| It strikes me that either you legitimately can't relate but might think you can, or you aren't empathizing with the author (nothing wrong with that, sometimes we legitimately can't put ourself in their "shoes"), or you may possibly be unintentionally gatekeeping nonconformity. None of that is meant as an offense to you but just the 3 impressions I get from your comment after reading the article. James provides many meaningful thoughts, and even gave a disclaimer that this is something he's still thinking through more. One of those meaningful thoughts I felt was particularly provocative was this: > I also learned that being a successful non-conformist is easier when you have security. It's easy for the rich kid from a well-connected family to be a nonconformist and still succeed at what they hope to do in life. Take a poor kid, who is also well-connected but not necessarily to those comparable to the rich kid. Poor kid might have a lot of social capital among their community such that they can get things done, but compare that to rich kid who can always fall back on a family friend hiring them for a junior management position where they'll get paid orders of magnitude more than the poor kid... Now imagine that poor kid with low to no security being a nonconformist. For them, that could go one of two ways: 1. Ostracized from community for going against the grain/not getting in line 2. They get lucky and some aspect of nonconformity brings them great success and even wealth Which of those two do you think happens more frequently? So, I politely disagree. While it does seem that he's sharing some raw thoughts, there are some good clear items in there to think about. |