this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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There's some nature vs nurture question here. Let's take twins with an identical ND brain. Due to random chance, from an early age one twin is interested in things society finds highly valuable, and the other is interested in things society doesn't value at all. What are the outcomes from childhood on?
I think about this a lot. There's an extreme luck or privilege that comes from happening to be born kind of "into" or good at the things society happens to find valuable at the current moment (and in the region of one's birth). I benefit massively from that today, and even just a hundred years ago I think my life would have probably gone very differently (worse). Meanwhile folks I know without those aptitudes but with tons of sincere effort just continue to struggle. It feels really cruel and unfair.
ETA: even worse, we never talk about this. I think you're the first person I've ever seen mention it. So most folks who lost that lottery walk around thinking it's their fault somehow. Such a sad thing to me.
It would be quite disheartening if I was the first person to have had the idea, or articulate it in this way, though not totally unexpected. Will search scholarly articles to see what I can find. So far these types of views are only coming from ND lead research, which thankfully appear to be accelerating recently.
I refer to it in my head as "vocational privilege". I've never once heard it discussed (not just the term I made up, the idea). And frankly we're not exactly at a societal moment when many of us are eager to bring new forms of privilege into discussions, I think it'll be quite some time before we're ready to grapple with this, but it's a huge problem.
Both in terms of human suffering but also just in terms of humanity's "efficiency". There's so much more good that could be done if we were able to harness people's born talents better, rather than the square peg round hole nonsense we do with so many folks today.