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Quillette article examines why technological and other progress is so often seen as stalling. My first thought was "risk"--we've developed a bizarre approach to it. We're doing everything we can to uncouple risk from reward, and we're increasingly willing to accept paralysis rather than suffer risk. A few paragraphs down, I found this:
The last 200 years have seen a shift from what moral sociologists have described as the ‘honour’ or warrior culture pre-dating the 19th-century—to the ‘dignity’ culture of the 20th-century—to the emergence of a ‘victimhood’ culture in the 21st.
Part of this shift includes the increasing adversity to risk.
This may explain why the entrepreneurs who succeed often have warlike temperaments too. Elon Musk apparently thinks he's Buck Rogers, building everything from personal flamethrowers to starships. The guys at Black Rifle Coffee built that company from nothing, in a specialized high-end market with a near-monopoly competitor in Starbucks, after their time in the 75th Rangers.
ReplyDeleteRisk is a big factor. Learning to take risks is a virtue like courage; maybe it's the same virtue.
I'd call it the same virtue, certainly.
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