This morning my head was filled with a phrase that has always annoyed me for a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on.<\/p>\n
“If I can do it, anybody can do it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And that is just plain bullshit. Stop saying such ignorant and offensive things.<\/p>\n
It is often intended on the surface to be self-deprecating, but it is also insulting to others who literally can’t<\/strong><\/em> do whatever it is I’ve done.\u00a0 By putting myself (or my achievement) down, it can make others feel like there is something wrong with them.\u00a0 That is insulting, because there really is nothing wrong or bad about them or their abilities, and there is no excuse for making others feel bad about not doing the particular thing I’ve done.<\/p>\n
It is okay to own your own level of skill at a particular thing, and to be proud of it, but there is no reason to lord it over others because they have their own skills that I cannot do.\u00a0 Why should it matter than I might be a world-renowned concert pianist if I can’t break down and reassemble an eight-cylinder combustion engine?\u00a0 (For the record, I can’t do either of those things.)<\/p>\n
Certainly, most people could do whatever they want, but that doesn’t mean everyone has the particular talent or temperament for a given skill, or they might simply not have any interest in doing that thing.\u00a0 There’s no shame in that, either.<\/p>\n
Another aspect of this sort of self-deprecation is that it dismisses one’s own accomplishments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning my head was filled with a phrase that has always annoyed me for a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “If I can do it, anybody can do it.” And that is just plain bullshit. Stop saying such ignorant and offensive things. It is often intended on the surface to be … Continue reading “No Comparison”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/raywhiting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/raywhiting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/raywhiting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raywhiting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raywhiting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/raywhiting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41,"href":"https:\/\/raywhiting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/raywhiting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raywhiting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raywhiting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}