Dear Young Eccentric

[Felan]

Robin Hansen has a lot of thoughful posts I think.

Here is relatively new one, title "Dear Young Eccentric", that I liked:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/01/dear-young-eccentric.html

Here is excerpt from it:



We humans are conformist — we typically prefer folks who fall in the middle of distributions, and avoid those from the tails. Yes, we prefer the high tail of health, beauty, intelligence, etc. But for most other traits, we prefer the ordinary.

This situation can seem pretty discouraging to those who find that they are naturally weird. Weird folks are often tempted to give up on grand ambitions, thinking there is little chance the world will let them succeed. Turns out, however, it isn’t as bad as all that. Especially if your main weirdness is in the realm of ideas.

 

[cheese]

"Think of it this way. When some folks go out of their way to show off their defiance and rebellion, others go out of their way to publicly squash such rebellion, to assert their dominance. But if you are not overtly rebellious, you can get away with a lot of abstract idea rebellion — few folks will even notice such deviations, and fewer still will care. So, ask yourself, do you want to look like a rebel, or do you want to be a rebel?"

I like this a lot.

 

[Cavallier]

"But if you are not overtly rebellious, you can get away with a lot of abstract idea rebellion — few folks will even notice such deviations, and fewer still will care. So, ask yourself, do you want to look like a rebel, or do you want to be a rebel?"

I like this a lot.

As do I. This is sort of what I've been doing most of my life.

 

[Wolf18]

When rebellion becomes status quo, the only true rebels are the covert ones.

SW