[atleastoptimal]

> every person has a purpose, nobody is superfluous or redundant.

Nice sentiment but wishful thinking lmao. At the very least there are some people for whom nowhere is a perfect fit, and there are people who would fit better in any place they could fit in. I.e. some people are not locally optimal anywhere.

Another issue is we read this and imagine the happy smart consciousness people in our friend groups. What about the psycopaths? Serial killers? Do they deserve a place too? Any environment they would thrive in would be damaging to the general welfare of polite society. Is the point then that anyone can be molded to an ideal?

[cardanome]

Yes, there is a place for everyone. For some it might be prison but it is a place nonetheless. Everyone has the right to live.

While psychopathy is relatively hard to treat it is worth noting that not all psychopaths are actively harming other people. They can also be functional and productive members of certain groups under the right circumstances. You might want to be more careful with stigmatizing a whole group of people.

[morning-coffee]

When you use the word "everyone", curious if you really mean it considering that set contains individuals like Adolf Hitler, Shiro Ishii, Josef Fritzl, etc?

[cardanome]

I mean I do consider a world where Adolf Hitler would have just been a unremarkable painter and Shiro Ishi doing boring research possible.

Yes, sometimes you have to use force to keep people from harming themselves and others but I don't see how this is related to the topic. I reject any form capital punishment though obviously some situations require killing when a person can not be stopped otherwise.

[fellowniusmonk]

Oddly enough I think a lot of abberant personality types can fit into group dynamics.

In fact go to any large, long running, stable, 3rd place and there will be some non violent psychopaths and narcissist in the community.

Serial killers usually won't kill people within their own community. The BTK killer was president of his church council.

Deserve really doesn't really enter into the equation. A serial killer might know a lot about webrtc or building operating systems and may be on this thread contributing niche info right now!

Society isn't a friend group. A co-working, community or church space isn't a friend group. One of my most rewarding experiences was in a space where >20% of people were bidirectionally incompatible for personal friendship.

This article isn't about the "whole self", it's actually the opposite in some ways, it's about how in a big world there is value in finding how a distinct and "flavourful" part of your interests has unexpected value.