Strivers Are Retards

[Guest]

Hitler was the last prophet. Post-1945 state-woo-myn are all strivers:
From Aristocracy to Meritocracy:

„Two related social forces, meritocracy and democratization, enabled and institutionalized the rise of middle-class leaders. One of the French Revolution’s rallying cries had been ‘careers open to talents’. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the adoption of meritocratic principles and institutions in the West – such as entrance examinations, selective secondary schools and universities, and recruitment and promotion policies based on professional standards – created new opportunities for talented individuals from middle-class backgrounds to enter politics. Simultaneously, the expansion of the franchise shifted both the social and the political center of gravity toward the middle class as well." (Leadership, Henry Kissinger, p. 764)

„Hence Lee’s recurring references to the junzi, or Confucian gentleman, and de Gaulle’s striving to become ‘a man of character’. Education was not merely a credential to be obtained in one’s youth and set aside: it was an unending effort with both intellectual and moral dimensions.“ (Leadership, Henry Kissinger, p.768)

Uni, especially law skrewl or technical uni, is just glorified trade school. The Yokels there are mainly animated by a desire for prestige. The intellectual discourse is highly performative, nobody is interested in ideas. They are just better AI and thats fine in some sense as someone in this thread pointed out.

It also is a form of other-directedness. Especially interesting is the Harvard example Thiel gives where whole cohorts of oversocialized buisness skrewlers systematically go into parts of the economy that bust shortly thereafter. Thiel talks about this in the context of Tech leaders having aspergers and therefore having less of an awareness to follow the Longhouse.

Hitler instituted meritocratic standards and disliked aristocracy.

[NuclearAbsolutist]

„Two related social forces, meritocracy and democratization, enabled and institutionalized the rise of middle-class leaders. One of the French Revolution’s rallying cries had been ‘careers open to talents’. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the adoption of meritocratic principles and institutions in the West – such as entrance examinations, selective secondary schools and universities, and recruitment and promotion policies based on professional standards – created new opportunities for talented individuals from middle-class backgrounds to enter politics. Simultaneously, the expansion of the franchise shifted both the social and the political center of gravity toward the middle class as well." (Leadership, Henry Kissinger, p. 764)

„Hence Lee’s recurring references to the junzi, or Confucian gentleman, and de Gaulle’s striving to become ‘a man of character’. Education was not merely a credential to be obtained in one’s youth and set aside: it was an unending effort with both intellectual and moral dimensions.“ (Leadership, Henry Kissinger, p.768)

Now I have not read Mr Kissinger's works so I don't know if he later covers it but a important asterisk has to be placed next to that analysis that being the actual realities of how positions  strivers fight  for are filled. 

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-a...on-regime/

"It is also important to keep in mind the actual Harvard admissions data at issue in this case. Table 5.3 of the expert report submitted by Duke University economist Peter Arcidiacono showed that, if Harvard admitted students according to a purely academic index (as we would expect an academic institution to do without racial diversity pressures), Harvard would be only 0.76% black (assuming that a selective institution like Harvard would not need to go beyond the top 10% of applicants). But with Harvard’s racial preferences, more than 15% of the admitted class was black.

In other words, the challengers to Harvard’s affirmative action program were willing to deviate so far from merit that, under their preferred admissions formula, the college could produce more than ten times the number of black admissions warranted under strictly academic standards. The real fight, then, between the challengers and defenders of affirmative action was whether Harvard would have a 10% or 15% black quota. With challenges like this, affirmative action isn’t in much danger."

I highlight this because outside this forum there's a growing call to question "American meritocracy" as the cause of people bending themselves out of shape in the name of exams which is to put it lightly missing the forest for the trees.

[GraalChud]

Hitler was the last prophet. Post-1945 state-woo-myn are all strivers:
From Aristocracy to Meritocracy:

„Two related social forces, meritocracy and democratization, enabled and institutionalized the rise of middle-class leaders. One of the French Revolution’s rallying cries had been ‘careers open to talents’. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the adoption of meritocratic principles and institutions in the West – such as entrance examinations, selective secondary schools and universities, and recruitment and promotion policies based on professional standards – created new opportunities for talented individuals from middle-class backgrounds to enter politics. Simultaneously, the expansion of the franchise shifted both the social and the political center of gravity toward the middle class as well." (Leadership, Henry Kissinger, p. 764)

„Hence Lee’s recurring references to the junzi, or Confucian gentleman, and de Gaulle’s striving to become ‘a man of character’. Education was not merely a credential to be obtained in one’s youth and set aside: it was an unending effort with both intellectual and moral dimensions.“ (Leadership, Henry Kissinger, p.768)

Uni, especially law skrewl or technical uni, is just glorified trade school. The Yokels there are mainly animated by a desire for prestige. The intellectual discourse is highly performative, nobody is interested in ideas. They are just better AI and thats fine in some sense as someone in this thread pointed out.

It also is a form of other-directedness. Especially interesting is the Harvard example Thiel gives where whole cohorts of oversocialized buisness skrewlers systematically go into parts of the economy that bust shortly thereafter. Thiel talks about this in the context of Tech leaders having aspergers and therefore having less of an awareness to follow the Longhouse.

It is tragic that neither a genuine meritocracy nor a genuine aristocracy exists today. 

W.r.t. the former in the context of schooling and employment, we have a pseudo-meritocracy that emphasizes quantity over quality: it`s all about how many things you have on your resume, how many boxes you check, how high your GPA is (without regard for the quality of one`s work, as the persons involved in the selection of admittees/hirees assumes that a high GPA translates to the hired/admitted individual`s work having been of high quality, which is a bad assumption in an era where testing measures the amount of things you can memorize and spew onto a page rather than analytical skills, reasoning, etc.), etc. Gone are the days where employers or admissions office employees are more concerned with the things that actually measure one`s capacity to perform in an academic environment or the workplace, and the drop in the quality of peoples` work that has resulted from hiring "better AI" (as you put it) shows in academia and the workforce alike.

As for the latter, as I`d assume everyone here knows, we essentially have a ruling class that is a gross inversion of a true aristocracy - it remains true that the "aristocracy" of today is of a different stock than your average white person as was true of European society in the past, however, the genetic makeup of that stock is (niggers, kikes, faggots, libtard strivers, troons, latrinos, poos) is the opposite of an aristocratic ethnos that lords over their inferiors to the benefit of both themselves and said inferiors (as was the case in England, ancient Greece, and France). Unfortunately for us, they`ve retained the "form" of an aristocracy, too, meaning that there is a ridiculously high barrier to entry into said aristocracy that is designed to prevent competent white men of good character (racial and mental) from entering AND there are safety nets that stop incompetent people born into this aristocracy from downward socio-economic mobility. This barrier is selectively impermeable, meaning that it can exclude us, but is permeable for niggers, kikes, faggots, strivers, latrinos, poos, etc. 

What this amounts to is a sort of synthesis between these two things (pseudo-meritocracy and a gross inversion of a true aristocracy), basically a Frankenstein`s monster that combines the worse features of an "aristocracy" (such as selective impermeability and preference based on the "class" into which one has been born, control over societal institutions, and disdain for the "masses" - in this case is white men of good character rather than some unwashed peasant horde) with the worst features of a "meritocracy" (namely, the ability to choose what constitutes "merit" or "achievement" in such a way that it favors certain groups while excluding others altogether). 

We truly live in a judeo-nigger-faggot hellscape.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

The difference between the striver and the genius: The goal of the striver is creating better things than others create, while the goal of the genius is creating something good on its own merits.

A culture of striving in a nation stifles genius because strivers cause the basic social demands of relative status to escalate (now Ching Lee needs to study 4 hours every night instead of 3, because every other kid is already studying 3 hours, so he has less time to grow in more unique ways).

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.

One particularly good example of how women love to strive is makeup. Makeup is an entirely unproductive competition over a limited supply of attention, yet great quantities of their money and effort are expended on it. At least bodybuilding can help to lift objects and improve health, makeup creates no value at all. The standard of what is considered beautiful has been artificially raised by their neurotic, mindless striving. Women would be happier and more tolerable if makeup was never invented.

[anthony]

One particularly good example of how women love to strive is makeup. Makeup is an entirely unproductive competition over a limited supply of attention, yet great quantities of their money and effort are expended on it. At least bodybuilding can help to lift objects and improve health, makeup creates no value at all. The standard of what is considered beautiful has been artificially raised by their neurotic, mindless striving. Women would be happier and more tolerable if makeup was never invented.

More generally makeup has a levelling effect in which nature is neutralised (as far as possible) so that plastic and self-determined factors override base judgements as far as possible.

This is also what schooling is. Women don't want you to just look at their face as it is. They also don't want you to just observe their minds in action. You can't really make yourself smarter. You can get better at thinking, but not smarter. Naturally this upsets a lot of people, so like with facial appearance they prefer if we can create a contrived proxy in which the one who is most neurotically driven wins. With makeup you're still working on the frame of the actual face, I would argue educational results are far less bound to the skeleton of nature, creating a more gross disparity between natural order and the results of the system.

And as I've said before elsewhere I think the "practical" arguments on bodybuilding are all rationalisations and that in line with the principle I've outlined above it's male makeup. The only place I see it invoked online is as a challenge to superior innate nature.

[anthony]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-colum...mogul-myth

Over time, Hsieh’s interest in junk psychology extended beyond happiness and into even stupider realms. He became obsessed with Neil Strauss’s “The Game,” the infamous guide for so-called pickup artists which taught men how to manipulate women via techniques like “negging” and “peacocking.” When Hsieh ultimately embarked on an ambitious project to revitalize downtown Las Vegas and turn it into a new tech hub, he boasted to a reporter about how he had used methods from “The Game” in selling his vision for the city to potential investors.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

Pain & Gain is an anti-striver movie based on a true story which I found hilarious. Although if you watch it, keep in mind that the 1 White-casted guy of the trio was actually hispanic in real life.

[anthony]

Pain & Gain is an anti-striver movie based on a true story which I found hilarious. Although if you watch it, keep in mind that the 1 White-casted guy of the trio was actually hispanic in real life.

Pain & Gain is one of my favourite American films made this century. It read the past and present so hard it predicted the future and becomes more relevant and funny as more time passes since its release. I think a big part of why it's fun is that it's not really an "anti" movie. It's not really negative or taking a position. It's about these people, the individuals and the type. And it's a depiction they'd probably find at least a bit flattering. As a very sharp writer told me, satire is not about sides. Saying one thing when you actually mean the other. Satire is about superiority to the subject. I think the movie works because Bay is a rich successful guy who can do what he wants so he has no reason to care either way about the Sun Gym Gang beyond them being a funny crazy thing that happened. We are not mad at capitalism, narcissism, stupidity, greed, weakness, or anything. We're just enjoying the human animal in its cage.

And yes lots of fun striverism stuff is on display in the film. And if it seems anti-striver I think that's just because Bay, from his superior position, was able to capture the innate absurdity of these people. "Anti" suggests an agenda against them. Bay's agenda is to have fun with them.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

Yeah, you're right. The film was somewhat sympathetic towards the characters (and actually, this made me think I was going to dislike it after seeing the introduction of the characters at the beginning). That view on satire is interesting, I think part of why I enjoyed it was because I had a preconceived hatred of this type of person and the film allowed me to laugh at the situation and even enjoy the positive traits of the characters.

[Crackromybatto]

*social media algorithm-fueled apophenia that essentially amounts to just cheap dollar-store bitching about aesthetics*

Yeah yeah we've heard it all before

[A chud that is not the chud]

*social media algorithm-fueled apophenia that essentially amounts to just cheap dollar-store bitching about aesthetics*

Yeah yeah we've heard it all before

The fact that you claim someone else is suffering apophenia is ironic.

[Guest]

What are good ways to filter out strivers and find real people with geniunely interesting character? Heard good things about people who do fencing in anecdotes. They know a lot of out there things like satellite engineering. Weird cuz that is a sort of ivymaxxing striver strat that some asians do. Wouldn't think asians could swordfight.

[BillyONare]

Fencing? That might be a good idea to find like minded zoomers. I was thinking you could find them in furry pedophile video game forums.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

It's funny you mention fencing specifically, I was just reading about Mensur (or academic fencing) which was popular in Europe during the 19th and 20th century.



Participants stand still wearing minimal facial protection on their eyes and noses while whirling blades around their heads. Needless to say this is incredibly silly. The purpose of the activity really was centered around the scars. There was no element of sporting here, this was a contrived excuse for participants to give each other scars for the sake of displaying a social signal.

Supposedly some young men participated in Mensur unofficially, or even cut their own faces with razors so they could pretend they were Mensur scars.

The practice of Mensur was prohibited in Nazi Germany, although this seems to be because fraternities in general were considered to be reactionary and forced to dissolve, not because of its nature specifically.

---

Fencing remains a favorite of academic strivers today, ironically not because of the desire to prove one's bravery with scars but because it's not a very physically demanding sport.

In response to your question, if you're asking "where can I meet people who aren't strivers", you are a striver. Stop trying to optimize your social life.

[Guest]

I don't see why I shouldn't optimize my social life. I want the best things, which means I want the most interesting people. If I can meet people who have ambitions like my own then we can have some nice hobbies in common or at least conversation topics.

I am admittedly a striver in a sense similar to this thread- I am motivated by wanting people to love and respect me. But if a much greater share of my motivation came from love of my ambitions themselves I would still seek out interesting ambitious people, if anything more desperately.

[The_Author]

This meme-term "striver" was never defined. It is good to accomplish things, anyway. This requires that they be striven for. Of course you want to strive for proper things and not useless things. You can spit out words like "mechanical toil" and "anticonceptual" but they don't mean anything unless you put them into an intelligible argument with a defined subject. The only subject I see here is "people suggesting that people do things that are pointless". Has not much to do with striving.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

Striving too hard for proper things is often not commendable, depending on the way one goes about it. I might as well try to define "striver":

A striver is a person who struggles excessively to gain a marginal advantage in a competitive setting.

• This "excessive struggle" is almost always entirely selfish. It's often focused on superficial appearance instead of real value (more efficient to do so). Focus on one's looks, including makeup, working out, or clothing fashions are an obvious example. Exams are another example, since grades are only loosely tied to job performance. These superficial attributes can take on totemic significance and become ends-in-themselves increasingly detached from the virtue they originally signaled.
  
• The "marginal advantage" will sometimes be a tiny chance at success that (excepting the very lucky) will be ineffective at allowing escape from their low status existence. They may strive all their life, flitting from cope to cope hoping for a breakthrough, or remain trapped in their 10 view gaming Youtube channel for decades. The advantage could also be a very slow and steady demonstration of dedication to their fast food job hoping to get promoted to manager.
  
• A "competitive setting" is not just in an academic or career sense (the urban dictionary definition in the OP is too narrow), it can also include other social settings, even virtual ones.
  

A person could selfishly strive for a goal of genuine merit that ends up appearing to create a positive outcome for society. An example of this would be Chinese students at med school - aren't doctors helping people? Not exactly, once strivers exhaust all means of advancing themselves by helping others, they'll end up striving for other "useless things" that hurt people. I predict that the current proliferation of alternative medicine is only the beginning of the corruption strivers have to offer here. Another example that shows this progression more visibly: entrepreneurs of the 20th century made truly great innovations that led to outstanding technological revolution. Today's entrepreneurs create web applications with ads and subscription-based monetization to exploit the consumer. It is all but safe to assume that anyone who describes themselves as an entrepreneur is building a useless thing.

The definition of "striver" given here involves subjectivity because we all strive in some ways; lower grade status-seeking behavior can be beneficial for society and isn't something we should necessarily seek to eliminate. However, some people clearly strive more than others, going so far as to warp their entire lives in joyless optimized service to the grind, leaving no room to enjoy life outside of their perverse self-sacrifice. These people are insufferable and their behavior negatively impacts others in ways that have already been discussed at length in this thread.

Examples:
Students who study long hours are strivers.
PUAs, incel looksmaxxers, etc. are strivers.
Andrew Tate fans are strivers.
Failed soundcloud producers spamming their profile are strivers.
Anyone with a substack blog is a striver.
Women who wear makeup are strivers.
Rationalists are strivers.
Redditors who discuss endgame meta strategies of a multiplayer game are strivers.
Korean women who get jaw bone surgery are strivers.
Cryptocurrency speculators and solo day traders are strivers.

[anthony]

Should have posted this here sooner. Very nice piece.

https://pimlicojournal.substack.com/p/wh...ean-babies

Where have all the Korean babies gone?

In fact, what we may be seeing is a global fertility bust centred around what we might call ‘striver societies’, almost regardless of their level of economic development, and only somewhat weakly connected to the advance of ‘feminism’. For instance, despite still very much being (in polite parlance) a ‘developing country’, and hardly a feminist paradise, India’s overall TFR is just 2.0, below the replacement rate (2.1), and it is notable that the areas of the country with higher fertility rates are widely known for being extremely backward (e.g., Bihar and Uttar Pradesh). Some other poor countries with below replacement level fertility rates include Bangladesh (1.93), Iran (1.56) – the ‘based’ mullahs apparently not helping out much there – and Thailand (1.01). By contrast, most European societies (especially pre-COVID) have somewhat higher fertility rates – relative, that is, to their level of economic development – and this is true even when ignoring the effect of (usually higher) immigrant fertility. Naturally, countries that most fully combine the big three – striverism, consumerism, and feminism – will see the lowest fertility rates of all.

Great suggestion from the author here, that striverism and related phenomena are actually what breaks lives and fertility rates above all else. Beyond that also a very nice and rounded summation of the striver phenomena and why it's awful. If you say "striver" and someone replies "what the fuck are you talking about?" I would recommend this as a go-to primer.

[august]

Another example that shows this progression more visibly: entrepreneurs of the 20th century made truly great innovations that led to outstanding technological revolution. Today's entrepreneurs create web applications with ads and subscription-based monetization to exploit the consumer. It is all but safe to assume that anyone who describes themselves as an entrepreneur is building a useless thing.

This is a very good way to put it. It does seem that the latter-described entrepreneurs, strivers in their own right, are in a way directly responsible for The Striver in the general sense, at least how I understand it; everyone that one might see on various social medias, showing off really, is doing so to an audience of people who don't actually care. Of course, "influencer culture" is a culprit as well because through all of this, you have one great cascading effect that permeates all levels. 

I think we can look to innovations even earlier than the 20th century to find worthy examples of the good and right kind of striving, namely during the Industrial Revolution. Take George Stephenson, who invented the first steam locomotive for public passenger transport and, with his son, spurred the development of rail travel in Britain. Definitively peasant-born, he only learned to read and write as an adult. 

From Lives of the Engineers: The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson

Modelling of engines in clay continued to be another of his favourite occupations. He made models of engines which he had seen, and of others which were described to him. These attempts were an improvement upon his first trials at Dewley Burn bog, when occupied there as a herd-boy. He was, however, anxious to know something of the wonderful engines of Boulton and Watt, and was told that they were to be found fully described in books, which he must search for information as to their construction, action and uses. But, alas! Stephenson could not read; he had not yet learnt even his letters.

Thus he shortly found, when gazing wistfully in the direction of knowledge, that to advance further as a skilled workman, he must master this wonderful art of reading—the key to so many other arts. Only thus could he gain an access to books, the depositories of the wisdom and experience of the past. Although a grown man, and doing the work of a man, he was not ashamed to confess his ignorance, and go to school, big as he was, to learn his letters. Perhaps, too, he foresaw that, in laying out a little of his spare earnings for this purpose, he was investing money judiciously, and that, in every hour he spent at school, he was really working for better wages.

[Guest]

I feel like this "art" belongs here.
https://twitter.com/LurkerLouis/status/1...0798444778