shashaank

In short, the meritocratic system is built on a series of non sequiturs. We train and segregate people by ability in one setting, and then launch them into very different settings.

This is why we have the saying that “the people that were cool in high school never end up all that cool later in life.” The cool kids at that age were just really good at imitating, which was the currency of coolness then. Since everyone was floating in a sea of imitation, no one appreciated individuality. The opposite in fact: they punished it.... See more

Angela Davis on cultivating long range imagination: “We wouldn’t be here today had it not been the case that in the 1600s and 1700s there were Black people who believed in the possibility of freedom and we are the beneficiaries of that imagination.”

BRIAN ENO

So what you see when you watch someone surfing is they take control momentarily, to situate themselves on a wave, and then they surrender. They’re carried along by it, and then they take control again, and then they surrender. I think that’s a very good analogy of what we do throughout our lives, actually. We’re constantly moving between... See more