

A Simple Survival Guide for your Inner Child - spo0nman
http://t3.dotgnu.info/blog/philosophy/a-simple-survival-guide.html?full#contd

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zasz
It's a well-written piece, but seriously: "If you're reading this, you've
probably already dismissed the plan. You, the individualist, is determined to
make your own way in this world."

No need to pander to tha audience so blatantly to make your point.

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twir
I just don't get the article. Would somebody care to explain it?

Rarely do I get exactly what I want by "just being myself." Being socially
adept is a learned behavior, often requiring one to modify one's own behavior
to fit in. I speak of this anecdotally. Maybe I'm missing the point?

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zasz
I think you're taking that part about being yourself a bit too literally. It
is completely possible to be socially adept (refraining from making dead baby
jokes around new mothers, not picking your nose in public, saying "please" and
"thank you") and still manage to do things you enjoy at home or as a career.
Perhaps catfish farming is your true passion, and people all your life have
been giving you weird looks if they were strangers, or trying to push you into
a safer occupation like lawyering if they were friends, but your will to raise
catfish commercially won. (Po Bronson actually writes about a catfish farmer
in his book "What Should I Do With My Life?", I believe.) That's an example of
being yourself and still leaving plenty of room to be socially adept.

Though, with that slightly contrived example concluded, there are times when
really being yourself and being socially acceptable aren't compatible. (Being
a woman a few hundred years ago who liked math, being black in the South a few
decades ago, etc). But being socially adept would not have saved you there. I
think we're fortunate in that the trajectory seems to be going in the
direction that we need make such compromises less and less.

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chasingsparks
I had never heard that Camus quote. Thanks.

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sebg
Quote from the article:

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to
the essence of being. \-- Albert Camus

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isamuel
Forget Twitterizing it. Randallize it:

<http://xkcd.com/610/>

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edw519
Another blog post that would have been better off as a tweet:

"Follow the path of least resistance and be part of the system or ride your
own wave instead."

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caffeine
That loses a lot of the piece's poetry (or masturbatory prose, depending on
how view you it). I resent this trend of twitterizing stuff. What's wrong with
a bit of drama and posturing and exciting hats, anyway?

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unalone
Because drama ought to be a part of the structure of a piece. When there's a
logic to the drama's being there, then it's fine. When it's just drama added
to a very simple idea, then it's excessive and a waste of reading.

Perhaps I'm biased, because I came across this just as I was finishing a large
and dramatic post based on a similar idea. I worried a bit in mine trying to
figure out just how to place my story in a way that it enforced what I was
trying to say. That, to me, is the challenge of writing about something like
this. This piece strikes me as much more divided between the _point_ and the
_drama._

Then again, I'm a pretentious asshat of a writer who uses phases like
"structural integrity" when describing writing, so perhaps I'm in the minority
here. I'd suggest that perhaps writing good blog is like writing good code,
however, in that there ought to be a reason for everything beyond just holding
attention. There's a noticeable logic in well-written pieces that I don't feel
this holds.

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MarkPNeyer
"But in the end, they won't call me a rebel. Because I wasn't ... I was just
being myself. "

ego much?

~~~
WilliamLP
I think you're demonstrating part of one of the exact systems of repression
that he's talking about, perhaps without knowing it.

From another one of his posts:

"There's some sort of misplaced humility that is injected into us by our
educational system. Or maybe it is some sort social stigma attached to the
braggart or overacheiver. "

Having experienced a lot of the misplaced humility injected by the educational
system, I've been all too happy (and dramatically better off) the more of it I
am able to get rid of.

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zeynel1
The picture of society he paints appears to be a standard scifi plot. From
Wikipedia Tron article: "Sark then informs everyone that they can either
renounce their belief in the Users and join the MCP, or they will be forced to
play games that result in their eventual elimination."
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(film)#Plot>

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modelic3
Awesome.

