I read that as “looking for the right person to fall in love with”. Then the sense is “be the right person for someone else”. But that achieves a different goal entirely, since it doesn’t make the other person right for you.
There are many cases where you want a different person right for the task.
Name three!
Romantic partners (inherently), trading and working partners (allowing you to specialize in your comparative advantage), deputies and office-holders (allowing you to deputize), soldiers (allowing you to send someone else to their death to win the war).
I assume the original intent of the quote was about romantic partners, where it means, “Instead of searching so hard, make sure to prioritize being awesome for its own sake.”
I was trying to repurpose it to express that action is better than preparing for something to fall into place more generally, and I think it’s appealed to people.
I originally read it as being about politics. We keep thinking that somewhere there’s a candidate worth voting for, and then things will be ok, but instead we should be trying to become the worthy candidates, even if only for local office. Or perhaps toward improving the world generally. Instead of deciding whether to pay Yudkowsky or Bostrom to work on existential risk, we should try applying our own talents. Similar to “[T]he phrase ‘Someone ought to do something’ was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider ‘and that someone is me’.”
Skimming Gloria Steinem’s biography, I am more confident in this reading.
But you don’t have to be perfect to be the right person in a team, and you don’t have to be “the” right person to be an asset to a team. People with low self-confidence plus low social confidence (plus possibly moralistic ideas about self-reliance) will try to self-improve through their own efforts rather than seeking help, regardless of how much less effective it is, believing they’re not worth someone else’s attention yet, or being afraid of owing someone, or whatever; quotes like Steinem’s reinforce that.
...Maybe. I don’t have any actual sources, so I could be totally wrong. Still, I’m not sure I like the focus on “being” rather than doing things.
-Gloria Steinem
I read that as “looking for the right person to fall in love with”. Then the sense is “be the right person for someone else”. But that achieves a different goal entirely, since it doesn’t make the other person right for you.
There are many cases where you want a different person right for the task.
Romantic partners (inherently), trading and working partners (allowing you to specialize in your comparative advantage), deputies and office-holders (allowing you to deputize), soldiers (allowing you to send someone else to their death to win the war).
I assume the original intent of the quote was about romantic partners, where it means, “Instead of searching so hard, make sure to prioritize being awesome for its own sake.”
I was trying to repurpose it to express that action is better than preparing for something to fall into place more generally, and I think it’s appealed to people.
I originally read it as being about politics. We keep thinking that somewhere there’s a candidate worth voting for, and then things will be ok, but instead we should be trying to become the worthy candidates, even if only for local office. Or perhaps toward improving the world generally. Instead of deciding whether to pay Yudkowsky or Bostrom to work on existential risk, we should try applying our own talents. Similar to “[T]he phrase ‘Someone ought to do something’ was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider ‘and that someone is me’.”
Skimming Gloria Steinem’s biography, I am more confident in this reading.
How isn’t “looking for” or “searching hard” action?
You still have to be the right person to be the right person in a team....?
But you don’t have to be perfect to be the right person in a team, and you don’t have to be “the” right person to be an asset to a team. People with low self-confidence plus low social confidence (plus possibly moralistic ideas about self-reliance) will try to self-improve through their own efforts rather than seeking help, regardless of how much less effective it is, believing they’re not worth someone else’s attention yet, or being afraid of owing someone, or whatever; quotes like Steinem’s reinforce that.
...Maybe. I don’t have any actual sources, so I could be totally wrong. Still, I’m not sure I like the focus on “being” rather than doing things.
Who said anything about being perfect?
And if you’re an asset, you sound prettymuch like the right person to me.
To me the clause “be the right person” sounds very much active/action-based.
Completely putting teamwork aside, most major contributions to humanity were achieved by standing on the shoulders of those who came before.