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https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/when-you-know-youre-impressive-just
FdB has a really interesting substack post up today about people downplaying their success after they got it. He is putting the irony and self-deprecation as a sort of humble brag, as a way to say “yes, I’ve achieved money and success and a family, but it’s all a joke.” I don’t quite agree with his thesis on why it happens that all of these rich and successful individuals are treating this sort of thing as a joke, something that doesn’t matter.
I’m suggesting that this meme might well be an attempt to protect oneself from others. And it serves two purposes. First, it paints the picture of a person who might well be on the loser’s side on things. After all, I get that I didn’t really earn that, so I’m not one of the stuck up people who think they’re better than the working class people who are not getting theirs. This is much like the old noble classes choosing to wear less ostentatious clothes and holding less decadent galas and parties. The losers, whether they earned the fate or not, are easily convinced to see displays of wealth as a target. It’s often good for the family longevity to avoid sending wealthy person signals.
The second reason is to create a layer of cultural mulch around the pathways to success. The truth is that nobody actually gets success without an extremely strong drive to strive for it. If you want your college degree to not be a very expensive but useless poster on your wall, you have to strive to form social networks, strive to get excellent grades, and strive to get work experience in your field to get into position to apply for a good job. And even after, you have to strive to get and keep a good job, or to get a business off the ground. You have to strive to keep up with the skills you need, and if you’re working for others, you need to be constantly looking for ways to upgrade your skills and get a better job. But here again, the meme suggesting that striving is a joke appears to be adaptive. If it’s all a joke you’re a fool to earnestly strive. And if you don’t strive, you’re not competing for the jobs. And they of course don’t need to worry that you will be the one applying for the next position they want. I think this is also why the media doesn’t like Tiger Mothers. Those women and their kids unironically believe that striving is good and that puts them in competition with their betters. The Asian kids who study more than you are trouble. And if white parents start doing this as well, it’s a problem.
I'm going to disagree with Freddie on this one. Not about the two specific people he alludes to--for all I know his description is accurate there--but for his general observation of a trend in self-effacement among successful people.
Success is very, very relative, and the more successful you are in some way, the more keenly you are aware how much more successful some other people are in that same field. Unless you're literally the apex, and who knows even then. The inner view of being successful is very different from the outer view.
When I was studying math in grad school, I was keenly aware how much faster and more prepared some of my fellow grad students were. (I paid much less attention to the students who were slower and less prepared.) When I got my PhD, I was successful (in getting the PhD). And yay for me! But I also understood just how much of a near-miss that success was, and that among my cohort there were other newly-minted PhDs who had much more impressive accomplishments under their belts.
Then I got a tenure-track position at my first choice (a small selective liberal arts college). Again, yay for me! But I understood how much that depended on the very generous bump I got being a woman (which was even more pronounced back then). I got that bump in getting the interview (I know the other candidate, also a woman, which was statistically unlikely). I got the bump when I got into my PhD program--that was right around the time when all the math departments started getting serious about recruiting women. I got the bump earlier when, as an undergrad, I went to an NSA-funded summer program literally for women considering mathematics as a career, which generously funded travel to reunions every January at the Joint Math Meetings. The networking opportunities were so good that I got a network even though I suck at networking.
I could go on through other milestones, but I hope that by now I made my point. Yes, I succeeded, but I have an internal view of what that success entails, and how it compares to others in that same field. So if someone is impressed that I was a tenured math professor, my natural inclination isn't to run a victory lap.
PS. I do not have an impostor's syndrome. I figured that if I got accepted / hired / tenured and I wasn't up to stuff, that's their problem. If it didn't work out, I can always go make money.
Maybe this is just the experience of persuing a career in math, but your experience aligns closely with mine, just replace "woman" with "minority". I will confess though that I did suffer imposter syndrome in the beginning but that just became the motivation to go the extra mile, be more prepared, and now I am at that stage in my career where jobs interview for me as much as I interview for them.
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