American society only rewards charisma and "coolness", not competence.

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onethousandknives
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American society only rewards charisma and "coolness", not competence.

Post by onethousandknives »

This I think is a fundamental issue and problem with American society, and I think a lot of the reason why many of us struggle, but also why society is wrecked. https://wonkette.com/629406/sorry-puert ... -hot-meals This is a prime example. This lady has a twitter full of motivational crap, describes herself as a mogul, is a motivational speaker, etc. Gets a 150 million contract she obviously has no ability to handle or do logistics for at all from an incompetent government that can't plan more than two weeks ahead, who was wowed by her "can do" attitude. Meanwhile when someone is competent, this happens.
One asshole who did a little too good of a job, Jose Andres, had his two-week contracts with FEMA discontinued after he served up only 2.3 million hot meals all over the island — and when he wanted a longer, 60-day contract for his nonprofit, FEMA balked. After all, how could FEMA give a $30 million contract to someone who’d proved he could actually feed people, when it had to give $156 million to this one lady who couldn’t?
Your actual competence doesn't matter. The end result of the job doesn't matter. Just feelings and charisma of people. If you try to make money honestly in USA, you generally fail, as being honest with people, giving them an honest time frame, being honest about what is possible for the amount of money the person has and why, people will just call you a 'hater' and go with someone who promises what they want even if it's totally unrealistic/lying, and has a lot of charisma. I'm not saying in other countries or societies that charisma doesn't help things along, but I just don't feel it's as much of a factor in business and by extension relationships as it is in USA.

But confidence and charisma is plain out useless without competence. In almost all my American business dealings, or dealings in general with people, almost every single time someone has been confident and charismatic, they've been dumb and done a crappy job or just were trying to scam me. For me, almost any time I've dealt with someone a bit less confident, more reserved, they've almost always done fantastic work or gotten a reasonable deal, and if they didn't, usually they would readily fix any problems that came up and not blame me, not say I've got 20 years experience and you shut up. Some of this is due to Dunning Kruger effect, but some is due to humility as well.

For an example I know, someone was complaining in my sport, of one coach, a very nice Ukranian man who is almost always quiet, of being a bad coach because he's "creepy" and cold and her daughter not liking him for this reason. In my times talking to him he's always been great to me and I'd like him as a coach one day. He has competed at the Olympics, world championships, two European championships, along with a bunch of other stuff. I said I didn't particularly like my experience with one other coach, an American, who competed only at nationals once here in USA, because his coaching style was completely random and relied basically entirely on emotion and had no coherency from lesson to lesson and seemed to be made up entirely on the fly. She said she and her daughter loved this man as a coach and thought he was great. Because he was charismatic. Never mind his actual competence is lower, he acts like a loud obnoxious jackass, he's so charismatic compared to that "creepy" quiet guy, who actually knowing said charismatic coach and his pervy shit he says constantly, I think the "creepy" label is more apt for him anyway. But charisma wins.

I think even in academics now, charisma wins over even grades. I was study halls in high school where the teacher encouraged people to talk and have conversations, and would make fun of people actually studying. He was a charismatic teacher everyone loved. Nevermind you couldn't, even if you wanted to, achieve an academic goal in his study hall.

This I think, if I could pick a fundamental issue or breaking point with American society, is charisma is probably more important here than any other country on Earth. And of course this applies to dating as well. Charisma, and confidence, is valued more than competence and humility.

Oh well, time for bed.
CB8
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Re: American society only rewards charisma and "coolness", not competence.

Post by CB8 »

onethousandknives wrote:
February 8th, 2018, 12:27 am
In almost all my American business dealings, or dealings in general with people, almost every single time someone has been confident and charismatic, they've been dumb and done a crappy job or just were trying to scam me. For me, almost any time I've dealt with someone a bit less confident, more reserved, they've almost always done fantastic work or gotten a reasonable deal, and if they didn't, usually they would readily fix any problems that came up and not blame me, not say I've got 20 years experience and you shut up. Some of this is due to Dunning Kruger effect, but some is due to humility as well.
I've had the same experiences. It was always the cheery, boasting socialites that did the worst job. But they could make everyone around them think they're God on Earth, until they inevitably trip themselves up.

I think America loves confidence over competence because it's very align with our culture of superficiality. Flash over substance. "Fake it until you make it." It's just too bad most people never "make it" because they're too busy trying to put up the image of being competent instead of actually working towards being competent.
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Cornfed
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Re: American society only rewards charisma and "coolness", not competence.

Post by Cornfed »

Isn't this a case of apeffirmative action rather than "charisma"?
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