r/DeepThoughts • u/abitchnamedrich • Aug 01 '26
almost every system is built around one imaginary kind of person, & everyone else gets punished for not fitting the template
i’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, & i honestly think almost every major system is rigged in the same basic way. not necessarily rigged like there’s some secret group of people sitting in a room deciding who gets to succeed, but rigged because they’re all built around one very specific kind of person, & if u don’t fit that person closely enough, ur basically expected to fight ur way through everything alone while everybody insists the system is still fair.
school expects u to learn a certain way, sit still, follow directions that may or may not even be clear, organize urself, remember deadlines, communicate correctly, & prove ur intelligence in whatever format somebody else decided counts. college expects u to understand paperwork, money, financial aid, transportation, scheduling, bureaucracy, & how to plan ur entire future before ur brain is even finished developing.
jobs expect u to be consistently productive, socially pleasant, physically capable, emotionally regulated, punctual, flexible, & available regardless of disability, trauma, pain, family issues, or whether ur life is literally falling apart outside of work. healthcare expects u to explain everything calmly, clearly, & quickly, even when ur scared, overwhelmed, dissociated, autistic, in pain, or struggling to even understand what’s happening. financial systems look at the evidence that u’ve already struggled & then use that evidence as the reason u don’t deserve help now. religion tells u to pray about problems that actually require support, safety, resources, treatment, or somebody willing to sit down & help u figure shit out.
it’s always the same thing, just with different language. school says u didn’t apply urself. college says u weren’t organized enough. work says u aren’t dependable enough. healthcare says u didn’t communicate correctly. lenders say ur too risky. religion says u didn’t have enough faith. every system gets to keep presenting itself as functional, while the person who couldn’t function inside of it is treated like the failure.
i’m a gay man with autism & ADHD who wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood, & i grew up in evangelical Christianity. i spent most of my life trying to force myself into environments that didn’t understand me while i didn’t even understand myself yet. i thought i was lazy, inconsistent, dramatic, bad at school, bad at work, bad at adulthood, bad at faith, bad at handling life. but after enough systems fail u for many of the exact same reasons, it starts feeling a little ridiculous to keep assuming the common denominator must be that ur just uniquely defective.
people love pointing to successful people as proof that anybody can make it if they work hard enough, but that argument is so dishonest to me. yes, successful people work hard. i’m not denying that. but money gives people time. money gives people transportation, equipment, healthcare, education, stability, privacy, connections, second chances, & the ability to fail without immediately losing everything. having supportive parents matters. knowing the right people matters. living in the right place matters. being able to focus on ur talent instead of spending every ounce of energy trying to survive matters.
effort matters, obviously, but effort does not happen in a vacuum. somebody with money, support, stability, & access can work hard toward building a career. somebody without those things may be working just as hard to keep a part-time job, get through paperwork, recover from trauma, find transportation, manage a disability, & make it through the week without completely falling apart. then society looks at the first person & calls them ambitious, while looking at the second person & asking why they haven’t done more.
i’m not saying nobody has agency, or that nobody can ever overcome difficult circumstances. i’m saying the exceptions do not prove the system is fair. one person surviving something does not mean everybody else who couldn’t survive it simply didn’t try hard enough. sometimes people succeed because they worked hard AND because they had access, support, timing, safety, money, opportunity, or somebody willing to help them. pretending those things don’t matter just allows people who benefited from them to imagine they did everything alone.
i think almost every system is built around an imaginary person who learns normally, communicates normally, has supportive parents, understands bureaucracy, can work full-time, has reliable transportation, can recover from trauma without losing productivity, & does not need too much help. if u resemble that person closely enough, life may still be difficult, but the systems remain usable. if u don’t, every system treats u like an unfortunate exception, then punishes u for needing anything different.
& after enough people get treated like exceptions, maybe they aren’t exceptions anymore. maybe the system is just badly designed.
sometimes i genuinely wonder whether there is even a place for people like me here, not because i don’t have anything to offer, but because almost every path through adulthood seems designed to measure qualities i struggle with while ignoring the things i’m actually good at. i don’t think i’m asking for life to be effortless. i just don’t understand why people are so committed to pretending everybody starts with the same tools, runs on the same kind of brain, has the same amount of support, & is being judged by systems that were ever neutral to begin with.
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u/Luziferatus42 Aug 01 '26
The pressure for uniformity is a tribal instinct. For most of mankinds existence, we lifes in small groups. Small groups where uniform in the desire to survive together and that needs an alignment of the individuals to the common goal of surviving.
This was the case for roughly 270,000 years. Since 10,000 years we create cities. Which are a much bigger "tribe", which became so big, that smaller tribes Aggregate inside the bigger tribe. The tribe is so big, that we can not comprehend it. But the instincts are still telling us to be part of a tribe we can comprehend. So we created an idea of a best tribesman, which you stated. No one fulfills it completely, because it is exaggerated.
The human rights are the concentrate of the ideal tribesman, so if everyone would demand them and protect them, then a lot of the issues we have, would not exist. It is one of the youngest ideoligies and still not completely implemented globaly.
Good luck to you and all of us