense in general.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| I agree that cities can be great at times. But as a whole
| comparatively they are not as stable or peaceful.
| dnissley wrote:
| This is a very rosy view of rural America, to which I am a
| frequent visitor. Just a few dysfunctions off the top of my
| head:
|
| - Reactionary politics were born in rural America, urban
| America is just catching up these days.
|
| - The value system of rural America is dismissive of
| nerdy/intellectual pursuits, and so it drives out talent that
| was already enticed by the opportunities present in cities.
|
| - More broadly there is a kind of pride in being very
| separate/distinct from the other parts of America, but it
| seems pretty shallow to me -- the emphasis seems mostly to be
| on the material trappings of "ruralness" (being a farmer,
| having a big truck, wearing camo patterns), and not on the
| values themselves.
|
| - And perhaps rolled up in politics, but I feel the need to
| call it out because I sense it on display in your comment: An
| eagerness to play the victim to the rest of America. "It's
| just those city folks that cause all our problems."
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| Come live out here for a while, talk with people,
| understand them.
|
| I've lived all over, including LA, east coast, south,
| Chicago, near the border of Mexico (I worked with illegals
| there even in sweat shops).
|
| Rural America is garden of peace and contentment compared
| to the urban areas.
|
| Your views are admitedly from a visitor... and there is no
| way you can compare them equally that way.
|
| Ignore Foxnews & CNN and get to know rural America before
| condemning it.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I lived in Rural America as a clear immigrant of color
| (my parents not fluent in English) and it sucked ass.
| bxparks wrote:
| I wonder if there is a bit of survivorship bias in this article.
| Some kids grow up in a non-friendly environment, but develop the
| skills to deal with the adversity, and when they grow up, those
| skills become highly advantageous. Other kids whither and fall
| apart in such an adverse environment, suffer from low self-
| esteem, substance abuse, and other mental illnesses, and never
| get the chance to reap the benefits of being an outsider.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I think there is. I think they are just speaking from their own
| experience. They are an authority on their own life experience
| and know what they've learned but that doesn't generalize.
| Advice is only right for the right person at the right time.
|
| > The best way to be liked is to just agree with everyone.
|
| This view is incomplete. Human relationships are build on
| connections. You can create those connections by agreeing with
| people, but that creates a very swallow connection.
|
| An example of connections is networking: you mingle in a group
| of people at an event and start or join conversations. Everyone
| at the event starts the shared experience of being there. After
| a conversation, you might find someone that works in the same
| city you do, that adds another connection. And so on.
|
| :)
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Indeed. And I have seen cases of both happening within the same
| single family. Different kids react to the same external
| pressure in different ways.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| There's various levels of not belonging - this one is the best
| version of it and is basically an outsider perspective. Not
| belonging and not wanting to belonging are great, but when you
| don't belong and want to belong, not so much. Being actively
| prevented from belonging is even worse.
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