I was lucky, and grew up with children who were similarly dedicated to me. I was the maths guy, another swam, another played piano, but we did the other activities too. It’s no surprise that we quickly became friends, at least until my parents yanked me from my childhood to worship closer to the cult center of Morridor.
I think going to primary school with people who “got it”—who put in the effort to be their best, who loved learning just because it’s interesting and wanted to share that with the rest of the world, and who were genuinely kind—set me up to empathize with other humans positively. It wasn’t just these two friends, there were a dozen others at my school who were pretty cool. Because everyone around me seemed to be dedicated to something and were just cool, smart people in general, I kind of just assumed everyone was like this.
Then in eighth grade, my parents took us north to the heart of Morridor, and something seemed… off. I had classes with the children of math professors, and yet, their math abilities were years behind the median student at my old math club. There were some literary freaks who seemed to get off on spouting Latin or being the erudite speedreader, but this seemed more of an instrumental good—how much can we showoff to the girls?—rather than because they actually cared about being smart. This was when I subconsciously began to realize not everyone was like my childhood friends.
Years passed, and eventually I made friends with the smart crowd, and like me they were mostly “immigrants” to Morridor. I.e., they didn’t grow up in its epicenter, but their parents brought them to Zion in high school. An intersting fact about Utah is that running is very competitive. Probably because the ones that couldn’t run fast enough died in the Missouri Extermination Order or the trek west, but who really knows? Anyways, at least at my school, running happened to be the equivalent of rowing or fencing. The dedicated kids’ parents told them they had to do a sport in high school, and they mostly all chose running. People that messed up their freshman year might have to start with track instead of cross country, and some people got injured and had to stop running, but all the smart or dedicated people ended up in the sport for at least a semester or two.
The relevance of running is that, while I happened to care a lot about academics, and most of my friends were the top in academics at my school, this is not why we were friends. It was from running hundreds of miles together. It was almost a lucky coincidence that they happened to be the best students, and it let me continue to believe that most humans try. Maybe only a little in maths (taking calculus in tenth grade isn’t too slow, right?), but that’s because they’re placing in state at running. The logic doesn’t quite follow, since most were doing neither, but getting handily beaten in every workout twice a week does amazing things for one’s suspension of disbelief.
In eleventh grade, one of these friends said, “you shouldn’t be so hard on others; I know you care a lot about math and computer science, and are sad not everyone cares as much as you, but everyone has something they’re good at. Maybe they’re really into legos, or photography, or something.” I think this was after I tried to organize the math club to participate in a math olympiad, and only a few people showed up, or maybe one of the few computer science club meetings I organized that had a positive number of participants.
“That’s not true,” I replied. “Some people are just worse at everything. Some people just don’t try.” At the time, I took more of a ‘nurture’ than ‘nature’ approach, so the former was proof of the latter, and that irked me. It was probably the first time I consciously realized that not all humans are like me, most people don’t actually try hard, and in fact most of my friends—which includes the smartest people at my school—don’t even try.
The cult brainwashing had still got me good, so I still thought people had inherent value (whatever that means), and I still cared about others (a lot), but empathy became a little more painful. I was disappointed that they didn’t try harder, when they knew they could, and in fact had someone waiting to help them out, if only they wanted to learn maths or cs. But probably, my primary emotion was jealousy. If only I didn’t care so much, I too could just relax and have fun.
Now, I primarily feel disgust. I see the opportunities they squandered because it required the bare minimum of effort. One friend, who probably could’ve gone to an Ivy League or maybe even MIT, wouldn’t even bother to fill out an application (but they did write 10,000 words for the local religious university.… a religion they didn’t believe in). They had thirteen years of subsidized education—or, to be a little more generous, seven years of secondary education—where their only job was to learn as much as they could, and they utterly failed.
I don’t expect people to push themselves as hard as I did. I don’t expect myself to push as hard as I see some others do. But, I do feel a little unsympathetic when I see people complain about the positions they’re in, positions that they put themselves in with over a decade of willful ignorance and doing nothing more than the minimum expectations of their parents. And, when I try to empathize with them, I get it. I understand why they made the choices they did. It was certainly more enjoyable, at least before adulthood. But I don’t understand how they can claim to both “care about learning” and not go out and learn. Or even, “care about others,” and not go out and get the skills so they can make a meaningful difference. This isn’t necessarily about earning to give; some of my friends are going into teaching, but how can they teach what they never learnt? It disappoints me that some people are content with mediocracy, and it disgusts me when the same people claim to themselves that they’re trying.
There are still people that I can empathize with kindly. I wish I could with everyone around me, like I did in elementary school, but sometimes the rest of reality forces the issue.
I was lucky, and grew up with children who were similarly dedicated to me. I was the maths guy, another swam, another played piano, but we did the other activities too. It’s no surprise that we quickly became friends, at least until my parents yanked me from my childhood to worship closer to the cult center of Morridor.
I think going to primary school with people who “got it”—who put in the effort to be their best, who loved learning just because it’s interesting and wanted to share that with the rest of the world, and who were genuinely kind—set me up to empathize with other humans positively. It wasn’t just these two friends, there were a dozen others at my school who were pretty cool. Because everyone around me seemed to be dedicated to something and were just cool, smart people in general, I kind of just assumed everyone was like this.
Then in eighth grade, my parents took us north to the heart of Morridor, and something seemed… off. I had classes with the children of math professors, and yet, their math abilities were years behind the median student at my old math club. There were some literary freaks who seemed to get off on spouting Latin or being the erudite speedreader, but this seemed more of an instrumental good—how much can we showoff to the girls?—rather than because they actually cared about being smart. This was when I subconsciously began to realize not everyone was like my childhood friends.
Years passed, and eventually I made friends with the smart crowd, and like me they were mostly “immigrants” to Morridor. I.e., they didn’t grow up in its epicenter, but their parents brought them to Zion in high school. An intersting fact about Utah is that running is very competitive. Probably because the ones that couldn’t run fast enough died in the Missouri Extermination Order or the trek west, but who really knows? Anyways, at least at my school, running happened to be the equivalent of rowing or fencing. The dedicated kids’ parents told them they had to do a sport in high school, and they mostly all chose running. People that messed up their freshman year might have to start with track instead of cross country, and some people got injured and had to stop running, but all the smart or dedicated people ended up in the sport for at least a semester or two.
The relevance of running is that, while I happened to care a lot about academics, and most of my friends were the top in academics at my school, this is not why we were friends. It was from running hundreds of miles together. It was almost a lucky coincidence that they happened to be the best students, and it let me continue to believe that most humans try. Maybe only a little in maths (taking calculus in tenth grade isn’t too slow, right?), but that’s because they’re placing in state at running. The logic doesn’t quite follow, since most were doing neither, but getting handily beaten in every workout twice a week does amazing things for one’s suspension of disbelief.
In eleventh grade, one of these friends said, “you shouldn’t be so hard on others; I know you care a lot about math and computer science, and are sad not everyone cares as much as you, but everyone has something they’re good at. Maybe they’re really into legos, or photography, or something.” I think this was after I tried to organize the math club to participate in a math olympiad, and only a few people showed up, or maybe one of the few computer science club meetings I organized that had a positive number of participants.
“That’s not true,” I replied. “Some people are just worse at everything. Some people just don’t try.” At the time, I took more of a ‘nurture’ than ‘nature’ approach, so the former was proof of the latter, and that irked me. It was probably the first time I consciously realized that not all humans are like me, most people don’t actually try hard, and in fact most of my friends—which includes the smartest people at my school—don’t even try.
The cult brainwashing had still got me good, so I still thought people had inherent value (whatever that means), and I still cared about others (a lot), but empathy became a little more painful. I was disappointed that they didn’t try harder, when they knew they could, and in fact had someone waiting to help them out, if only they wanted to learn maths or cs. But probably, my primary emotion was jealousy. If only I didn’t care so much, I too could just relax and have fun.
Now, I primarily feel disgust. I see the opportunities they squandered because it required the bare minimum of effort. One friend, who probably could’ve gone to an Ivy League or maybe even MIT, wouldn’t even bother to fill out an application (but they did write 10,000 words for the local religious university.… a religion they didn’t believe in). They had thirteen years of subsidized education—or, to be a little more generous, seven years of secondary education—where their only job was to learn as much as they could, and they utterly failed.
I don’t expect people to push themselves as hard as I did. I don’t expect myself to push as hard as I see some others do. But, I do feel a little unsympathetic when I see people complain about the positions they’re in, positions that they put themselves in with over a decade of willful ignorance and doing nothing more than the minimum expectations of their parents. And, when I try to empathize with them, I get it. I understand why they made the choices they did. It was certainly more enjoyable, at least before adulthood. But I don’t understand how they can claim to both “care about learning” and not go out and learn. Or even, “care about others,” and not go out and get the skills so they can make a meaningful difference. This isn’t necessarily about earning to give; some of my friends are going into teaching, but how can they teach what they never learnt? It disappoints me that some people are content with mediocracy, and it disgusts me when the same people claim to themselves that they’re trying.
There are still people that I can empathize with kindly. I wish I could with everyone around me, like I did in elementary school, but sometimes the rest of reality forces the issue.