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The case against the “Friend Argument”
I’m not a murderer; some of my best friends are alive.
—Sean Lock
Having a friend who belongs to a demographic that one hates isn’t incompatible with a prejudice against that demographic – and this is the key to the fallacy. A prejudice, is by its etymology a “pre-judgement” of someone, based on more general information that may not necessarily apply to an individual.
This can be a relatively benign conclusion (“he’s a gay man, he must like fashion”) or it can be the considerably more negative (“he’s a black man, he’s going to stab me”). However, once some has actually gotten beyond the stage of judging someone on prior knowledge, they can change their mind about that individual.
In many cases, this might overturn the prejudice entirely but in the case of people using the friend argument, it has only overturned the prejudice against one individual, or maybe a few more. The prejudice, the pre-judgement against a group of people, still stands. This is why saying you have a friend in one particular demographic doesn’t excuse racism, homophobia or other prejudice; you can’t have a pre-judgement about someone you already know, but you can still maintain your pre-judgement against people you haven’t met.
You don’t have to monetize your joy
Molly Conway absolutely stopped me in my tracks with this great article. Here is a small excerpt but it is worth reading the whole article:
We live in the era of the hustle. Of following our dreams until the end, and then pushing ourselves more. And every time we feel beholden to capitalize on the rare places where our skills and our joy intersect, we underline the idea that financial gain is the ultimate pursuit. If we’re good at it, we should sell it. If we’re good at it and we love it, we should definitely sell it.
Adam J. Kurtz, author of Things Are What You Make of Them has rewritten the maxim for modern creatives: “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life work super fucking hard all the time with no separation or any boundaries and also take everything extremely personally.” Which, aside from being relatable to anyone who has tried to make money from something they truly care about, speaks to an underrepresented truth: those with passion careers can have just as much career anxiety as those who clock in and out of the mindless daily grind.
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
FREE coloring pages from museums around the world
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30 legendary startup pitch decks & what you can learn from them
A pitch deck is a brief presentation that provides clients/investors with an overview of your business. It generally includes your product, sharing your business model, and introducing your team.
Here are some great examples of pitch decks that will help you understand what is persuasive enough to get into a clients head and the best takeaways from each deck so you’ll get an idea of what to include in your pitch deck.
[Story by Aaron Lee, Co-Founder | Leneys]
Fish in a barrel
There’s some confusion here.
Of course it’s easy to shoot fish in a barrel.
The difficult part, the part no one talks about, is getting the fish into the barrel in the first place.
– Seth Godin