Thoughts
-It concerns me that lately it seems elites are more grounded than their critics. The former appear to be the only ones capable of seeing and addressing reality as it is. For them, there are two considerations: reality and the public rationale (or as 20th century thinker Leo Strauss put it: the use of noble lies and deadly truths to achieve social cohesion). The critics of the elite conflate the two and are forever confused. Instead, average folks live in a world of contradiction, hypocrisy, and make-believe. The degree of their over-simplifications are only matched by their conceit as far as “knowing” the reasons behind past and current events.
-Just read Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander. A whole subculture playing out just beyond the perception of minorities inhabiting the same country. Any minority who read this will be surprised and enlightened by one or more of the 150 things white people like. I trust there is truth in Lander’s humor and it made me look back at my interactions and explain a lot of things: why my friend’s families would sometimes have second homes by the lake, why two friends would bond over reading the Sunday Times newspaper, how High School classmates got turned onto NPR at such a young age, why one should praise another for training for a marathon (not ask “why are you doing that?”), the glorification of the “wounded party” in a breakup, and so on.
