09-18-2021, 05:25 PM
(09-18-2021, 12:12 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(09-16-2021, 06:48 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: But at any rate, arguing with Classic doesn’t seem to be much worth it. Attention should stay focused on the real problems, the influence of money on government, and systematic racism.
That's right, you can't win an argument with an American who knows better than to cling and go along with the elitist/racist Blue narrative that's being exposed and falling apart.
I'm not denying that you are an American, but I know well that you don't know as much about America as you pretend.
Some elites are legitimate and some aren't. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra consists of elite musicians because anything less would be inadequate. The Art Institute of Chicago has no schlock paintings. Major-league athletes are as a strict rule the best of the best at their sport. College professors are the among the elite of academics because people less learned would be inadequate as college teachers. Medicine? Law? Engineering? CPA's? You guessed it. Hollywood film stars? Nobody plunks down real money to watch a cheaply-produced movie created swiftly and ineptly in someone's basement unless it is porn, in which quality is of little concern.
Have you ever read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers? It explains much. By now the standards of achievements in many fields of endeavor are so high that only those who have prepared extensively so that they can have a credible presence in those endeavors have a chance to perform at the top level and get paid well for it. Whether one speaks of ballet dancers, Hollywood film stars, members of first-rate symphony orchestras, one needs on average 10,000 hours of preparation. Such comes at great sacrifice, mostly of not doing other things. If one is to be a concert pianist one doesn't watch huge amounts of TV or play lots of video games, tool around in cars, or get involved in something incompatible, like playing soccer. The great soccer stars and auto racers don't spend much time playing a piano, either. One can excel -- but only at the expense of a normal life, and possibly a varied life. Raw talent is not enough; there are no "naturals" at anything requiring consummate skill.
A rap on classical musicians is that they are lousy lovers. Obviously they are more involved in practicing their instruments than in dating.
The price of a normal or even varied life is that one fails to excel at anything. Many have no chance because they have spent all their lives doing things at which mediocrity is acceptable because society needs multitudes of people doing those tasks. Think of fast-food workers; nobody needs great skill to work in such places. People able to do something else typically leave for something else that pays better and allows one to develop more lucrative skills. That's fine for McDonalds'. The food that it offers is highly standardized and predictable, which means that a Big Mac will be just the same in Springfield, Missouri as in Springfield, Massachusetts. If you want to be a great chef you will need to go into some other place. If you want really good food you will need to go some place where the chefs run the kitchen and nobody needs a manual. You will also pay more to eat in such a place, because the chefs are well paid and the raw food is more costly. You will also remember your experience in that high-priced restaurant, and if you are making anything like what I think you are making as a skilled blue-collar worker, then you have surely experienced that. "Chez Mac" is convenient, predictable, safe, and inexpensive. If I am going on a road trip I eat much in fast-food places. On some fall colors tour I am going to take pictures of glorious fall foliage, and food will not matter that much except that I have some.
We obviously need far more farm workers (which may explain why farm families had lots of children about a century ago), cashiers and checkers, people doing minor maintenance on cars, insurance clerks, merchandise stockers, call-center workers, cabbies, truck drivers, and movie ushers. Far more people in the movie business are movie ushers, ticket takers, or sellers of snacks than are actors. Seemingly anyone can dispense popcorn and sodas... and not many people can meet the high standards of acting at a major movie studio.
Remember: you must eat. You do not need to listen to the Chicago Symphony live.
Much that we need done we want done cheaply, inexpensively, and predictably. That's how it is with an oil change. I could probably learn to do that in less than a week. Racing a car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway? Absolutely not.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.