Designed to Reject
The brutality of a system that rewards linearity, punishes wandering, and calls it success
“It seems we’ve created a vast multilayered system that evaluates the worth of millions of young adults and, most of the time, tells them they are not up to snuff.”
Swipe left.
Ghosting.
Rejection.
In cultures of hypercompetition and superselectivity, these behaviours permeate our lives and become the world we know.
Reading this piece by David Brooks, I can’t help but think of the dehumanising and brutal practices in the current job market.
I experienced them last year, and that led me into hundreds of conversations with people around the world facing chronic rejection.
Competitive exclusion doesn’t just take a toll on our mental well-being.
It also suffocates our creativity.
At a very early stage, young people are pushed to narrow down their possibilities, to specialise, to pick a path so they have more chances of jumping through the myriad hoops ahead.
Is adult life punishing kids for wandering?
Feels like that, if the only valid game is one of security and linearity, where advancement requires defeating others. If you even make it to the next level...
We've transformed belonging, stability, and worth into a game where losing is the default setting.
Everything is a rat race, where you’re the loser almost all the time.
And oh boy, that dopamine hit when you finally win!
One sweet second that vanishes when nobody likes your post on social media.
Hopefully, if we pay attention between slap in the face and dopamine hit, we can grasp the madness of the system.
And realise that, in this tug of war, winning might just look like relaxing our grip and dropping the rope.