zlacker

Scott Adams died today. I want to acknowledge something complicated.

He always felt culturally like family to me. His peaks—the biting humor about corporate absurdity, the writing on systems thinking and compounding habits, the clarity about the gap between what organizations say and what they do—unquestionably made me healthier, happier, and wealthier. If you worked in tech in the 90s and 2000s, Dilbert was a shared language for everything broken about corporate life.

His views, always unapologetic, became more strident over time and pushed everyone away. That also felt like family.

You don’t choose family, and you don’t get to edit out the parts that shaped you before you understood what was happening. The racism and the provocations were always there, maybe, just quieter. The 2023 comments that ended Dilbert’s newspaper run were unambiguous.

For Scott, like family, I’m a better person for the contribution. I hope I can represent the good things: the humor, the clarity of thought, the compounding good habits with health and money. I can avoid the ugliness—the racism, the grievance, the need to be right at any cost.

Taking inventory is harder than eulogizing or denouncing. But it’s more honest.

>>jchall+(OP)
This comment reminds me of when I talked to a few Chinese friends about their thoughts on Mao. They all acknowledged the failed policies which led to famine, yet they also admired that he basically gave Chinese people their pride back.

They related him to an uncle figure who became a mean drunk.

>>throw4+Z4
Well that’s the kicker right? Mao gave way for later leaders who lifted China out of poverty. The normalization of all this craziness is what led the USA to where it is today. Two quite different trajectories.

>>lambda+Jb
Not very different. In fact, both endpoints seem very similar, even though the starts were different.

If anything, the US is still far away from as bad as China.

>>marcos+6i
> If anything, the US is still far away from as bad as China

That is a matter of opinion

I am unsure about social conditions within the countries ( freedom Vs. economic security -hard to compare)

But in international relations the USA has been a rouge state for many decades (e.g. tjr Gulf of Tonkin deception). The USA pretends to care about "values", but does not, it cares about it's own interests

China is plain speaking and cares, openly and transparently, about its interests

The USA has institutionalised hypocrisy. China sins her own sins in the open

The USA is much worse than China - to foreigners

>>worik+aF
> China is plain speaking and cares, openly and transparently, about its interests

Hum... Are you from the US or Europe?

The amount of propaganda circulating worldwide about how China is helping propel all developing nations into modernity with infrastructure investment is just ridiculous. (And yeah, there's half a truth in it, like all useful propaganda.)