The emotion of envy is looking at someone who has a better life than you and presuming that this is unfair. It may well be unfair. But there is no objective standard of fairness, so even if the world were fair we would not all perceive it to be fair. So thinking about unfairness is a waste of time at best.

Lest I come across too much like Epictetus – who isn’t always helpful – let me say: if you focus on improving your own lot in life, you’ll feel less bad about it all. And if you succeed in improving your own lot in life, you’ll feel great. But if not, then expect no sympathy from me – even though I’ve been there myself. Because I didn’t wallow in it.

All things considered, I would much rather be hated than be this sort of hater. Being in a position to be envied is better than being in a position to envy. Still, it does raise safety concerns.

Your second paragraph has made my day.

Arguments based on “disparate impact” are the flip side of prejudice. It’s all reading into data what the data do not say.

There are certain words that once may have had specific meanings (I’m not sure) but now are simply used to push emotional buttons or to confuse issues. I never trust those words. I call them whore words. Truth, love, justice, empathy, equality, fairness, diversity. Words for fanatics and suckers.

The circle is not quite squared yet, but I keep hearing how there’s reams of solid “data” demonstrating how essential race/gender/orientation is for success in any field, so presumably “essentialism” is winning.

Stupid. It doesn’t matter whether the cat is white or black only that it catches mice.

Almost anyone raised, not necessarily even born, and educated in the contemporary United States [or Canada, or Europe] has a set of assumptions about the world that doesn’t vary that much from anyone else, and even not that much allowing for race or class.

You can’t even get much alternative analysis use out of the quasi-Marxist mental framework and language nowadays, since it is almost entirely normative now. You can’t really do the opposite, and rely on the liberal worldview as a red cell for the former one, since its residual assumptions are still omnipresent.

Not that everyone is precisely the same. There’s the set that thinks everyone does or should want to be western or like America, then there’s the set that disdains that but still thinks there’s a law and a path to some uniform modernity, and everyone will tread it to more or less a common outcome.

In other words, there is no meaningful difference between the flawed expectations that drove the US in Iraq and the flawed expectations that almost led to an intervention to overthrow Assad in Syria.

You need a couple of analysts who either genuinely are from very anti-US or anti-Western places and remember how their families think, who of course could never get hired, or some who love their country but disdain the prevailing jargon/worldview. Fat chance.

Still, sometimes you just can’t break through the mindset of the enemy. Look at Japan. Hard for anyone whose culture is based on a combination of being basically peaceful and counting money and assets, like the US then or now, to figure out why Japan would go to war when the balance sheet was so wildly against them.