Going off on a tangent of something that zompist wrote in a discussion over in the Random Thread...
zompist wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 5:23 pmIs it actually healthy to continue celebrity culture in an sf utopia? There can only be one ultra-champion in chess, only one top-selling rock band, one most-produced playwright, whether a civ has 10,000 members or a trillion. I'm not sure any author has come up with a solution to this.
This brings me to one of my pet peeves about US politics: the way how, apparently, people across the political spectrum seem to assume that
in principle, everyone could, or should, be able to rise to the top. This takes different forms in different political camps: right-wingers often seem to believe that everyone
can rise to the top except if they're too lazy, while left-wingers often seem to believe that everyone
can rise to the top except if they're hold back by the one or other kind of systemic oppression.
But relatively few people seem to realize that, even in a hypothetical society in which everyone would work extremely hard, and no one would be under any kind of systemic oppression, the vast majority of people
still wouldn't rise to the top because it is part of
the very definition of "the top" that the vast majority of people are never a part of it.
Of course it's very bad when right-wingers more or less directly assert things like "Our policies make things horrible for everyone who isn't rich? Well, it's people's own fault if they aren't rich!" But I don't think it helps that much when people on the center-left (the far left seems to be better on this particular issue) talk as if you can solve the problems of disadvantaged groups simply by creating more opportunities for their members to rise to the top.
Think, for instance, of the talk you occasionally hear about how, if the USA would get a woman President, every little girl would be able to dream of growing up to become President. Um, what? Even if that should happen, the vast majority of little girls who would, after that, dream of growing up to become President,
still wouldn't end up as President. I mean, even right now, the vast majority of
those little
boys who are born rich, white, straight, cis-gendered, able-bodied, and into Christian families - that is, with all the standard forms of privilege you can think of -
still won't ever become President. If there was a woman US President, the chance of a little girl to grow up to become President would rise roughly from the chance of winning the lottery if you
don't buy a ticket to the chance of winning the lottery of you
do buy a ticket.
How many women are there in the United States, how many PoCs are there in the United States, how many poor people are there in the United States, how many queer/LGBTQ+ people are there in the United States, how many people with disabilities are there in the United States?
They can't all become President! And they can't all become astronauts, or movie stars, or billionaires, or Nobel Price winning scientists, either.
So, yes, there should be a lot more opportunities for disadvantaged people to rise, and that should be an important priority of progressive policy. But the
most important priority of progressive policy should be to ensure that the lives of those who
don't rise are still worth living.
)