The Worst Thing About the System

I could list out all my accomplishments right now and it wouldn’t matter to anyone.

In fact, I’ve done that here in the past, and it never made me feel pride in anything that I had done. It was drilled into my head to hold it all with an air of certain…disdain. Everything I had achieved was in the past. It was why I had those few little letters attached to my name — to make other people feel instant respect, intimidation, or a measure of wariness…like “Oh no, another one of those ‘elites’ that are going to hold their degrees over us.”

I can’t remember ever pulling rank on anyone…but it’s also because I never cared much for the system in the first place.

The longer I’ve been writing, the more I’ve realized something about myself: I always hated authority figures. I hated having my life set out in front of me with milestones and waypoints and things I had to have done by the time I was X years old. Honestly? I’ve done a vast majority of that crap.

The list is complete enough to make any self-respecting Asian parent puff their chest with pride (and I won’t list them all here).

This past year, things have started coming into focus with all the ideas and thoughts that I’ve put out here. From being the “mind miner” and questioning what it all really means to why society is structured the way it is, I can see there’s been a thread that’s lead me to where I am now. People like me are shoved into the system and expected to hit the highlights and be grateful we’re not chewed up and spat out until the very end.

Because that’s exactly where we’re all headed from what I’ve discovered.

Now that I know what the game is really about, what do I do with this information? The education system is designed to make us compliant, obedient, and subservient to the people who pull the strings. Everything that’s happened this year on a geopolitical scale in America has been awful (like truly horrendous), but it has served to peel back the layers of our complacency in ways that nothing else has in recent memory:

The foundations of the corruption are on full display.

I’m not talking just about politics. I’m talking about the “meritocratic” system itself. Despite achieving everything my parents told me I had to do to be successful, I find myself in a position where I am struggling to make ends meet in a way my parents never had to forty years ago. Haters can say “you aren’t working hard enough”.

The truth is that I’ve worked my ass off.

Yes, play that tiny violin, they will say, but hear me out. I’ve been surrounded by people throughout my life who are role models when it comes to work ethic. I’ve followed their example in every area from the performing arts to academia, and I’ve come a long way in each of them. I know for a fact that each of them deserves far more than they’ve earned from being in their jobs and careers.

And now I know why.

Society is designed to extract maximum output for minimal pay. The people at the top should be the ones who work the hardest, know the most, and care about others. Instead, we have a shining example of everything in upside down land on full display right now. The honest, the compassionate, and the industrious are at the bottom.

It’s because they, we, don’t speak up.

There’s a thin veil that separates us from them; that we focus more on action and substance than on rhetoric. We let our results in the real world speak more than amplifying ourselves on social media because it’s all a waste of time when we could be doing more, making more, producing more.

Meanwhile, the people who do far less and talk big game are the ones promoted.

The digital world is becoming essential, and if you don’t have a footprint, a presence there, then your reach and potential impact is restricted to your physical location. There was nothing wrong with that in the 20th century, but globalization and the internet have vastly expanded the playing field. AI has levelled this new arena, and there’s no excuse at this point to not put yourself out there.

To even the playing field, I want to help people like me who have been steamrolled in the past to build a body of evidence — leave a paper trail so to speak — that can effectively do just that. So that’s what I’m going to be doing in my writing. It’s really not all that different from what I’ve been sharing before, but having a “digital heirloom” is only part of the picture.

Digital Presence is more like it.

Still tinkering with the idea…but it’s high time to give something that actually will help others who deserve to be seen and heard.