Re:On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality
by stcredzero on Thursday November 16, 2017 @04:15PM
(#15716693)
I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us."
What I've seen in SF is a lot of tribes with very tight restrictions on being "one of us." What's more, is that this tribalism seems to be mostly pattern matching as opposed to being based on principles. Back in the day, musicians would at least pay lip service to judging fellow musicians on their music, as opposed to how they dressed. It's only after I came to SF, that I encountered musicians talking about how doing so was some kind of good idea.
Even the tech community has pockets of people who think like this. So now my key question, when it comes to evaluating people at the most fundamental level, is to ask, "Do they put principles before tribe or tribe before principles?" The former group tends to be a slim minority in SF, where the rarity is proportional to the trendiness. I guess that's just how it's always been, everywhere money and power are concentrated.
What I've seen in SF is a lot of tribes with very tight restrictions on being "one of us." What's more, is that this tribalism seems to be mostly pattern matching as opposed to being based on principles. Back in the day, musicians would at least pay lip service to judging fellow musicians on their music, as opposed to how they dressed. It's only after I came to SF, that I encountered musicians talking about how doing so was some kind of good idea.
Even the tech community has pockets of people who think like this. So now my key question, when it comes to evaluating people at the most fundamental level, is to ask, "Do they put principles before tribe or tribe before principles?" The former group tends to be a slim minority in SF, where the rarity is proportional to the trendiness. I guess that's just how it's always been, everywhere money and power are concentrated.