[HN Gopher] Harrison Bergeron (1961)
___________________________________________________________________
Harrison Bergeron (1961)
Author : dusted
Score : 201 points
Date : 2022-09-27 13:16 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (archive.org)
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| There was a 1995 adaptation for Showtime starring Sean Astin.
|
| It's on Youtube. I remember watching it once back in the late
| 90's but haven't watched it since, so I can't vouch for its
| quality but it's definitely a nostalgia trip. The more recent
| "2081" adaptation might be better.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBcpuBRUdNs
| swyx wrote:
| i dont know Vonnegut's politics but i have always wondered if
| this story was secretly a fairytale for the right-leaning. it
| paints wanting equality as intensely evil, holding back the best
| of humanity. which, yes, true in communist regimes, but you see
| echoes in some less well considered laws and policies in modern
| life. i am afraid to like, or even publicly discuss, the story
| because of what it might say about me.
| nmilo wrote:
| > i am afraid to like, or even publicly discuss, the story
| because of what it might say about me.
|
| I really hope this is just well-written meta satire, and not
| actually how you feel.
| ep103 wrote:
| This story was part of a collection of literature that came out
| shortly after it became irrefutably understood on the left,
| that the USSR had failed and become a totalitarian state.
|
| Early on in USSR's history most of the socialistically leaning
| world was hopeful that the USSR might still be, to some degree,
| working out as hoped. It was extremely hard to get unbiased
| reporting about what was actually happening within its borders,
| which allowed some die-hard supporters to hold out hope. But
| when the USSR put down the Hungarian revolution in 56, there
| was no denying this any longer.
|
| This story wasn't support of right wing politics. It was anti-
| totalitarian.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > most of the socialistically leaning world was hopeful that
| the USSR might still be, to some degree, working out as
| hoped.
|
| I have to wonder what you mean by "most". Because as early as
| 1921 the Bolsheviks were supressing anarcho-communists in
| Ukraine, purging former Mensheviks, putting the SRs on trial
| and seizing food from starving peasants. All of which was
| highly contentious and written about combatively in anarchist
| and socialist newspapers.
|
| Perhaps by "most" you refer to the largely student and
| professional class socialists who lived in Bourgeoisie
| democracies largely untouched by the history of Bolshevik
| domination and who for some reason have become the most
| visible historical standard bearer of socialism in western
| pop culture.
| ep103 wrote:
| Perhaps the word most was too loose, but yes, I understand
| the history. I also understand that what reporting that
| came out of Russia was mixed, and heavily propagandized by
| both sides, so if you were living through it, and were in
| the Western world, it was hard to know for certain exactly
| what was and was not true, and what the real causes and
| effects of what was going on were, until years later.
| Historically, the breaking point for many in the West to
| give up on the USSR as a clearly totalitarian state, for
| which excuses could no longer justify their actions, was
| the suppression of Hungarian revolution.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| you got any books to recommend learning about all that?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. As hard as it may be to
| comprehend, there are _still_ some people who think the
| various atrocities perpetrated by the USSR were justified
| by the greater good, or were merely western exaggerations.
|
| I don't think they're intrinsically bad people for this,
| despite the monstrous nature of the USSR. A few of my
| friends believe as I say. In most regards they have a
| sensible attitude towards morality and ethics, but when it
| comes to the USSR specifically they have psychological
| blinders on. They're so infatuated with the idea of the
| USSR, that they can't accept the reality. And this isn't a
| phenomena that is special to the USSR of course, they are
| similar to many Americans I know who cannot accept
| criticisms of America in a similar way. Generally, people
| may become so infatuated with the idea or principle of a
| thing that they cannot accept reality when it contradicts
| their idea.
| prottog wrote:
| > wanting equality
|
| It's equality of outcome writ large, not equality of
| opportunity. I see it as a nonsensical extension of the
| classical liberal idea that everyone is born equal, which to me
| means that everyone is treated equally under the law; not that
| everyone is literally equal and anyone should be able to be and
| do anything that anybody else can, which is reflected in
| various postmodern movements such as critical race theory or
| transgenderism.
| godshatter wrote:
| This depends on what you mean by "equality", which leads
| directly into the "equality of opportunity" vs. "equality of
| outcome" debate.
| mmmpop wrote:
| Striving for equality of opportunity is righteous and good.
| Forcing equalities of outcome starts getting gross pretty
| quickly.
| Applejinx wrote:
| You've got to remember that the role of an artist isn't always
| to provide answers. The role of an artist is to provide
| questions.
|
| 'Harrison Bergeron' is a nightmare tale, not a Utopia... but
| Harrison is not sympathetic, he is a tyrant, 'justifying' the
| world as established. If the story is a fairytale for the
| right-leaning, it's for the very childish right-leaning. It's
| also too aggressive to be a fairytale for would-be left-leaning
| moralists.
|
| It's an exaggerated picture of a condition: forced equality of
| outcome made hideous, a presentation like Swift's 'A Modest
| Proposal'.
|
| As a reader, your job is to get the picture, not to take it
| literally or apply it. If it were truly a parable for the
| right, Harrison might've broke into his parents' house and
| liberated them, or rescued a chosen ballerina (with or without
| his eventual fate) as if he'd loved her, but no: everything in
| the story is just a nightmare and awful. Harrison is a parody
| of an ubermensch and is destroyed, and there's no escape from
| the proposition, nor anybody to understand the horror of it:
| that's left to the reader.
|
| As both a better-than and lesser-than in different sorts of
| ways, I'm more than happy to discuss the story without concern
| of what it might say about me. I think it's a very good story
| and an intentionally terrible philosophy. No way was Vonnegut
| attempting to indoctrinate anybody with this wild vision. At
| best it's a cautionary tale, but if you're taking it too
| literally there's a caution for you in there as well: note that
| Harrison is a monster wanting only power and sex, bullying
| those around him in between Hulking out. That is no argument
| for giving him the world that he wants handed to him.
| morelisp wrote:
| Interesting that you mention Swift - a pithy comment I heard
| at a convention panel many years ago was something along the
| lines of "saying _Harrison Bergeron_ is an argument for
| libertarianism is like saying _A Modest Proposal_ is an
| argument for the Irish remaining in poverty. "
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yeah it reminds me of the CIA funding Jackson Pollock and the
| Iowa Writer's Workshop.
|
| Vonnegut probably intended more shades of meaning, but it is
| instead a ham-fisted manifesto for liberals (in the more
| original, globally center-right sense) like Scott Aaronson
| whose entire worldview is rooted in loving accelerated
| schooling.
| antiquark wrote:
| Equity equalizes downward.
| falcolas wrote:
| In this story, yes. In reality, it can be done in either
| direction. You can give a short person a step more easily than
| you can chop the legs off a tall person.
| prottog wrote:
| In reality, the step has to come from somewhere.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "You can give a short person a step more easily..."
|
| Once you get into the territory of cognitive abilities, it is
| the other way round. Making a dumb person smart is nigh
| impossible, while you can dull a bright intellect with all
| sorts of external interventions (various medications or drugs
| come to mind).
| cableshaft wrote:
| Several years ago I participated in a local writing anthology
| that was about "Near Myths", i.e. taking existing myths and fairy
| tales and twisting them in some way. I wasn't feeling inspired by
| any until I thought of Harrison Bergeron, which was a childhood
| favorite story of mine and left a lasting impression.
|
| I decided to twist the story and make it about a world in which
| everyone had to constantly be coming up with new ideas, and
| couldn't think of the same ideas twice, or else they'd be
| punished (squeezed by a collar, that I called Doublethought
| Inhibitors), as the world craves novelty and new ideas and the
| government recognized it and decided to enforce it. There wasn't
| any TVs anymore, as those showed the same images to people, just
| individual Inspirators that showed unique imagery to everyone to
| help them come up with new ideas.
|
| One cute thing I just remembered now that I'm reading it over
| again for the first time in a couple years. In Harrison Bergeron,
| the couple is named George and Hazel. In my story, I decided to
| name my couple Curious and Nut. You have to compare their names
| in both stories to catch the joke there.
|
| It's not the same story but I did refer to the original while
| writing it and kind of kept similar beats.
|
| Ended up calling it 'Fatterson Boogieton', just what popped into
| my head when I was trying to twist the original name. It's mostly
| a humorous story anyway, that tends to be what I write.
|
| The paperback of the anthology is on Amazon pretty cheaply at the
| moment, if anyone is curious. They never made a Kindle version,
| which is unfortunate.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Near-Myths-Tim-Yao/dp/1977642527/
|
| I should probably get the story online somewhere. It's been long
| enough I should be able to do so now. Not sure where though,
| without creating a proper personal website again.
| spicyusername wrote:
| Treating different things the same can generate as much
| inequality as treating the same things differently. - Kimberle
| Crenshaw
| superb-owl wrote:
| This story is typically seen as a critique of socialism, but it's
| more likely that Vonnegut intended it as a critique of
| _critiques_ of socialism [1]. Vonnegut himself was a socialist
| [2], and the absurdist tone of the story reinforces this idea.
|
| [1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-
| attachments/197545/03882696bf...
|
| [2] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/04/kurt-vonneguts-socialism-
| fr...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Socialism provides a safety net at the bottom end of the social
| achievement scale so that you don't end up with large homeless
| populations living under bridges.
|
| The notion that socialism cuts off the heads of over-achievers
| to enforce a dull sameness on society is basically a straw man
| argument that doesn't correlate at all with how socialist
| governance works in practice. Some will point to higher taxes
| on billionaires as a counterexample, but it's equally clear
| that the wealthiest rely heavily on things like roads, ports,
| etc. (to get goods from one place to another), and since
| without that infrastructure they'd have little opportunity to
| accumulate wealth, higher taxes on that wealth are appropriate.
| mmmpop wrote:
| I always found the story to be a bit silly and hamfisted if
| intepreted as a sort of a critique of government enforcement of
| "equity" and given Vonnegut's politics, I find this to be the
| most reasonable take.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| If it is a critique of critiques of socialism, if it is mocking
| "right-wing fantasies," then how unfortunate for the story when
| they come true.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| thanks so much for reducing this emotional work of art to a
| political check box?
| fullshark wrote:
| I'm not sure I should like it until I learn what side of the
| current cultural/political war it's on.
| tomrod wrote:
| I admire KV. We must also recognize he lived, that he lived
| in a certain time, and that some of his writings deal with
| some of the events and attitudes that existed in a certain
| time.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Vonnegut was a highly political writer, as SF writers often
| are. His most famous work is the extremely traumatized
| "Slaughterhouse 5", after all.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five
|
| That doesn't mean it can or should be neatly mapped to the
| left/right distinction or culture wars of the current moment.
| Especially when people have so many bizarre ideas about what
| constitutes "left" or "socialism".
| danso wrote:
| Seems reductionist to think that Kurt Vonnegut was writing
| only/mostly from emotion, and that he didn't intend for it be
| political commentary/satire.
| golemotron wrote:
| We're talking about a guy who reduced all story telling to a
| set of 8 graphs.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ
| z7 wrote:
| In literary analysis the author's intention is generally not
| viewed as the final word on how a story should be interpreted.
| There's an extensive debate around this question of authorial
| intent: https://www.britannica.com/art/intentional-fallacy
| While it's interesting to know what meaning the author might
| have had in mind, I personally wouldn't view it in a
| prescriptive sense when evaluating a story.
| absolutelynobo wrote:
| Thanks for authoritatively clearing that up for us all, z7.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| Unless I'm mistaken, socialism has to do with wealth, not
| talent, intelligence, and good-looks.
| viridian wrote:
| Moreover, Marx's famous slogan summarizing socialism was
| "From each according to his ability, to each according to his
| needs".
|
| Harrison Bergeron is clearly set in a world where "From each"
| is not taken based on the productive skill of the each, but
| rather the skill of the each is brought near to the lowest of
| the whole. To each, less obviously is also flawed in this
| world. Rather than to the man's needs, each is given such
| that he is rendered equal with the whole.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I doubt it. He deals with this theme more subtly in "Breakfast
| of Champions". I don't see why being a garden variety socialist
| would mean you couldn't possibly critique the idea of forced
| equality of outcomes.
|
| People don't always fit in neat boxes. It's OK if your
| politically aligned literary heroes occasionally challenge you.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > you couldn't possibly critique the idea of forced equality
| of outcomes.
|
| I suspect it's actually exactly the opposite - Vonnegut
| himself grew up in the 30's and 40's when socialism and
| communism were still untested ideas without the evidentiary
| baggage they carry today. The only people who are attracted
| to socialism in modern times are people who start with an
| equality of outcome mindset and can see from history that
| socialist societies inevitably devolve into what they (think
| they) want.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| "I can't be sure, but there is a possibility that my story
| "Harrison Bergeron" is about the envy and self-pity I felt in
| an over-achievers' high school in Indianapolis quite a while
| ago now. Some people never tame those emotions. John Wilkes
| Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald and Mark David Chapman come to
| mind. "Handicapper Generals," if you like."
|
| - Vonnegut
| Pxtl wrote:
| That fits. It sounds like it's not the high-minded
| anticommunist social criticism that conservatives want it to
| be, but more of just grousing about the tall-poppy problem of
| high-school that I think most gen-X-and-older nerds would be
| more than familiar with.
| lliamander wrote:
| It can be validly used as a criticism of socialism, even if
| not so intended by the author.
|
| George Orwell, also a socialist, famously noted that many
| of his fellow socialists were motivated more by envy and
| resentment toward the rich than by compassion for the poor.
| As others have commented, envy could certainly be
| attributed as the cause of many "social justice" minded
| policies we see today.
|
| Those on the right would argue that (barring some virtuous
| individual socialists) socialism is at root an ideology for
| justifying envy.
| chernevik wrote:
| It is entirely possible that Vonnegut was a socialist and that
| he worried about the logical end of an obsession with
| "equality". He may have believed that socialism applied
| entirely and only to economic matters. After all, Marx wrote
| that socialism would unleash human potential: "while in
| communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of
| activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he
| wishes". (There is a better quote for this, which I cannot
| recall/find.). So Vonnegut may have thought that envy and a
| resentment of excellence were entirely apart from socialism.
|
| Now, I myself detest socialism, in part because I believe it
| establish a stupid, reductionist and overbroad "equality" as a
| goal in its own right and unleashes many forces to tear down
| excellence, freedom and accomplishment in its pursuit. I expect
| if this consequence of socialism were better understood we'd
| have far fewer socialists. But this is by no means obvious, and
| of course there will be many socialists who don't agree.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| There is a fairly good cinematic adaptation called "2081" with
| Armie Hammer playing Harrison.
| causality0 wrote:
| I can't say I really understand the intended meaning behind the
| story. The ending is obviously fantastical and the author was a
| socialist, but it also depicts an absurd and brutal form of
| social equity. Is the whole thing supposed to be sarcastic in the
| sense of "look what those silly capitalists/individualists think
| of us and themselves"?
| mikewarot wrote:
| I've known that something like this story exists forever, it
| seems, but upon reading it all I can think about is the woke-ism
| that seeks to cripple society by making every little non-
| conformity a problem, and not celebrating differences.
|
| It made me really angry... took a moment to wind down.
|
| Diana Moon Clampers -- the perfect social justice warrior.
| dublin wrote:
| It's amazing to me that this is the FIRST post of the many in
| this thread to have included the word "woke", when the evils of
| what we now call "wokeness" is exactly the entire point of the
| entire story!
|
| Political Correctness, "wokeism", and "Diversity, Equity, and
| Inclusion" (DEI or DIE) are a death sentence for free and
| civilized society.
|
| How many of us are forced to endure PC/Woke pandering and
| officially sanctioned repression and institutionalized hatred
| ("DE&I moments", "implicit bias training" and the like) simply
| because speaking up would quite clearly cost us our jobs?
|
| This is the reason I now refuse to work in big companies - I
| will not subject myself to the hatreds of these (literally)
| evil "HR/People" organizations.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Vonnegut, to his credit, died long before he would have had
| to hear someone accuse him of writing a short story about
| "wokeism."
|
| The story is about envy. Vonnegut said as much whenever he
| was asked about it: it's _directly_ inspired by his own
| feelings of creative inadequacy. Shoehorning it into some
| execrable 2022 political statement is embarrassing.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _The story is about envy._
|
| So is most 'wokeness.' Envy and power.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| And, as Douglas Murray points out, resentment.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| ahh, yes. Repudiate the diana moon glampers of the world, no
| matter their intentions.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| A more readable version:
| https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
| Bakary wrote:
| It's not clear to me if the story is supposed to be a second
| degree satire of left-leaning doctrine or a third degree satire
| of right-leaning fantasies.
|
| No matter its goal, the story hits a raw nerve. The mix of
| emotions over inequality, natural superiority, and its
| implications one way or the other is one of the strongest
| cocktails, I feel.
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| What's a first degree satire look like then?
| swayvil wrote:
| Playing it totally straight.
| wnoise wrote:
| Wouldn't that be zeroth degree satire?
| qsort wrote:
| Just like a third, fifth, seventh... degree one, I imagine.
| Bakary wrote:
| It can't exist by definition. Or if it can I'm not equipped
| to visualize it.
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| >the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to
| expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices,
| particularly in the context of contemporary politics and
| other topical issues.
|
| This is first degree satire. Your third degree satire is
| actually satire in the second degree.
| Bakary wrote:
| After checking it looks like the expression second degree
| doesn't map to English from my own language and I was
| translating too literally (in the first degree? lol)
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Why can't it be both at the same time? Vonnegut was both a
| great thinker and a great writer (the former is typically a
| precondition for the latter).
| Pxtl wrote:
| Vonnegut was brilliant, but I never found his writing subtle.
| He generally was pretty straightforward about things. imho,
| Harrison Bergeron should be taken at face value as his
| indictment against holding back the gifted among us.
|
| Remember that his exemplars aren't great Randian
| industrialists, but like... dancers. Artists. Quietly
| intelligent men like himself. Vonnegut isn't saying "the
| strong should triumph and stand on the backs of their lessers
| and dominate the world" but rather just "let great and
| beautiful things be great and beautiful".
|
| And there's the subtle misogyny that our hero is smart and
| his wife is a bit dense and happily accepts their dystopia. I
| love Vonnegut, but that fits with his writing through and
| through. Vonnegut's women generally... aren't great.
|
| Yes, letting greatness be victorious has kind of a
| conservative bent because it also implies letting the losers
| lose, which runs runs against progressive ideals that
| Vonnegut seems to hold of making sure everyone is taken care
| of. I think Vonnegut was the kind of man who could hold both
| those thoughts in his head at the same time.
|
| We contain multitudes.
|
| In general, it's a cute story within Vonnegut's body of work,
| but anybody who fixates on this one piece... it's kind of a
| red flag of "I would do great and awesome things if only the
| bleeding heart liberals stopped holding me back!"
| swayvil wrote:
| >And there's the subtle misogyny...
|
| Because they have genders, right?
|
| Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not a statement of
| identity politics.
| axus wrote:
| I liked that Harrison immediately declared himself emperor,
| as soon as he had the chance. George is a big supporter of
| the oppressive system. The "best" ones are as much of a
| caricature as the oppressors.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Oof, I'd forgotten that in the end Harrison declares
| himself emperor. That does kind of lend towards the
| "satire of both sides" interpretation.
|
| With that lens, kind of reflects the 20th century nerd
| experience; The tall-poppy nerd kid who is "handicapped"
| in school and, escaping into adulthood, becomes an
| arrogant and overbearing prick.
| virissimo wrote:
| You contrast Rand's heroes with those of Vonnegut as if
| they are all CEO-types, but they also include sculptors,
| architects, engineers, composers, and philosophy
| professors. IMO, Rand and Vonnegut are much more similar
| than their fans would like to admit.
| indrora wrote:
| Attempting to compare Vonnegut and Rand without
| acknowledging that Rand fundamentally believed poor
| people should suffer for their poorness is comparing a
| scathing comedian and a clown: you have to accept one has
| a point, and the other is a clown.
| virissimo wrote:
| On the contrary, requiring the addition of a disclaimer
| containing an overall evaluation of an author before
| correcting someone's misleading caricature of their work
| would be an extremely tedious community norm.
|
| Let's be brief and accurate instead.
| aasasd wrote:
| It's always fun seeing USians trying to shoehorn every
| variation of human behavior into the one-dimensional
| classification.
|
| (Seeing other Westerners confusedly borrow the same dichotomy
| is also entertaining, as it often fits poorly to them and they
| surely should know better.)
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| > USians
|
| We have a word for this in English: Americans.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| He knows. It's bait and you swallowed it. This is the part
| where you get a lecture about Central and South America.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| I always have to explain that we didn't come up with the
| name, the British did when we were first a colony, almost
| 500 years ago. Then the US became the first independent
| nation in the Americas, so it naturally became the
| nomenclature for us as a people. If the latin American
| countries wanted to have claim on the name, they should
| have had a revolution first instead of copying us decades
| later. It's not our fault they decided to live under
| European tyranny for decades longer. If their ancestors
| weren't so passive, then they would be called Americans,
| not us. You snooze, you lose.
|
| I say all this just to be annoying, of course. When I'm
| talking to a Latino in person who complains about it, I
| explain it all in fluent Spanish to make sure my point is
| well taken.
|
| Every country in the world has a name for its people, and
| that just happens to be ours and it's not going to change
| any time soon. Besides, not even Spanish speakers enjoy
| using the word "estadounidenses".
| commandlinefan wrote:
| My wife is Mexican. Us calling ourselves Americans drives
| her crazy (so I make a point, every time we visit her
| family in Mexico, of loudly declaring, "well, goodbye
| America!")
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Latin Americans feeling perturbed by the 'American'
| demonym is certainly understandable.
|
| Nevertheless, I feel that 'USian', despite being
| motivated by an understandable disgruntlement, is
| used/proposed in bad faith for these reasons: 1)
| 'American' is the demonym a consensus majority of
| Americans have have chosen for themselves. 2) 'USian'
| only works in textual conversation, in spoken
| conversation it is one small mumble or tongue fumble away
| from 'US Asian' aka Asian-American. 3) Combining an
| uppercase initialism with a lowercase suffix is
| unnatural, not idiomatic English. The clumsiness of this
| term seems deliberate. 4) It is rarely used except in the
| context of bitter remarks about Americans (such as
| above.)
|
| These four factors combined lead me to conclude that the
| term exists and is primarily used for trolling Americans.
| criddell wrote:
| Is this a criticism of Vonnegut?
| aasasd wrote:
| The only problem I might have with Vonnegut is that I could
| use more of his novels. Some of his books easily derail
| into author's explicit commentary on things--which is fun
| too in its own way, but leaves less space for more subtle
| jabs in the course of an actual plot.
| bfors wrote:
| As a USian, it is not fun
| sixo wrote:
| The words "left" and "right" are flimsy and one-dimensional
| for this purpose, but the basic dichotomy they're referring
| to in this context has deep roots in historical thinking:
| whether it's right for people to have whatever they can get
| vs what they need-- with the choice of moral framework
| indicating who "deserves" status and advantages; the former
| being the meritocratic/libertarian/objectivist sense, or the
| latter the communist/liberal/christian sense. In either case
| "right" and "left" are poorly matched, but come on, you know
| what they're talking about.
| Bakary wrote:
| I don't think this condescension is warranted for two
| reasons. Vonnegut operated this satire clearly within
| American cultural parameters and the dichotomy, though one-
| dimensional, is linked to many different foundational ideas
| in various cultures all across the world.
| aasasd wrote:
| Alright, so I'm guessing when people have to give up
| personal freedom for collective values, it's called
| 'leftist', right? Like, freedom of personal expression and
| freedom over one's own body--so men are forbidden from
| growing out long hair and decorating themselves with
| trinkets, women have to look 'womanly' and to assume
| traditional matronly roles, homosexuality is outlaw,
| recreational drugs are criminal as damaging for the society
| at large. Likewise, people are precluded from spending
| their money as they see fit, and the state dictates what
| healthcare, schools, universities and other caregiving
| establishments look like, such that everybody pays taxes
| for them. People can't sell each other whatever they want,
| but have to follow invasive regulation by the state. This
| all is leftism.
| Revery42 wrote:
| Leftists believe in egalitarianism, but this is very
| different from giving up personal freedom for collective
| values across the board. For one thing, leftists
| generally don't believe the collective values you've
| listed have value to begin with. It's also noteworthy
| that your examples target taking from those who already
| have less.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Revisiting mid-century dystopian fiction seems like it might
| yield some insights about the present. I didn't know who the
| story was by until the last line. I studied his work in 9th grade
| english class, and it just clicked how meaningful it is that I
| was part of a lot of experimental education programs as a kid.
| One could legitimately say I escaped from a lab, and my phone has
| also been on silent mode with alerts turned off for at least a
| decade now.
|
| Maybe we can attract the eyre of the very-concerned about old
| sci-fi and let them make it into a moral panic?
| absolutelynobo wrote:
| Ire?
| falcolas wrote:
| Ironically, I personally have always felt a kinship to the
| character George Bergeron. Why? Because it's a shockingly
| accurate depiction of how ADHD's lack of control over one's own
| concentration feels.
|
| Normal stimuli can be like the sounds coming from his earpiece.
| Unique, unpredictable, and they wreck utter havoc on your ability
| to concentrate. But sometimes the sounds don't come for hours,
| and your mind won't - can't - break free of its current task
| without those sounds.
|
| Anyways. Always a favorite story of mine.
| jcynix wrote:
| BTW, there's a Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis
| which does (or did) digitize Vonnegut's work:
|
| http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/12/digital-libraries/kur...
| sireat wrote:
| I recently asked twenty college sophomores whether they knew OF
| Kurt Vonnegut.
|
| Not a single person knew.
|
| These were twenty bright young persons double majoring in CS and
| Business Administration.
|
| Now there is a disclaimer: the students were mostly from Eastern
| Europe. However they speak fluent English. In fact I envy how
| well they carry on their day to day conversations.
|
| To add fuel to the fire Vonnegut was widely translated in former
| Soviet Union. My librarian colleagues almost had a stroke when I
| told them this story.
| tromp wrote:
| > like something the cat drug in
|
| TIL that drug is a valid alternative to dragged. In fact about as
| common according to #google hits.
| dublin wrote:
| Google hits reflect popular usage, not proper usage. In many
| cases (like this one, and the even weirder "snuck") there is a
| big difference between those two...
| faut_reflechir wrote:
| Factoid: "snuck" and "drug" have in common that the irregular
| conjugation is the non-standard one, but are different in
| that "snuck" is a neologism of the 19th century whereas
| "drug" is in fact the older standard form, gradually
| supplanted by "dragged."
| unwise-exe wrote:
| Today's popular usage often _is_ tomorrow 's proper usage.
|
| Even if it is sometimes a bit unfortunate.
| notenoughbeans wrote:
| As someone that struggled with envy as a kid, this story spoke to
| me. It made me think twice about trying to tear people down that
| I thought were hogging the spotlight.
|
| Although, I'm sure there were people in my class that identified
| with Harrison and thought that everyone else was holding them
| back.
| cowllin wrote:
| The ~25 minute short film titled 2081 of this story is amazing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GVHgpCnBmk
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Honestly, I hate this story. As a disabled kid with an IEP and
| getting government aid I really didn't need to read this in high
| school.
| Parmenidea wrote:
| My hot take is that this story is highly overrated. It's boring,
| poorly written, and lacks nuance. The reason people remember it
| fondly is (1) everyone loves Vonnegut because he's funny, so they
| don't want to criticize it and (2) everyone read this story in
| middle school and are blinded by nostalgia.
| dkarl wrote:
| I think it has a special place in the hearts of people who are
| especially affected by interruptions, more because of what is
| concretely inflicted on the title character than because of the
| abstract argument about equality and inequality. There was no
| language for talking about being sensitive to interruptions
| back then, and there isn't really now unless you have some kind
| of diagnosis. My wife does not understand that speaking to me
| every ten or fifteen minutes affects my ability to concentrate
| and do my job. As an adult with a high-paying job, I'm able to
| rent space at a coworker space so that we don't have constant
| fights about it that affect our marriage. For children living
| in loud homes where people constantly yell and blare the TV,
| and trapped in classrooms with other children who scream and
| disrupt simply because they can't stand quiet, they have no
| ability to escape, but at least they have some validation in
| the form of this story, proof that a famous and successful
| person recognized their experience as real.
| MockObject wrote:
| I always thought that the interruption theme was not at all
| the point of the story, but simply the most disturbing
| handicap from the perspective of an author.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I'm with you. I think it's one of Vonnegut's weaker works. The
| only reason I'd recommend someone read it is because it comes
| up a lot.
| dusted wrote:
| I've been called an excitable simpleton in many different ways,
| but this one is new ;)
|
| I read it the first time today, In my opinion it was a
| pleasurable read, well written, witty and, clearly
| demonstrating a certain idea.
| davidw wrote:
| I had to read it in high school, and hated it for those reasons
| as well as just being a pretty literal minded person. My mind
| is wired such that I would much rather read an opinion piece
| stating your actual opinion rather than some lame bit of
| allegory where the actual story and characters are weak and the
| whole thing is about Conveying The Author's Message. And that
| message tends to be some extreme version of something with no
| nuance or real debate.
| mmmpop wrote:
| As mentioned in this thread already, it's almost certainly a
| parody of what an unsophisticated person thinks government
| forced "equity" measures would look like in a dystopian future.
| But in my opinion, if Vonnegut were alive today, he may find a
| little less humor in it seeing how far we've come in making his
| silly fiction closer to reality.
| snarkerson wrote:
| The enforced equality of outcome is extended into the extreme.
|
| So is it of value when not in the extreme?
| davidw wrote:
| One of the many reasons I hated this story when I read it in
| high school was because it's kind of a straw man with no shades
| of gray or nuance, and thus felt like kind of a dumb thing to
| discuss.
| LanceH wrote:
| Bringing people down for the sake of equality? Depends.
|
| Bring in more tax money from the rich and build a safety
| net...that's pretty popular.
|
| Don't allow a student advanced math classes because he'll get
| ahead of his peers. Unfortunately this is actually being
| pursued.
|
| Title IX in the US might be used for either side of the
| argument. Everyone should have equal access in education --
| positive. We need to get rid of men's soccer so we can balance
| the scholarship numbers (bad for men's soccer players). No idea
| why we can't balance football scholarships with
| academic/art/engineering/architecture/whatever scholarships.
| [deleted]
| softcactus wrote:
| I always interpreted this work as a satire of Ayn Randian style
| objectivism/exceptionalism. It's funny that in school we were
| taught that it was a criticism of communism/socialism when I
| think it's really a criticism of the popular perception of
| communism/socialism.
|
| The underlying premise is a misunderstanding of equity that
| persists today. The idea behind leftist ideologies is not to
| handicap the brilliant and able, but to extend the material
| buffers that allow brilliance to flourish to everyone:
|
| "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of
| Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal
| talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."
|
| But at the time and today, people (leftists included) thought
| that leftist ideology must have been based in envy or some
| inferiority complex. Harrison Bergeron is that 'meta-ideology'
| taken to its extreme.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Vonnegut, whether you agree with his moral tilt or not, is an
| absolute master of writing dramatically, thematically simple
| stories that leave you thinking them over for days, and sometimes
| years.
|
| I read this story in high school and it still comes to mind a
| handful of times a year.
| possiblydrunk wrote:
| In a similar vein ... Now there's no more oak
| oppression For they passed a noble law And the trees
| are all kept equal By hatchet, axe, and saw
|
| Rush - The Trees
| nbernard wrote:
| IMHO, the short film 2081 [0], based on this story, is also worth
| watching.
|
| [0]: http://www.finallyequal.com/
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| /me thinks reading
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Basis_of_a_Backward_...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_selection_(politics)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up_with_the_Joneses
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_mentality
|
| would be more productive.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i think this: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-
| kropotkin-the-c...
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Could be. Tabbed for later. Thx.
|
| edit: I have that site bookmarked already, and browse there
| from time to time.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| conquest of bread is a fundamental anarcho-communist book
| and kind of addresses some of those themes you linked if
| you draw your own conclusions while reading it
| jszymborski wrote:
| Need art be productive?
| aasasd wrote:
| Yes, the best way to deal with social knowledge is to memorize
| the list of biases and sociopolitical behaviors from Wikipedia,
| and to recite the fitting ones when anything relevant comes up.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Can't parse if satiric, or not, distracted ATM. But if
| satiric, why would that be a bad thing, to be able to point
| to a generalized concept, the essence, which otherwise
| requires much more words to describe? Like 'Gell-Mann-
| Amnesia' f.i.?
| falcolas wrote:
| Not everything related to learning requires perfect efficiency.
| Fiction is a fantastic way to take dry principles and make them
| relatable. Read those wikipedia articles _and_ Harrison
| Bergeron if you really want to get the most out of those
| factual articles and fictional story.
|
| To put it another way, productivity is not - nor should it be -
| the milestone by which we evaluate our lives.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| That's not what I meant to say. Actually I searched for
| words, thought about 'informative', 'enlightening', other
| rephrasing, but been lazy. I like (some) fiction too. But all
| the discussions about this short story seem to remain fuzzy,
| coming to no real conclusions, not pointing to the core.
| Because, hey, fiction, so what? That is detrimental, I think.
| And because of that, I've put it that way.
| falcolas wrote:
| > That is detrimental, I think.
|
| Not at all. Different people will take away different
| lessons and meanings, because they're thinking about what
| the story means given their own experiences. And as they
| grow as people, the things they take away will change.
|
| Thinking about the principles linked above - how those
| principles apply to the story and to our own lives - is
| much more valuable to a person than purely memorizing these
| principles.
|
| What's even better is that a lot of folks will take away
| things that the author didn't even think of - perhaps
| couldn't think of given the time frame of the writing.
| Simply viewing it at a time that has a different framework
| of morality than was present back in the 1960's can give us
| a whole different perspective.
|
| Thinking is good. Coming to different conclusions while
| still being able to discuss them with others is even
| better.
|
| EDIT: A concrete example. I noted in a different thread
| about how I identify with George Bergeron due to my ADHD.
| Vonnegut is unlikely to have written George in such a way
| intentionally, nor is it one of the central themes of the
| story, and yet I'm able to use it to help others understand
| how my brain works; I can give them a relatable portrayal
| of a person's mental experience.
|
| That's something you won't get by reading a Wikipedia
| article about Crab Mentality - by simply reading about the
| themes of a story.
| Animats wrote:
| I've seen this obscure story on HN three times in the last month.
| I read it decades ago. Did some mainstream event make it popular?
| dusted wrote:
| This is the first time I saw it, but to be honest, it was
| referenced by another article which I did read on HN, so it's
| possible that the author of that article previously found it
| via HN.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I don't think any single event made it popular. I think it's a
| reaction to the 'DEI' zeitgeist generally.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Beauty, and human attraction to beauty, is impossible to
| overcome. While sometimes informed by culture, attributes like
| symmetrical faces are desirable across all cultures. And those
| attributes are often powerfully informed by genetics. Absent
| absurd handicaps like in the story, people with those attributes
| will have better lives. Life is not fair. In some ways it's
| better that it's not. Our perception of beauty, and marveling in
| its wonder, is something that makes us uniquely human.
| [deleted]
| cainxinth wrote:
| > Life is not fair. In some ways it's better that it's not. Our
| perception of beauty, and marveling in its wonder, is something
| that makes us uniquely human.
|
| I don't know if I buy either of those statements. Taking the
| second part first, animals probably can perceive 'beauty':
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/2021...
|
| And as for the first part, yes, life isn't fair, which is
| partially why human societies make rules that attempt to
| alleviate some of that arbitrariness. The story of Harrison
| Bergeron is an example of human rules run amok. It should
| encourage us to create better rules, not abandon them entirely
| and return to the law of the jungle.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| "I'm glad life isn't fair. If it were, it means we deserve
| everything that happens to us." -- paraphrasing a quote from
| _Babylon 5_
|
| Principles are superior to rules, but the best we can do in
| government is making rules. Best they be few, and of high
| quality.
| llanowarelves wrote:
| Even various animals prefer attractive people. It's pretty
| crazy
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I've noticed that large energetic dogs seem to respect large
| and strong people more, and show disrespect to smaller
| people.
| rob74 wrote:
| That doesn't reflect my experience - unless you mean
| "attractive" by the animal's definition, which in case of a
| cat might be "someone who feeds me reliably twice a day and
| cuddles me from time to time".
| waterhouse wrote:
| That sounds like an interesting result, but I wonder about
| how such studies were done. Might it be that attractive
| people are more likely to have certain types of mannerisms or
| other traits? Did anyone go as far as making people wear
| clothing or makeup that made them more or less attractive and
| then putting them in front of the animals?
| egypturnash wrote:
| Captive to our smartphones, distracted constantly by an endless
| succession of oh-so-important notifications for trivial things.
| Who in modern life does not feel a little like Harrison Bergeron
| with his federally-mandated thought-train-interrupting earpiece?
|
| And who among us cannot sympathize with Albert Brock, The
| Murderer? https://www.readkong.com/page/the-murderer-by-ray-
| bradbury-8...
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| Complaints of this type go back over a century. Before
| smartphones, people complained that nobody was socializing
| because they were all busy reading newspapers. I think it's
| safe to call this argument tired at this point.
| tryptophan wrote:
| But...measures of socialization are at an all time low? It
| may not be due to smartphones, but it is a real phenomenon.
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| I don't think you've really processed The Murderer.
|
| Bradbury was predicting that we'd have smaller slices of
| attention available, that we would choose to hyper-stimulate
| ourselves 24/7 and not choose to protect our time for quiet
| contemplation. That every moment would be filled with either
| important work messages or advertisements.
|
| Bradbury doesn't even predict a way that this causes
| secondary harm. He just says "hey, this is how the future
| will look and some people won't be wild about it."
|
| He _nails it_. That 's exactly what our world looks like now.
|
| His protagonist isn't a fan, probably Bradbury isn't a fan,
| but the explicit message is that most people will be in
| favor. If they weren't then we wouldn't have this kind of
| world.
|
| So, ok, we can all decide what we think about that. The
| protagonist decides to destroy his company's equipment. The
| psychiatrist moves back to a life of notifications and
| buzzing. Life goes on and society continues to work.
|
| The story is morally neutral. It isn't a complaint; that's
| the beauty of it. Bradbury is one of the few authors who
| often tried to achieve that kind of neutrality.
| falcolas wrote:
| And Television. And radio. And books. And the ability to read
| in general.
|
| These same historical ills attributed to all of these
| activities are being recycled against today's social media,
| even here on HN.
| jimbokun wrote:
| It was true for all of those things.
|
| It is an ever accelerating trend away from in person
| socialization and towards solitary entertainment and
| electronically mediated, soloed interactions.
| falcolas wrote:
| Ooooor you may consider that in-person socialization as a
| form of entertainment or a way to pass time is
| drastically overrated - typically by people who _want_
| in-person socialization. People who want /need the
| affirmation that comes with being in a small group of
| people who share their views.
|
| Not everybody does.
|
| Not everyone finds socializing with the same clique of
| 5-10 people day after day after day to be a valuable
| experience. Especially when you're not the "star" of the
| social cliques you find yourself in.
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| It is _baffling_ that Bradbury was able to write The Murderer
| in 1953.
|
| The transistor was invented in 1947 and the first fully
| transistorized radio wasn't available until a year after
| Bradbury published this, but he got all the way through
| predicting ringtones, smartwatches, housing automation, GPS
| digital dispatch/gig economy jobs, and smarmy digital
| assistants in the span of a single story.
|
| I am not aware of a more prescient bit of science fiction.
| Bradbury knew how people worked and what we'd try to make.
|
| If you haven't read The Murderer, please do so.
| mpettitt wrote:
| Ever read "The Machine Stops" by EM Forster? Over 100 years
| old, and it's got Facebook style interactions!
| scandox wrote:
| Yes and video calls that are "good enough".
| devindotcom wrote:
| The most prescient fiction work of the century, in my
| opinion.
| mariodiana wrote:
| Ever read Bradbury's "The Veldt"?
|
| Makes you wonder if Bradbury wasn't a real life John Titor.
| Bakary wrote:
| _Paris in the Twentieth Century_ (1863)
|
| _Stand on Zanzibar_ (1968)
| ren_engineer wrote:
| he basically just worked from first principles of human
| nature and took it to the logical conclusion
| hirundo wrote:
| axolotlgod wrote:
| No. Ableism (not sure why the quotes, comes off as a little
| sarcastic) is expecting and demeaning individuals--either
| purposefully or implicitly due to environmental design--for not
| achieving some arbitrary standard of "normal". No one
| advocating for better treatment of people is suggesting a
| Bergeron-esque reality where those who are performing must be
| handicapped for equality. It is more about making social
| systems and attitudes welcoming for those who were
| traditionally seen as worthless (especially in a system that
| valued productive work above the health of the individual).
| Making room for others doesn't mean dragging others down, you
| know?
| falcolas wrote:
| Nah. Abelist is expecting that everyone is capable of and
| should perform to Harrison's level - that not performing to
| Harrison's level is a failure by the individual.
| gojomo wrote:
| Thankfully, internet attention-harvesting business models have
| provided us with an emergent, decentralized 'Handicapper General'
| functionality. That saves us from the abuses that a formal,
| centralized agency that enforces equality-of-outcomes might
| entail.
| elmer007 wrote:
| What's going on in the reviews? Benjamin Khavasov coming in hot
| after 6 years.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| This is one of my favorite stories ever. I have never seen it as
| particularly anti socialism per se. Through most of KVs parables,
| there is a satire of what happens when we use forced constraint
| and compulsion to achieve a desired behavior. History has
| examples of how things go pear shaped when religious/right
| movements force people to behave a certain way, from the crusades
| to the current arguments about women's rights in both the US and
| Iran at the moment. I've always seen KV's tales as a warning to
| lefter leaning ideologies, that if you use the same compulsory
| means to achieve your left leaning goals, you'll end up with
| equally wonky results as using the same means to achieve right
| leaning goals. You can't _make_ people good. The people of a
| society have to choose to be good (for whatever arbitrary measure
| of morality your society has created).
| jasonhansel wrote:
| I've always seen this story, less as a parable about our
| treatment of the disabled (or the gifted), and more as a lesson
| about envy. It shows what happens when you try to eliminate envy
| from society by bringing everyone to the same level, so that
| nobody has any "unfair" advantages.
|
| edit: I think the telling line is:
|
| > their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and
| graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the
| cat drug in
|
| The point isn't to make people equal for the sake of an abstract
| egalitarian principle, the point is to stop anyone from feeling
| envious.
|
| edit 2: There is one obvious problem with this attempt to prevent
| envy. When you handicap someone, if the handicaps are _visible,_
| you can still tell by looking at the handicaps who has the
| greatest talent, as happens in the story. A more dystopian
| version would make the handicaps invisible.
| rcktmrtn wrote:
| I agree, especially considering the version of the story
| Vonnegut previous told in Sirens of Titan [1]. In that story
| (written earlier), the people are shown willingly embracing
| handicaps out of love. Definitely makes an interesting
| contrast. My theory is that he wrote the later story (Bergeron)
| is to clarify the distinction you mention. Loving people will
| want to "handicap" themselves for the sake of solidarity, but
| you can't turn it around the other way.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron#Parallels_wi...
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| This seems similar to a common justification for school
| uniforms. If everybody is made to dress the same way, we can
| eliminate the bullying that comes with letting people choose
| their own fashion. Of course, the bullying continues anyway.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| This story had an amazing effect on me as a child and before it
| begins, yes I have a disability (though a so called invisible
| disability - I have type 1 diabetes and epilepsy).
|
| It isn't that we should turn a blind eye to the disabled, as many
| use it as a parable for. Many disabled do need extra help, but
| that help comes in the form of lifting up, not pushing down those
| who are able. The able should be encouraged, in their own way.
| Everyone needs to excel in an area that is their own and have a
| space to grow (oh God, I've turned into a hippy =/).
|
| I worry that this parable, the true meaning of this parable, has
| been washed-out over the years to be used only as a sword and not
| the shield it was meant to be.
| geysersam wrote:
| Interesting. I've always felt the story to be a bit of a straw
| man. Don't we always celebrate and idolize ability, beauty etc?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Americans idolize athletic skill and beauty, but look down on
| intellectual achievement.
|
| "nerds"
| MrZongle2 wrote:
| That's an unnecessary large brush. There are 300 million of
| us. Are we all the same?
| WalterBright wrote:
| When I say "people like ice cream" and you say "not all
| people like ice cream" I reply "I didn't say _all_. "
|
| "All" is a modifier for a reason.
|
| For example, people are demanding that the SATs should
| not be used to evaluate students academic ability,
| because it's unfair that some students do better on the
| test than others.
|
| Have you ever seen anyone advocate this sort of thing for
| the school sports program? How about it being unfair and
| inequitable that top athletes have a leg up on college
| admissions?
|
| Did any PE teacher shower attention on me or the other
| inept students to bring us up to speed? Nope. The
| attention was all on the top 2 or 3 athletic students.
| The rest of us were just an annoyance. (I'm not saying
| this to complain, as my interests were elsewhere, just
| illustrating an example.)
| choko wrote:
| Using the term "people" or "men" or "women" without a
| quantifier is misleading. I could say "people think the
| earth is flat" and it doesn't matter if it's one person
| or one billion people but the difference is very
| important.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Using the term "people" or "men" or "women" without a
| quantifier is misleading
|
| If I say "people have two legs" and you reply saying what
| about amputees, that's a debate tactic, not a
| misinterpretation. If I say "people are amputees" that
| would be a false statement.
|
| > I could say "people think the earth is flat" and it
| doesn't matter if it's one person or one billion people
| but the difference is very important.
|
| The term "people" by itself means people in general. Not
| all people, and not one person in a billion.
|
| English is neither a mathematics nor a programming
| language, and should not be treated as such.
| choko wrote:
| Seems like you moved the goal posts a bit there. Your
| first comment indicates "people" could be any quantity,
| now it seems you mean that "people" means people in
| general, which indicates a majority of people? It's
| important to be precise in language if you want your
| thoughts understood.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Media and popular culture teaches the nerd/jock dichotomy
| to children, who internalize it and let it become a self
| fulfilling prophesy. When the influence of this meme is
| diminished, athletic and intellectual ability have a
| positive correlation with each other. People with healthy
| strong bodies are more likely to have healthy and strong
| minds as well, and vice versa. The quality of a school and
| a community's attitude towards intellectualism can be
| judged by how much overlap there is between the sports
| teams and honors courses. The less overlap there is, the
| worse that school/community is.
|
| One way that popular culture teaches this dichotomy is with
| role playing games, where you choose to spec into INT or
| STR, but if you split your skill points between both you'll
| be mediocre at both. Real life doesn't work like that.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Mens sana in corpore sano
| aasasd wrote:
| Accusing a 'science fiction' story of strawmanning is pretty
| weird.
|
| Moreover, 'Harrison Bergeron' can easily be paralleled to
| Bulgakov's 'Heart of a Dog', which is a direct jab at the
| early Soviet Union. However, idk if Vonnegut was interested
| in that or read Bulgakov.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Not always.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
|
| People are fickle in their adulation.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Oh. Hi! :-) 8minutes faster U!
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| People certainly interpret it as a straw man, but if it was
| that, I'm really not sure why the author would have decided
| that Harrison would be declaring himself king, getting a
| beautiful queen, appointing an aristocracy, being weirdly and
| unnecessarily violent or literally flying.
| josephcsible wrote:
| There have been school districts lately that have been
| getting rid of advanced math classes in the name of equality.
| flatline wrote:
| Like the sibling poster said this is probably a cost
| cutting measure. However, I really hate the dichotomy of
| "special ed" vs "gifted/advanced" that permeates education.
| Every student has special educational needs, and by that I
| mean not just academics. I excelled in school with no real
| effort and never got the support I needed in other areas
| because, clearly, I was doing great. I now have a 2e kid
| that goes to a Waldorf type school and gets like zero
| academic assistance (not really needed) but a ton of
| social/emotional support he needs. Eventually he'll be in
| some more mainstream school where he can take advanced
| courses. I have a girl with ADHD and an 88 IQ - she just
| squirrels out as soon as she sees a problem that she cannot
| answer without some thought. She is sharp as a tack and
| does well in school because she has had to learn good study
| habits, but her support comes in the form of special ed to
| help give her a distraction-free environment in which to
| study.
|
| I do think there is a push not to equalize everyone but to
| actually address individual needs, and those may draw
| resources from areas like advanced courses. Boredom in
| school for bright kids can definitely be a problem but I'm
| not sure it's the end of the world. The kids who want to
| excel generally will, and can often just be advanced a
| grade or two. The rigid structure of class groupings by age
| is anachronistic and maybe like 50% appropriate. There are
| better ways to structure education.
| LtWorf wrote:
| > Boredom in school for bright kids can definitely be a
| problem but I'm not sure it's the end of the world.
|
| Until they completely lose the habit of learning. Which
| might come handy later on when the extra stuff they knew
| is no longer advanced.
| hedora wrote:
| Here in California, the people setting the next
| generation math curriculum explicitly reject the idea
| that some children are better in some subjects than
| others (0% of the people responsible for creating the
| math standards studied math).
|
| Their original proposal would ban all but remedial
| coursework, so your kids would get the same treatment as
| everyone else (by intentionally lowering everyone's
| achievement; especially the special needs and gifted
| kids).
|
| I can only assume the people pushing this are trying to
| sabotage the school system, but they claim to have good
| intentions, and hide behind all sorts of woke double
| speak.
|
| In other news, the schools no longer fund science or art
| classes. Instead, the parents pay the public school
| $1000's per year per student (tax deductible) so we can
| have those programs.
|
| Also, the facilities are crumbling and have all sorts of
| obvious health and saftey issues. This is in an extremely
| affluent part of the state and a top ranked school.
|
| My kids will be fine (the parents at the school happily
| throw money at the problems -- it's cheaper than private
| school, after all), but I don't see how kids in poorer
| districts will be able to pretend to have a middle school
| education, regardless of whether they earn a California
| high school diploma, or not.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Like the sibling poster said this is probably a cost
| cutting measure.
|
| In the Seattle school district, this is certainly not a
| cost cutting measure. It's an equity measure.
|
| > The kids who want to excel generally will
|
| That's true. Even though there's a complete lack of
| interest in them by the public schools, at least those
| schools don't make an effort to block them.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Seattle-area parent here. I grew up in near a small city
| in the midwest, but even there we had 3 levels of classes
| for nearly every subject, and a gifted program. It was
| awesome. My classmates were all smart and hard-working,
| and I entered college already having tested out of nearly
| 2 years of general education requirements. Public schools
| are the way to go, or so I thought.
|
| Having seen what the Seattle public school system has
| become, I'm planning to send my kids to private school.
| Most of my (largely Asian) friends here will do the same.
| As usual, people with the means to do so will pay to
| avoid these problems, but the lower/middle class suffers
| the consequences.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| I had a similar experience in school and definitely agree
|
| > I do think there is a push not to equalize everyone but
| to actually address individual needs, and those may draw
| resources from areas like advanced courses
|
| This is a great point and reminds me of the quote "When
| you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like
| oppression". I definitely got a lot of privileges in
| school my friends didn't because I got good grades -
| better choice of classes, counselors will listen to you
| more, and maybe most of all, teachers seem to care much
| more about teaching and engaging and not just getting a
| group of kids they don't think want to learn to pass so
| they can leave the class.
| LtWorf wrote:
| For teachers is more fun to teach interested kids rather
| rather than people who clearly and blatantly aren't
| paying any attention.
|
| You try talking for an hour to someone on the train, and
| keep going when they put their earphones on and start
| scrolling on the phone... it's not that easy.
| mcguire wrote:
| The cynical among us might suspect the real reason to be
| budget.
| geysersam wrote:
| Do you have a source for this claim? Sounds incredible.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Here's one:
| https://stanforddaily.com/2022/04/07/stanford-and-cal-
| profes...
|
| > the reformed framework attempted to remedy achievement
| gaps by urging public schools to remove certain
| accelerated math tracks from middle school education.
| Boaler's guidelines have become a basis for a statewide
| push to move these classes, specifically Algebra I, out
| of middle school.
| geysersam wrote:
| Strange indeed! Difficult to understand the motivation.
| How would removing advanced tracks from public schools
| (with disproportionately more minority students) help
| equality?
| LtWorf wrote:
| Basically they do that to kill force people who can to
| send their kids to private schools.
| tigeba wrote:
| The district where my kids attend have suggested this on
| a few occasions. Frequently advanced math is the target.
| The district has hired a consultant that is charged with
| professional development for educators in the district.
| Among other things, the consultant makes claims that
| tracking is "... a racialized system of exclusion." and
| compares it to Apartheid on multiple occasions. The
| rationale is explicit: "The biggest problem with
| tracking-by a million miles -- is the equity issue." In
| my opinion combatting inequity in this way, by
| eliminating a resource that students need to succeed, is
| an example of "leveling down" or "Harrison Bergeroning"
| the situation if you will.
| bnralt wrote:
| Story from a local school:
|
| Parents of the more advanced math students in the grade
| requested some sort of more advanced math opportunities for
| their kids. School didn't provide any. When several of the
| kids used a more advanced math concept they had learned
| outside of school to solve a problem, the teacher told them
| to not do it that way because they hadn't learned it yet.
|
| The school does provide extra classes for kids who they
| think are behind in one area or another. And if a kid has a
| lot of issues, a class will even get an extra teacher that
| just focuses on that kid.
|
| Children who perform below grade level or have issues are
| getting extra attention from the school (great), but
| children who already know what's being taught are expected
| to just sit there quietly and waste their time (not so
| great).
| babyshake wrote:
| > When several of the kids used a more advanced math
| concept they had learned outside of school to solve a
| problem, the teacher told them to not do it that way
| because they hadn't learned it yet.
|
| This is nothing new. Most teachers are more concerned
| with being able to manage their classes than they are
| with outcomes for individual students.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| This also seems to be for the sake of the teachers.
| There's a bunch of different methods to do math problems,
| and they're supposed to grade both the method and the
| result. It's way easier if everyone is using the same
| method than to allow everyone to make their own.
|
| As a straw-man example - you could come up with a more
| advanced way to format your essay and maybe write it in a
| new language you learned, but if the teacher can't
| understand it then it doesn't really fulfill the
| requirements of the assignment.
|
| The "new math" thing also isn't anything new, there's a
| song about it from 1965 and another from 2009
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math_(song)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Note the contrast between that and the athletic
| department, where schools are absolutely delighted to get
| a kid with an aptitude for sport, and push him hard to
| achieve.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Art classes seem the same, art and music teachers always
| seem eager to give special attention to kids who do much
| better than their peers.
| bitwize wrote:
| Art and music programs are being cut to free up funding
| to ensure all the kids pass the standardized tests so the
| school doesn't lose NCLB funding.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Of course.
|
| Very few teachers take any interest in the students who
| do well in math. In fact, they'll often find them
| annoying.
|
| Yes, there are some teachers who do take an interest and
| do their best for those students. They just aren't the
| norm, and they don't get much support from the
| administration.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| I think the big difference here is that it doesn't really
| matter if someone isn't athletic. A school can have 10
| kids for an amazing basketball team and 990 that are
| terrible at basketball and it doesn't affect anything,
| but if you have 10 geniuses and 990 kids that can't read
| then it's a huge negative for society
| mcguire wrote:
| Given the test-driven nature of modern education in the
| US, having 1000 kids that can just read at grade level is
| better than having 985 kids at grade level, 5 below, and
| 10 above. Any resources spent on the latter would be
| better spent on the 5 that are below grade level.
| LazarWolf_ wrote:
| I think this argument presupposes that denying resourcing
| for the 10 will definitely improve the success of the 5.
|
| Personal side note; I've tended to find that exceptional
| people are more productive with the resources given. So I
| find it hard to believe the inverse would also be true.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > it doesn't really matter if someone isn't athletic
|
| Tell that to people who faked athletic credentials to get
| into the college of their choice. Or who get in with full
| academic scholarships because they're good at football.
|
| I'm not advocating ignoring 990 kids that can't read, not
| at all. What I am suggesting is ignoring the 10 geniuses
| and not taking advantage of them _is_ both unfair and bad
| for society.
|
| Consider that WW1 and WW2 were won in large part by smart
| people making more effective weapons. You see the same
| thing in the Ukraine war today.
|
| Failing to nurture the 10 geniuses is a very bad idea.
| pydry wrote:
| This is probably a vain attempt by management to put a
| shine on a cost cutting exercise.
|
| There _is_ a poisonous ideology at work in the background
| but ultimately defunding schools comes from a desire for
| more inequality, not less.
| woooooo wrote:
| Who do you mean by management, here?
|
| The superintendent, the school board, the city council or
| the voters?
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| "A desire for more inequality"?
|
| That smacks of "good people support Policy X, even if it
| achieves the opposite of its goals in the long run. To
| acknowledge that and oppose Policy X, even on its own
| merits, makes you evil in intent."
|
| Few people actually have desires like "I want more
| inequality", even if they oppose a policy which intends
| to decrease it.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| Brazilian guy here. In Brazil, state of Sao Paulo, some
| years ago the government wanted to implement a gifted
| students program, and it was DEFINITELY shut down for
| "politically correct" reasons, no "cutting costs" involved.
| But anyways, Brazil is not known worldwide as a smart
| celebrating country. Carnaval celebrates asses, not brains.
| geysersam wrote:
| There's a difference between not providing _extra_
| resources to educate "gifted" students, and spending
| effort actively inhibiting their development. I feel what
| you describe falls in the first category, while the
| situation in the story falls in the second.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| There was no extra costs involved per se. To "educate"
| the gifted children, you will incur some costs, be it on
| a regular public school or on a school dedicated to
| nurture this kids special abilities. What the political
| groups wanted, and in the end got, was a policy of not
| acknowledging that there are innate differences between
| children, and some are "better" than others. It doesn't
| matter that these kids, that frequent public schools in
| Brazil, are 100% poor. There is no rich kids in public
| schools in Brazil, I guarantee you that. The result is,
| this poor kids could have had a real jump start to their
| lives, but no. 10 years later they never had a chance,
| just stayed rotting in the garbage dumpsters the
| governments call public schools down here. It's the
| dangers of tabula rasa arguments, if you do not see
| reality in realities terms you end up hurting people.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| My school had a lot of different levels of math in
| particular, I took a lot of the highest courses and loved
| my teachers, but with the stories I've heard from other
| students it seems like the school would give the best
| teachers to the best students, so people already doing bad
| would only do worse. So I do see some value in removing
| that because it incentivizes the school to not care about
| the lower level courses as much.
|
| I think a better overall solution would be something like
| what Khan academy was going for - you can have a bunch of
| kids at different levels in the same class, and then you
| can also rely on them to help teach each other more. I
| think this was the main way schoolhouses were run before
| the industrial revolution. Then you're not limiting anyone,
| and you're also not encouraging the weird social effects
| that come from trying to section off people into discrete
| buckets
| mmmpop wrote:
| Equity, not equality. Big difference in modern parlance.
| choko wrote:
| It's all double-speak for Marxism, or equal outcomes for
| everyone.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| AFAIK Marxism isn't about equal outcomes, but it is
| opposed to enforced classes. So a Marxist would likely
| argue you shouldn't have lower and advanced courses
| separate, but you'd still have one course with a
| distribution of grades. The teacher would just focus more
| on the kids that need more help to improve the mean of
| the distribution, where our current method would create
| unnatural multi-modal distributions
|
| If you're opposed to Marxism you should also know
| "double-speak" comes from a book written in support of
| socialism[1]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Spanish_
| Civil_Wa...
| esja wrote:
| It's remarkable how Equity was just smuggled into
| "Diversity, Equity & Inclusion", without people realising
| that it doesn't mean the sort of equality that the
| majority supports.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| In my highschool there were honors courses, but no AP
| courses. The school district wanted to replace honor
| courses with AP courses so that students might earn course
| credits for college. However the school district was in a
| working class town were most adults did not have college
| educations. The introduction of AP courses was fiercely
| opposed by many of these people, ostensibly because they
| didn't think it would be fair that taxpayers would have to
| pay for college credits, when they themselves never went to
| college.
|
| Crab bucket mentality. It's real.
| z7 wrote:
| Related:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27040373
| pjc50 wrote:
| What constitutes "ability" and "beauty", and what is
| acceptable/permitted to idolize, is extremely culturally
| specific. And the story explores a world with a very
| different view of those.
| Animats wrote:
| No, as we learned when morphing started to work, beauty is
| average. If you average a large number of faces, you get
| one most humans think is beautiful.[1] Non-beauty seems to
| be a defect-sensing system.
|
| [1] https://petapixel.com/2013/05/28/what-averaged-face-
| photogra...
| swayvil wrote:
| Consider the bloodsoaked frenzy that surrounds any celebrity
| who steps out of line.
|
| Consider, in social media, our quaint tradition of "voting".
| Suppressing the smart and stupid alike. Enforcing conformity
| to the norm above all.
| hbosch wrote:
| >Don't we always celebrate and idolize ability, beauty etc?
|
| It's a complex terrain to navigate, I think. The German term
| "schadenfreude" comes to mind, specifically, in direct
| contrast to that. For example, would you say the Kardashian
| family is celebrated or despised?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I had a teacher that loved to use Harrison Bergeron as a useful
| discussion point on the complex difference between "Equality"
| and "Equity", and my understanding is that is also what
| Vonnegut intended. (The nihilistic modern Libertarian
| interpretation of "it's not even worth trying to accommodate
| differently abled people because Harrison Bergeron said so"
| seems quite contrary to a lot of Vonnegut's other works.)
|
| I appreciate that today we have less likely to be confused with
| nihilism memes on "equality" versus "equity" such as this now
| classic:
| https://i.pinimg.com/736x/94/b9/cf/94b9cff6e57f8bff9db127a21...
|
| I think it is a shame that we've almost lost some access to
| good humor/satire/farce such as Vonnegut's in what increasingly
| feels like a Post-Poe's Law Singularity world where the
| internet makes it painfully obvious how much "most" people
| associate any given satire with its most facile arguments and
| miss the forest for the trees, miss the punchline, or miss the
| general point.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The nihilistic modern Libertarian interpretation of "it's
| not even worth trying to accommodate differently abled people
| because Harrison Bergeron said so"
|
| That isn't what Libertarians think.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Anyone I've ever heard it _from_ was a Libertarian, so it
| seems fair to use that as a label. I don 't know or care if
| it is a "party plank" shared by "all Libertarians" or "true
| Libertarians" or "true Scotsmen", it's not relevant to my
| point.
| WalterBright wrote:
| You're not hearing it from this libertarian.
|
| Libertarianism is not code for rude, thoughtless,
| meanness, uncharitable, stealing, defrauding, enslaving,
| etc.
|
| It's code for people doing what they want to, as long as
| they don't hurt others.
|
| For example, I follow recommendations for making my web
| sites more usable for people using screen readers. Not
| because anyone makes me do it - I'm happy to do it.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Great. You want a pat on the back for doing the easy
| things?
|
| A lot of accommodations cost money and are supported by
| taxes. Are you one of the rare Libertarians who doesn't
| also believe "taxation is theft"? Other accommodations
| require regulation because incentives (money) alone don't
| work (and have been repeatedly proven not to). Have you
| squared your Libertarianism with the need for useful
| regulations of accommodations?
|
| The extreme nihilistic version has deep roots in modern
| American Libertarianism, I'm glad you anecdotally don't
| think you subscribe to it. I don't have any cookies to
| hand out for someone feeling happy to do the low hanging
| fruit when part of the point is about doing the _hard
| things_ for equity (not equality) and compassion.
| lliamander wrote:
| "taxation is theft" is compatible with a desire to help
| the less fortunate. We don't all have to subscribe to
| your ideology of forcing "conpassionate" behavior to
| actually help people.
|
| There's plenty of reasons that a voluntary approach can
| (and does) work. Not perfectly, of course, but nothing is
| perfect. But it arguably works better than the more
| authoritarian approach you prescribe.
| LtWorf wrote:
| > "taxation is theft" is compatible with a desire to help
| the less fortunate. We don't all have to subscribe to
| your ideology of forcing "conpassionate" behavior (sic)
| to actually help people.
|
| So you mean saying "oh poor you!" giving a sad look and
| moving on with your day?
|
| I'm sure the less fortunate are really happy about that.
|
| Or can you detail what's the plan to help the less
| fortunate without taxation on the more fortunate?
| lliamander wrote:
| > So you mean saying "oh poor you!" giving a sad look and
| moving on with your day?
|
| Oh what a zinger! You got me there! /s
|
| Honestly, why should I waste time arguing with you?
| LtWorf wrote:
| > Honestly, why should I waste time arguing with you?
|
| To show good faith... you succeeded at showing you didn't
| have that.
| WalterBright wrote:
| You can read my other posts. I've extensively written
| about Libertarianism. None of it matches what you
| describe.
|
| I'm not asking for cookies. I'm pointing out that you
| have a misinformed view of Libertarianism, and gave an
| example.
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