From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 00:41:34 MDT
At 11:32 PM 8/28/02 -0700, Lee wrote:
> I don't know... I just have
>no idea how to keep the truth from them, namely that most of
>them aren't very smart.
People mostly want to be like other people. True, they also aspire to
resemble those whom others admire--the jocks, say, who are up one end of
the curve--but by and large people despise the really stupid and despise
and resent the clever. And this calibration is made locally, because that's
all they know. If the neighborhood has been leached of smart kids by
educational mobility over a generation or two, the stay at homes will be
less smart that they might have been but their own mean will be the place
to aim at. You don't need to keep this truth from them; they're pack
animals and like milling around in the middle of the herd. When I was a kid
I wished desperately that I could be there too.
Damien Broderick
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