Why People are Sheep
Yesterday morning, I found a dozen or so comments telling me to stop being an entitled socialist whiner, seize life by the ballocks, and twist until my dreams came true. The comments were reasonably articulate, yet remarkably trollish. Odd. I generally only pull in a few comments a day—and most of those are fairly constructive—even when they are critical. Something was wrong. It seemed I had angered the techno libertarians. It makes a certain sense that libertarians are disproportionately represented in the tech world. Many people have succeeded (or watched others succeed) with a combination of merit and dumb luck that makes a compelling libertarian narrative. A technically talented kid spends his summers fixing computers when his friends are scooping icecream or mowing lawn. He comes of age as the internet comes of age. Maybe he wrote a few AOL Proggies. He profitably helps some local businesses set up websites. High school isn’t particularly challenging or engaging. Maybe he drops out. But after that, he starts his own business—and since it’s the DotCom boom and he’s one of the few people in the town who can tell a modem from a printer port, he does well. Maybe he does very well. Maybe he’s naturally brilliant and is still on top of the game. Maybe he got scooped up by a big corporation and now spends his days in a cubicle code monkeying. Either way, he got where he was because he could create something nobody else could. He was one of the first settlers on a newly opened technological frontier. For him, the American dream came true. He applied himself to something he loved. It worked for him. Shouldn’t everybody be able to do this if they just apply themselves? Ron Paul Forever!
(I should note before going on that despite the critical things I’m about to say about the libertarians in the tech world, I don’t think they’re bad people. Nor do they have any monopoly on a distorted view of reality. )
This is a tempting conclusion. And it’s such a convenient conclusion if you’re in that situation that it would be genuinely hard to resist. If you interests and strengths are in technology, who can blame you for being bad at sociology? And while excelling at computers as a kid requires some privilege (like access to computers), it doesn’t require that much. And a particularly savvy kid might have foreseen that a hobby in computers would probably be a better launchpad for a career than fixing cars or theater or multitrack recording. But this misses one crucial element. The combination of explosive growth with a limited supply of qualified people is not generally replicable. Where else do you get that combination of low startup costs, minimal educational requirements, and nearly unlimited growth-potential? It only works in a bubble industry—and there isn’t enough space in that bubble for everybody. It might work for thousands—or even hundreds of thousands of people—but it can’t work for tens of millions.
This can lead to some awkward philosophical conclusions. If you have succeeded by doing something relatively simple, you have to ask yourself why everybody else hasn’t done the same thing. You could tell yourself that they simply value different things and thus chose their lives. You sacrificed and worked hard—and even if somebody else looks like they’ve worked hard without the same results, they must be secretly lazy. You could tell yourself that life is life and good things happen to some people and bad things happen to other people and that philosophizing all the time is a waste of time you could spend living your comfortable, unreflective life. That’s a pretty easy solution—though willfully ignoring the problem doesn’t mean its real. Ultimately, you need to conclude that you have something that not everybody else has. It could be luck—but if you got where you are by luck, you get awkward questions of fairness. You could also decide that you’re some sort of Lodwickian UberMensch who has succeeded purely on grit and genius. You might be right. There are some stunningly brilliant people in the tech world. (You could also be wrong. There are some stunningly large egos in the tech world.) But if you really are God’s Great Gift to Humanity, you should eventually start wondering why God would gift humanity with somebody like you. Perhaps the rest of humanity isn’t a pestilence sent to annoy you. Perhaps you have some responsibility for your fellow humans. If you immerse yourself in Ayn Rand, you can perhaps convince yourself for a few years that solely following your self interest is the best way to help others, but eventually some awkward economic truths will break through. For some reason, the wealth doesn’t trickling down. And social responsibility can be difficult.
Fortunately, there is one last thing you can tell yourself to keep the whole story together. Tell yourself most people are sheep. Call them sheeple if you can bear the sound of yourself. If realized they were sheep, they could be every bit as smart and successful as you. Now all you need to do is tell people they are sheep. Tell them their public education brainwashed them. Tell them the whole public school system is a giant brainwashing machine designed by sinister philanthropists to cage human potential. Help them unlock their potential. You don’t have to tell them directly—because confronation can be scary. See if you can find an indirect way to do it. Casually suggest they read Atlas Shrugged. “It will change how you see the world.” Leave notes in the break room. “Did you know you were a sheep? Reading this note will unbrainwash you and you will be a master of humanity like me. Signed, Somebody Awesome.” Trollish comments also work.
