Nice thread. Thank you for getting us started on this subject. Let me just run some thoughts out.
Women/Girls: Remember the "Girls' brains mature faster than boys' brains" meme? Obvious answer is that a dog's brain also matures faster. I know I'm hung up on the schooling question but the world is becoming a giant school so it's very important. Girls are naturally excellent at schooling because the whole thing is a giant selection for loyalty and patience with authority, with
very short general competence to clear along the way. The strength of girls isn't intellectual, or even any positive character traits. The power of girls in schooling is negative. An absence of character to get in the way of toil. A lack of integrity and good sense to clash with the idiocy all around them. A consistent them across the striver class. A lack of friction. Sometimes caused by a lack of self to clash, other times enabled by the fact they personally do not give a shit about things others will. We'll get more specific on that point as we go.
Chinese: The Tiger Mother and her Oriental Pianoslave. Asians in particular I suspect have a similar thing to girls going for them.
Not an essential point, but I sometimes wonder. Do the Chinese have a unique lack of nerve relative to general intelligence compared to the rest of the human race? An interesting double edged sword if true.
More essentially, I've observed the Chinese pianoslave type personally. And I've observed various other ethnic transplants behaving in more or less the exact same way. Note I'll make on the others is that I think of all ethnic striver transplants Chinese seem to have the most refined aspirations, even if they don't believe in the principles behind them. Indians, Iraqis, whatever, I think the Chinese were just the first notable cerebral striver ethnics to be noticed as a general phenomena.
Being new migrants they had no settled habits or comforts to hold them back, no organic and stable social networks at a set level to acclimate themselves to, their position was fundamentally unsettled and their futures were completely open. This being the case, why not aim as high as possible? America's paths to prestige are
ostensibly plain and up for the taking. "Meritocracy". Harvard is one of those, right? Get your grades and get in, get the job, style on everyone with your wealth and status. But China, even modern china, has enough respect for old culture in its blood to want to look the part of better people. That and Harvard also sometimes acts like it cares about looking the part. Hence the piano.
The piano has in the mass mind suffered a similarly unfortunate fate to intellectual life. Something I didn't elaborate upon above under the girl question, but both issues are the same here. The actual thing that did so much good work for humanity in history and was loved and driven forward by those lovers for so long is now a very sickly tradition. But this can be hard to see because so much time is sunk into pursuing institutionalised imitations for institutional credit. In trying to incentivise everyone appreciating these things (arguably the point in some cases, definitely not in others) we have created an environment where this is harder than ever. Actually far worse for the general life of the mind I would say. Music is harder to get totally wrong and become totally alienated from while engaging with an instrument. But it still happened to me so nothing's set here.
Chinese mothers don't make their sons slave over a piano because they love music. Music becomes a totem and path to power. If America told them that music is when you physically bash your face into an instrument over and over again I believe many ethnic strivers would make their sons do exactly that. What
actually goes on in the oriental pianoslave's musical education is thankfully not
that alienated from what the process is meant to be. They can actually handle their instruments with skill, and get to engage with a lot of music on an at least technical level. But maybe the word "play" wouldn't be fitting for what they at their instruments is the thing. Do these families produce a lot of genuine lovers of music who feel as though their lives have been enriched beyond the point to put on the university application? I can't say. Might be good to get some testimony here.
Now back to that above thought for a moment. "If music was bashing your face into an instrument".
Music, has not been reduced to that level.
However, I would say that that is almost exactly the state of learning and intellectual cultivation in schools right now. Someone forced to grind out a "musical education" to current institutional standards with no appreciation for the essence of the thing motivating the one pushing this, they won't have a good time, but they'll learn their music. Technically at least. The same cannot be said for school and intellectual life.
I repeat myself in setting this up because I think it might be the most essential point one can cover under this subject, and probably the answer I would give to questions raised by several other threads here and elsewhere. What's wrong with strivers is that the institutional path up into institutional intellectual life is almost completely divergent from the actual path to real intellectual life. The things you have to do to access a more cerebral and cultured mode of existence are the intellectual equivalents to slamming your face into the wood of the piano and calling yourself a pianist.
Girls do this and see absolutely nothing wrong. Ethnics do this, and I suspect the smarter ones just grit their teeth. Either way the most important point is that the best people will probably refuse or break.
Do I have any more thoughts on the Chinese in particular? Probably not. I don't actually have much against them.
E-Stoics (White): Guys who turn their bodies into homework to deal with insecurity and hide their shame and alienation by saying everyone who doesn't is morally weak. Might also wish they had more willpower to read more books. They obviously don't like these books. What upsets me in this case is the moral element. What I've always hated the most about strivers and grinders is their vulgar moralism. How we got to the lumberjack meme. But even a nigger who wants to be Andrew Tate will morally posture at you. They all do.
E-Stoics (Indian Grindset Slaves): Guys who know they can't gymmaxx their ways out of being pajeets and so search for the gnosis that turns them into guru-heroes. Waste all of their money on magic beans.
Village Worthies: Comfortably affluent older normalfags who were able to comfortably "work" their way to success and are more strivers by their total disregard for higher existence than particular efforts applied in spite of this. My mental image is of white well off boomer dads who at the same time understand that their sons have to work harder for less than them and still believe that the world is a fair merit-machine. The men who even if they do nothing wrong consent to an impure age. That goes for all listed of course, but these especially.
Jews: Europe's historic designated striver caste. For various reasons. I'm tired so think this one out yourself.
My personal thought that got me started talking about strivers elsewhere, and may have led to the creation of this thread, was on 'Ping-Ling the Piano Prodigy'. I don't know about now, but I feel like 20 years or so ago (I am old) it was huge for white parents to feel intimidated an ashamed of themselves upon discovering the power of striver-drive. And many, being passionless people with no appreciation of anything nice themselves couldn't compete in driving their own children towards richer lives or towards power. And following this took to blaming their children for not being strivers as a means to cope with their own negative feelings. I recognise this in retrospect now, that it's on them. They're acting out. But when I was a kid I didn't. It was impressed upon me that there was some kind of moral chasm between me and the Ping-Ling's of the world. Every minute I spent doing anything but chasing Ping Ling was another reason I'm not Ping Ling and if I'm not Ping Ling what am I good for?
My issues with striver culture are very personal. Striver culture destroyed all natural things an intelligent person would want to pursue and erected fake totems which nobody wants but many are forced to live for despite this. I think as long as the situation doesn't seriously change the lives of most intelligent people are ruined.