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Comment by atleastoptimal | Hacker News Reader

I think you hit the nail on the head in a lot of aspects but I don't fully agree. Our society does endorse and actively support the virtues of personal growth. The issue is, as you pointed out, it only values the growth of those "chosen" to reach a high-percentile level at the end of their journey. There's nothing more abhorrent to our societal myths of a just road for everyone to take than someone who worked years to reach some level of success in a field they want to excel in but only hit a point barely above mediocrity.

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> There's nothing more abhorrent to our societal myths of a just road for everyone to take than someone who worked years to reach some level of success in a field they want to excel in but only hit a point barely above mediocrity.

I think it depends on how we define mediocrity. Is it mediocre to spend as much time it requires to get a PhD becoming a good pastry chef or carpenter? In the west very likely yes, unless you're an "entrepreneur".

Ironically, despite being touted as individual work, this kind of success and excellence requires institutions to be recognized.

> Is it mediocre to spend as much time it requires to get a PhD becoming a good pastry chef or carpenter? In the west very likely yes, unless you're an "entrepreneur".

Or, unless you apply your skill into pursuing a bakery career, or a celebrity career (e.g. by running a baking channel on YouTube). Being good at something alone doesn't get you past being perceived as mediocre at best - you have to have an external institution attest for it. PhD, that's easy - the title is itself an attestation. Baking? Proof is in running a successful bakery[0], or in being called a great baker in mass media articles, or in running a popular baking show, etc.

I guess that's implicit in the whole philosophy of "self-improvement" being conditioned on how others see you.

[0] - However little sense this makes these days; "running business doing X" is 99% about "running business" and 1% about "doing X", and if you want money and control, you have to let other people to "do" X for you.

Never thought about it this way, but yeah makes a lot of sense. So the real approach should be: pick the kind of institution you care about first. Skill mastery might just end up being optional.

To be honest, I'm rather surprised how good we have it those days, when good skills and hard work at least have a quite good chance to lead to a decent life

Ironically, by relying on institutions so much, the value of their recognition becomes reduced over time, and we get stuff like credential creep, university bureaucratic bloat, and general mistrust in academia.

>In the west very likely yes, unless you're an "entrepreneur".

I think you live in some weird startup-obsessed bubble or something because that is quite unlike my experience living in "the west"

Not really no, I am quite far from the startup scene on the contrary. In French we'd call an entrepreneur anyone who runs a business, aside from a small shop owner maybe.

TeMPOraL nailed what I was trying to convey.

What is your experience like? Do you live in a place where high quality work alone is unanimously recognised as success?

Yeah I hear you, and no doubt Horatio Algers (and simplistic interpretations/retellings of his story arcs) have done plenty of harm in this respect.

I think we can do much better than “if you work hard and believe in your dreams you’ll make it”. There are many techniques people can learn than can amplify the impacts of their efforts and make them much better companions. They’re just not widely known/accepted as yet.

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