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The Elitist Fallacy and Why You Should Watch Out for It

There is a surprisingly prevalent but flawed type of argument you may hear people make that I call the “Elitist Fallacy.” The Elitist Fallacy is a way to falsely position one’s skills, approach, and/or discipline as crucial in a given situation.

This is how the argument goes:

1) X Skill is crucial or necessary.

2) I cultivated X Skill through Y Practice.

3) Thus, Y Practice is the only and/or best way to develop a needed skill.

People more often invoke this kind of reasoning implicitly rather than explicitly, especially since when you see the argument laid out like this, you may easily spot its flaw. Just because someone developed a skill one way does not mean it is the only way to develop that skill.

The first two premises may be true: X Skill may be important, and the person in question may have used Y Practice to cultivate X Skill. It is wonderful that they were able to develop that skill in that way. The error comes in assuming that since this was the way they did it, it is thus the only way to develop that skill. There could be many other ways that work for other people, and if you are to present your way as the sole or at least best, you must carefully explain why the others do not work as well as it does.

People often invoke this argument to sell themselves as the sole or best person to hire to invoke that skill, and disciplines often foster it to institutionalize their way to teaching the skill or conducting that type of work as the only important approach so that they receive more attention, money, and/or following..

But, it falsely elevates one’s experiences to rank of the sole experiences in a given matter, making it elitist. As such, watch out for it in others and try to be aware if it creeps into your own assumptions.

Do you assume your path to understanding is the only way to develop a particular skill, and if so, do you have explicit justifications as to why? Try to engage with others around the world who do something similar to see whether they had a completely different way of developing that skill in their context.

Adjusting Expectations When Living in Abroad

Over our lives, we develop expectations for how our needs will be met based on the culture(s) we live in. This includes our physical needs but also our emotional needs, social needs, and all our other needs. There’s nothing wrong with this; expectations help keep us sane and allow us to determine how to make choices in our daily lives.

However, in new cultures, these expectations tend to break down. The most difficult yet most important aspect of long term cross-cultural adjustment is to learn how to develop new expectations and use those to determine how to meet our needs.

Every culture can meet people’s needs. If it did not, people would not survive there. But a new culture may have vastly different methods or tools to meet those needs. In another culture, you must learn how their ways of doing things can and do meet people’s needs in life. And you must not only understand this consciously but internalize subconsciously.

Internalizing that is not always easy, and it’s okay if it takes time. All humans have built a set of expectations over the course of their lives based on how we are used to things happening. This helps produce the (generally subconscious) filters we use to assess the world around us: to determine, for example, what people mean when they communicate things, what they want from us, whether we are safe or secure, and what to expect from another in any given interaction. Without these things, we couldn’t function or handle daily interactions.

But in a new culture, all of this has to be rebuilt. It’s easier said than done, but much of the difficulties one feels in another culture – including culture shock, frustration or anger at local practices, sadness, etc. – deep down stem from the difficulty of experiencing a mismatch from your expectations and subconsciously sensing that you will fail to have your needs met. If so, it’s okay to pause and know that you are doing a complex psychological reset.

Intellectual Vacations

Most people need to take a break every once in a while, whether that be a few week vacation, or sometimes a longer break to help unwind. A physical break can help us detox emotionally from the constant churn of our everyday lives.

An intellectual break can be just as necessary and life-giving as well, yet it doesn’t get the same focus in our society. Take time off from your normal rhythm of production and produce something new yourself.

For example, one could take a few weeks or months off to work on one of your passions. During that time, produce something, such as poetry, a novel, a painting, a new video game, a music album, a beautiful hand-crafted piece of furniture, or whatever it is you enjoy making. Such a goal gives direction for the time and also can give a sense of exhilaration at creating something with one’s own hands.

Many would rather it be in a field or hobby that is different from what they do all day, so if you are, say, a writer slowly becoming tired from having to write all the time for your job, paint, write music, or do something far away from what you normally do all day for work. An academic friend of mine cooks: using his hands to produce great food to detox from reading and typing on a screen all day.

In their jobs, many are denied the ability to make something that excites them personally. Their employers give them tasks, and they produce what the organization needs or wants from that. That can be worth the paycheck and can even be fulfilling for many, but after a while of producing, it can become soul-sucking.

Some do this during their off-hours throughout their normal week, but if you are able, it can be helpful to set aside a few weeks or even months every once in a while to complete something on your own like a sabbatical. Use that time to unwind from the stress of your daily existence and work towards something new that you are proud of.

If that is you, taking time for yourself to create something with your own hands every once in a while can help replenish you from the soullessness of conformity and drudgery. Go on a vacation where you physically unwind, sure, but also make sure you devote time to make something you are proud of.

The Bike (A Short Story)

So one day over the summer, my friend and I were leaving my house. We got bored playing video games.

Outside was parked my bike, a really nice mountain bike. It was gray with rear shock-absorbers and like twenty gears. You could ride over just about anything on a trail. I had just got it, and it was barely used. My parents had found it at a garage sale, and it was only a few months old. The newest bike I had ever had.

He walked up to the bike, “Wow, this is a nice bike. Can I give it a try?”

“Uhh,” I began to answer, but he was already gone.

He rode around the block, and I saw him again a minute or so later.

“Wait,” I shouted back. “I want to ride it too.”

He continued another lap. His second time around, I ran after him. I only lasted twenty feet, though, before giving up.

“Stop! It’s my bike.”

But he went around again.

I stamped my feet in frustration. That was MY bike, but he just kept going. Why can’t I have my bike back? I rushed inside and did the only thing I could think to do: call the cops. I came back out as he was turning the corner towards the house.

“Nice bike,” he said, getting off and walking it over to me.

As I went to grab it, a police car rode down the street and parked right in front of us. He must have been patrolling in the area or something, because he came around pretty fast.

“I got a call about a bike robbery,” he said from his car seat. Both us stood dead in our tracks.

“Yeah, that was me,” I replied after a few moments of silence. “But I’m fine now. He’s returning it.”

“Well, can I get a brief description for our files.”

He reached into his dashboard and got out a notepad, and I walked around the car next to his door. My friend just stood there on the sidewalk frozen, clutching the bike.

“Look, we’re fine now. He just went off with my bike, but he was only going around the corner. I thought he was stealing it and called you.”

“Okay,” he muttered. His pen was still pressed against his notepad ready to write. He looked up with a tinge of annoyance. “Well, can I at least have your names?”

I gave him mine, and then I gave him my friend’s. The officer’s face suddenly changed. He repeated his last name for confirmation, a new look of concern across his face.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yep,” I said. Why couldn’t he just go away?

He jotted something down in his notepad.

“Well, let me know if you continue to get any trouble from him.”

The cop put the notepad down on the passenger’s seat and drove away. My friend, who had crept over to the car during the conversation, was looking down at the notepad. I managed to steal a glance before the cop drove away. It read his name in big letters along with attempted theft of a bike.

Suddenly everything clicked. The cop recognized his name instantly. His stepfather was a well-known drug dealer in the neighborhood. The police had been looking for any dirt for a while so that they could make a move on him.

With the police car gone, nothing stood between us. He glared at me. He knew what the cop wrote down and why.

“Here’s your bike,” he said, pointing to it behind him on the sidewalk.

I passed him on the way to it and got on.

He was still glaring at me and began to walk over.

“I just didn’t know what you were doing with it,” I stammered, but that didn’t cover anything. I didn’t know what to say.

He ran after me. Instinctively, I biked away. I had won, had gotten my bike back, but I didn’t want it like this. I stopped pedaling, so he could catch up. He pounced on top of me, pushing me right off the bike. I scraped against the concrete sidewalk. Before I could catch my breath, he was kicking me in the stomach. I lay there, tightened my abs, and hoped for the best.

About two minutes later, we hung out at the park as if nothing had happened.

(If you would like to read more short stories, you can browse them here.)

Reflection on Living in New York City for the Last 5 Years

I wrote this reflection during my last day in New York City:

Today is my last day in New York City. I have lived here in Brooklyn for five long years. New York has meant a lot to me. It has been my single favorite place to live out of all the places I have lived in. Here are some of the things that New York has meant to me or that I learned during my time here:

1) Many jobs, most frustrating: I worked many jobs while there. I developed my professional capacity as a data scientist there. I had many jobs I loved and many frustrations. Many annoying bosses and many great people to work with.

2) Many relationships: I went on a lot of dates during this time. I went from someone pretty inexperienced with dating to doing it all the time. Some were good relationships, but for whatever reason, most turned out to be okay or bad. Finding someone often felt nearly impossible in New York, especially through dating apps. It had the problems of too many options, leading to difficulties finding which ones were the best fit for you.

3) Many new societies, cultures, people: New York throws a lot at you, and I loved that. I loved seeing the many different parts of the world represented here. Visiting all the restaurants. Seeing all the museums Learning about different facets of history and society. I learned so much about the world here.

4) Pandemic and foot injury: About half my time here was during the pandemic, during a partial or complete lockdown, and during that time, I was further handicapped by a debilitating foot injury for about a year and a half to two of my five years here. That was awful.

5) Transitioning stages in life: I transitioned from young adulthood to the starting of middle-life here: I arrived in my late twenties and am leaving at 33. During my time here, I transitioned from my youthful energy to what may be the beginning of my middle adulthood. I noticed my energy level, preference for routine over adventure, and desire for things like alcohol changed pretty drastically over time.

6) Changing life priorities: I arrived here burnout from graduate school but still in love with learning. I was connected very much with academia and out there intellectual pursuits. During my time here, my passions transitioned towards a career focus, which then bottomed out, leaving me to whatever I will find passion in next.

Over these five years, my career and building my resume I think slowly became my driving force. I built a career in data science and juggled multiple passion projects (writing poetry, an animated sitcom, a blog, etc.) In contrast to previous stages in my life, I read less intellectual material, spent less time socializing with peers, and tended to focus on what would build my resume or on the “crux” or intricacies of getting my projects done. I think this was a necessary stage for me as it grew my skills and my capacity to get things done efficiently.

At the same time, I think my interests are changing, and I am slowly moving away from that during my next stage in that. In the last year, I started to realize how truly pointless all such career ventures ultimately were. I got shaken out of the trance and decided to move on, focusing on what makes me happy.

7) Fewer relationships: I made less close friends here than during previous places I have lived and felt less connected community-wise. Maybe that was partially because New York is a big city, maybe partially because the pandemic and my foot injury stifled some of this, but mostly I think it was because I was focusing on my career.

Despite the fact that my time in New York felt like back-to-back life crises and stress, living here was still a joy. I will always cherish my time here.

(For more about life in New York City, click here.)

Awoken from Her Afternoon Nap (A Short Story)

The knocking jolts the Thai nurse from her nap. She pushed aside the Thai comic book she had been reading on her couch before she drifted into her afternoon siesta. This was her day off, and all she wanted to do was relax at home. Who would come knocking at her door?

“Hello, I need your help!” The voice called from the other side.

At first, she tried ignoring it, but the man on the other end wouldn’t go away. She was off the clock: this was her day to not help anyone. Eventually, though, she walked over to the door to figure out how to politely send him away.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Please help me!”

“Help you with what?”

“My foot! My foot hurts,” the man cried.

She looked through the peephole and saw it was her neighbor. She barely saw him, but he lived across the hallway in their apartment complex.

“I need someone to check it out,” he implored.

She is hesitant, but she decides the easiest way to send him away would be to look at it real quickly.

“Ok,” she replied, opening the door. “Let me see.”

He limped her over to his apartment, where he reclined on his couch, his right foot sticking up towards her.

“It’s the sole. The sole really hurts!” is all he could say.

“Ok,” she conducted a brief examination. She started poking the soul along key pressure points to see whether anything was the matter and then moved up along the ankle.

“You should be fine,” she explained. “You just have some swelling along the ankle that is pinching your nerves and causing pain in your sole. You should be fine. Rest for today, but tomorrow, go see the doctor. There’s a small chance it might constrict your blood flow and cause a blood clot. Those can be life threatening.”

“Ok,” he stated, relieved.

“You are going to be okay. I’m going to go back home, but if you have any more pain or soreness take some aspirin.”

With that, she left. She didn’t want to say anything because she didn’t want to stay long, but something was off. His foot was cold, and she couldn’t feel a pulse. He also didn’t respond to the normal nerve pinches or tickling that would usually cause any foot to flinch. If that was not attached to her moving, screaming neighbor, she’d have assumed it was a dead foot.

She walked back to her apartment. Had she done the right thing in not investigating the anomaly further? She couldn’t help but feel like she had seen a case like this before, but she couldn’t remember any details. As a matter of fact, all of this felt vaguely familiar.

She entered her apartment. Her cat was staring at the screen door of her balcony, gazing outside. She walked over to her balcony too. It was a sunny afternoon, and its warm glow seemed to beckon her. She couldn’t help but see a part of herself in her cat, the part of her that longed to head out and have an adventure.

She opened the screen door to take in the sun, but her cat immediately took this as an opportunity to try to bolt outside. She caught him just in time.

“No, no, no,” she cooed. “You can’t climb out there. You might fall off the ledge and get hurt.”

She carried him back to her couch, but when she sat down, he immediately jumped out of her lap and perched right back up on the windowsill to plan another opportunity to escape.

She checked the status of her nursing certification application for New York. Everyday, she was waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. She felt like her life has been stuck in limbo.

She put that aside and picked up her Thai comic book. It satirized the latest developments in Thai politics, how the current military-backed government had bamboozled democracy to maintain their iron grip like always. She also felt like this was the same old song and dance. Like she had been reading about this same story happening again and again.

This all struck her as odd. Like her world was on repeat. All this intense thought made her sleepy, though, and she slowly drifted off to sleep.

She jolted awake suddenly to someone pounding on her door crying that he needed help.

(If you would like to read more short stories, you can browse them here.)

How Do You Come Across in Other Cultures?

As I was walking through the Changdeokgung Palace in Seoul, South Korea, I overheard a very interesting conversation.

A Chinese tourist and a Dutch tourist were walking in front of me talking (in English). The Chinese tourist was explaining the different types of tourists he sees from around the world:

“Koreans, they are often silent. They may not say much the whole conversation, unless they have something very important to say. For example, they may say one thing in the conversation: something you should do. They’ll phrase it like a suggestion, ‘You might want to consider doing this.’ Absolutely do it. Don’t let that confuse you. It’s a complete necessity. That’s why they are bringing it up.

“Americans, on the other hand, never shut up. They will constantly ask you questions, like they are interrogating you. It’s their way to connect with you as a person and get to know you. They’re trying to be friendly, but it can take some time to get used to. They love long conversations where they ask you tons of questions about their life.”

When I heard this, I was trying not to laugh out loud because as an American it is so true for me: I love asking lots of questions as a way to get to know someone.

At the end of the day, this is only one person’s take on American vs Korean styles of interactions, but as an American, I found it helpful to hear the perspectives of US culture from others around the world. They shed new light on my styles of communicating that I often take for granted. We can become so used to our way of doing things that we can easily forget to see it for what it is: one way among many.

Thus, when you talk with others around the world, feel free to think about how they might see you, and if you are feeling particularly adventurous, you can even ask how you come across. It makes a fantastic edition to add to your long list of questions.

(If you find discussions of people’s experiences in other cultures around the world like this interesting, please let me know, and I will be sure to keep writing these.)

4 Things that Surprised Me about Living in Brooklyn

I lived in Brooklyn for 5 years. Here are a few small things that continue to surprise me about this place:

1) How affordable some parts of Brooklyn are

New York City – Brooklyn in particular – has a reputation for being expensive, which is usually true, but I was surprised to discover some parts (like South Brooklyn) that are pretty cheap. Too often people only consider the popular or standard neighborhoods instead of finding a place that is a good fit for them. These neighborhoods, in my experience, are often more expensive, more crowded, and otherwise less enjoyable to live in.

My rent of $1,500 a month for a single bedroom was below the average for the country overall, and I have never seen cheaper groceries than in the stores around me. I averaged $219 per month on groceries. On top of that, I did not need a car, meaning no car payments, car insurance fees, gas expenses, or trips to the car mechanic.

Thus, Brooklyn has cost me about the same as or been cheaper than most other parts of the US I have lived in. The trick is to find the right part of the borough to live in.

2) Its ethnic quilt

Brooklyn is a hodgepodge of races and ethnicities. Each group is surprisingly concentrated into distinct neighborhoods (often based on historical waves of immigration) that transition suddenly. In a few blocks walk, you may pass through several very distinct ethnic enclaves with different feels. If you walk only a few yards, for example, you may shift from a predominantly Chinese or Yemeni neighborhood. More than say Manhattan, this gives the borough the feeling of a quilt with distinct feels in each section.

3) How helpful people are

New York City has a reputation for being stand-offish, but that has not been my experience here. People – in both Brooklyn and other parts of the city – may prefer quick interactions, but they are really helpful. You often have to get straight to the point rather than exchange long touchy-feely pleasantries and will keep the interaction short, but Brooklynites and New Yorkers, in general, will give the shirt off their backs if that is what you need.

4) How alive yet reclusive Brooklyn can be

I am the type of person who needs stimulation, yet I feared that living in Brooklyn, the constant churn of traffic and people would slowly drive me insane. Maybe some parts of the borough have this issue, but I was surprised by how quiet it can feel. I can have activity when that is what I want or I can retreat into my quiet apartment when I need to relax. It’s been a great balance of adventure and tranquility.

(For more a fuller personal reflection on what my time living in New York City meant for me, click here.)

How to Survive as a Young Adult: What You Can Do to Live A Satisfied Life during Your 20s and 30s

As someone in my early thirties, these are the aspects of life that I have found useful to feeling satisfied and fulfilled during this stage in life. If you are unhappy, feel free to think about whether you lack any of these and then determine the best ways to cultivate it. Be patient with yourself as you do; it can take months to grow them, and you have done nothing wrong if you are missing some of these; you are not a failure.

1) Intellectual growth: Are there things you are learning in your life: new skills, new perspectives, new things about the world, etc.? That can range from formal education to more informal methods like reading books, watching insightful videos that teach you something (all over Youtube or Netflix), or stimulating conversations with others. It can also range from learning about abstract academic subjects like philosophy to drawing to studying ants (because why not). Everyone has their own thing. For some, learning communities like book groups or other meetups where you learn with others help keep them accountable and encourage them to think about the topic in a new way.

What you are learning about can be useful for your career or completely separate, but developing wholly unrelated skills can teach you something new about yourself. Follow passions beyond what is “useful” or can be applied to your daily life: it helps you grow as a person. For your career, it may even give you inspiring new ideas about what you want to do with your career. That and it can be a lot of fun, helping fulfill you in ways you did not realize you needed.

2) Creativity: Are you producing anything cool? That could be art, writing stories or poetry, wood carving, drawing comics, dancing, or whatever you love in life. For example, my friend and I write a haiku a day (a small three-lined poem) and over the last few months, we started writing one short story or essay a day (like 300-500 words or a half page). Writing is my form of creativity and art, but you can also do supposedly “logical” activities not just artistic ones, like solving math puzzles that interest you (which I have done from time to time; I’m that kind of nerd and love it), conducting science experiments, programing a computer game, or building a computer from scratch.

For some people, their intellectual growth and creative activities are the same: they learn about a topic area as they produce things in that space. But, it is important to determine whether you are exploring each one adequately. Some people who combine them into one activity lean towards one and do less of the second without realizing it, leaving them unfulfilled. If that is you, you could develop whichever one you are lacking through another fun activity.

3) Introspection: Exploring who you are, what gifts you offer the world, what you need in life, and what you want in life. In my experience, too many people just “go with the flow” in life and follow what society or others suggest they do, become, or value.

Instead, it’s important to think about what you value in life, what makes you happy, and how you can use your gifts to help make the world a better place. What do you offer the world? What have the opportunities in your life offered you (your job, your family, your group of friends, etc.), and to what extent have they helped meet your needs and allowed you to become all that you can be? Finally, to what extent have you been able to offer your gifts and abilities to the world?

If any of these spaces you inhabit are lacking, it can be okay to advocate for yourself to make sure they meet your needs, find supplemental communities in your life that add the aspects that these communities lack, or leave any of those communities entirely. (Which one is best in any given situation is an incredibly complex judgment call to make, but when you are lacking what you need from the environments you are a part of, it is usually some combination of these three responses that ends up resolving the issue.) No one knows what you need better than yourself.

A helpful way to start thinking about what you offer the world is to list the jobs, courses, projects, programs, and other things you have done in your life (both fulfilling and unfulfilling) and list what about them has given you life (aka motivated you) and what about them have frustrated you or otherwise stifled your life. List what impact you made in that setting that you are proud of as well. Then look for common patterns across these lists: What common patterns emerge about what inspires you, and what about what frustrates you? This can help determine both what types of skills you offer and also what kinds of communities to look for that might best incorporate and cultivate your skills.

4) Mentoring and leadership: Do you have the ability to grow, teach, or inspire others? Examples of this can range from parents raising children to mentoring or teaching others to managing a team of employees who you help grow and become all they can be. Many psychological studies show that people tend to feel most satisfied in life when they have both mentees then can mentor and coaches/mentors who can, in turn, mentor them.

In addition to learning, we become more fulfilled when we feel like giving back to others in our community. Some people do this through their careers, either in their official job description or by informally helping others in their workplace. Not every job gives people the opportunity to do that, though, so others do in other communities of life: within their family, their religious communities, within their groups of friends, in clubs or social groups they are a part of, etc. If you are lacking this, think about how within your current social network, you might be able to mentor or lead others, and if there are no such opportunities, brainstorm how you can branch out and do it in other ways. These can range from volunteering to workplace mentorship programs to help youth with their homework to hanging out with your lonely neighbor when you have the time.

If none exist, think about what skills you can offer and help others through. You can use Recommendations 1 through 3 to try to come up with a few ideas on how, and if none of those work for you, brainstorm how you can branch out and do it in other ways. These can range from volunteering to workplace mentorship programs to help youth with their homework to hanging out with your lonely neighbor when you have the time. If you think creatively about this, you can make it happen, and you will almost certainly love the result.

5) Relationships: Community matters. I find in this stage of life, this can be hard. Studies show that in the United States at least, the 20s and early 30s in the United States are on average the second loneliest time in people’s lives (after one’s elderly years) where people have some of the least strong relational connections. High school and college are times when you are surrounded by peers, and after graduating, we are thrust into the world without yet having built the alternative communities that those who are older end up relying on.

Thus, you must be intentional and sometimes creative to form community. You may have to put yourself out there. Don’t let shyness defeat you.

What Is the Point of Money?

Many spend their lives acquiring money, but what really is money?

For many scholars, money is the ability to do something – whether that is to eat a sandwich, own a nice necklace, have someone provide a service for you – turned into a quantified unit. By this definition, money has incredible value. It literally is the ability to do or have things, but there are still some limitations to that value.

First, the capacity to do what? At the end of the day, money is a tool, a way to meet other goals. Capacity makes a very poor goal or purpose in itself. People who pursue money for money’s sake are attaining the ability to do things without a sense of what they want to do in life in the first place.

Second, as quantified capacity, money becomes less valuable the more you attain it. Everyone has the capacity to do things with their time and energy. Your salary has a certain amount of capacity as well. When you work, you trade the ability to do whatever it is you could do with your time and energy during that time for the capacity latent in your salary.

Often, this trade may give us even greater capacity, allowing us to do things we otherwise could not do with the time we have. You can use that capacity to meet your needs and pay for the things that you want, and thus help you live a better life. Such a trade may be worth it for you.

But after you have so much stored, gaining more may no longer add much value to your life and in some cases, may decrease it. Billionaires, for example, have enough to meet an entire life’s worth of needs and wants (and often the needs and wants of dozens or hundreds of more lives after that).

In such a situation, they do not have enough time left in their life to enjoy the capacity that they would gain from making more money through work. Each day they work, they lose one more day they have spent doing anything else (spending time with family, relaxing on a beach, or whatever makes one happy). Some ultra wealthy still work because they feel their job gives them a sense of meaning in their lives, but from a certain perspective, they are sacrificing their capacity to keep working.

Billionaires are an extreme example, but this applies to a certain degree to everyone. There is a time to build a base of capacity for ourselves by earning money, but the more one builds up, the less useful any new money we gain becomes. Eventually, that can switch and trying to attain more money after that is actually counterproductive.

You should evaluate for yourself how much of this thing called money you truly need and when the money you would gain is no longer worth what you would have to do to get it.