The Law recently passed in Russia banning the progaganda among minors of non-traditional sexual relations has evoked hysterical responses from liberal media.
A boycott of the Winter 2014 Olympics has even been discussed.
Less belief that I’m special and can change the world 3. There’s an innocent explanation for this: intellectual elites are pretty wise, so as I grow wiser I converge to their position.
Less trust in any specific system, more resignation to the idea that anything useful requires a grab bag of intuitions, heuristics, and almost-unteachable skills. More willingness to assume that other people are competent in aggregate in certain ways, eg that academic fields aren’t making incredibly stupid mistakes or pointlessly circlejerking in ways I can easily detect. More willingness to believe that power (as in “power structures” or “speak truth to power”) matters and infects everything. But the non-innocent explanation is that I’m not getting wiser, I’m just getting better socialized.
Then when other people say it, I start looking down on them for being bad at public relations.
Then I start looking down on them just for being low-status or cringeworthy.
A lot of the “wisdom” I’ve “gained” with age is the kind of wisdom that helps me channel James C. Then I realize it’s considered low-status and cringeworthy.
