跟读练习: a warning for high achievers - 通过视频学习英语口语
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I did everything right.
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I tried every single sport until I found one that stuck.
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I grinded through my entire four years of high school so that I could get into a good college.
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I did a competitive internship in New York City.
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I posted every single week on YouTube for five years until I built a community of hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
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I did everything.
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I tried my absolute hardest.
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And it still wasn't enough to get me the success that I wanted.
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Because somehow, no matter how hard I try, I'll always feel like I'm falling behind.
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Like I'm failing.
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Does that sound like you?
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Because if so, then you're just like me.
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Someone who stacks up their external life achievements just to feel like they're enough.
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Someone who gives their 110%.
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Someone who, theoretically, should feel like enough.
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I've spent my entire life up until now putting one foot in front of the other, running as fast as I can towards the finish line without bothering to look up.
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And I wake up most mornings feeling like a lazy, worthless potato.
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Not even in a self -deprecating way, but in a genuine structural way.
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Like there is some internal meter that never moves and leaves me perpetually behind.
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And for a long time I thought that I was the problem.
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That there was something deeply wrong with me.
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Why was I never satisfied?
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Why was I always jealous of other people's achievements?
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yet unimpressed by my own.
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Why couldn't I for once just be satisfied?
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What I didn't know then
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and what I'm about to break down for you in this video is
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that this wasn't about me or about you or about any one of us individually.
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The chronic disappointment in ourselves isn't a character flaw.
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It's a design feature.
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We aren't failing the system.
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The system is working as intended.
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It's just working against us.
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We are all raised on the same story.
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Work hard, be smart, make the right choices, and the world will reward you.
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So as long as you do things right, follow the rules, and put of your effort into everything, there is no way that you won't succeed.
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And if you don't succeed, well that means that you didn't try your hardest.
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It also means that you're essentially a failure.
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The word meritocracy first appeared in print in 1956 in an article by British sociologist Alan Fox.
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Fox was trying to put a name to something he was observing in modern society.
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A new way of ranking people.
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One that was quietly replacing the old aristocratic ways of birth and class with something that felt more fair on the surface.
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A combination of ability, intelligence, and effort.
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Two years years later, British sociologist and politician Michael Young brought the term meritocracy to mainstream consciousness with his satirical dystopian novel, The Rise of the Meritocracy,
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written explicitly in the mold of Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984.
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Young imagined a nightmare future society ruled by an educated, entitled elite who believed with complete sincerity that they deserved all of their power.
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The new hierarchy wasn't built on bloodlines or inheritance, it was built on IQ tests, on exam results and school credentials.
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Sound familiar?
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The new hierarchy It looked fair.
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Even now it probably sounds fair to you.
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Does it not?
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And that's precisely what makes it so cool.
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When the system seems fair, you can no longer point to the system for failure.
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You can only point to yourself.
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If you were curious, the book actually ends in revolt.
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The narrator, a true believer in the merit of meritocracy, is killed in the social unrest that he denied.
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Young delivers the news in a single dry footnote.
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Since the author of this essay was himself killed at Peterloo, the publishers regret that they were not able to submit to him the proofs of his manuscript.
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Young was giving us a warning about meritocracy.
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And what do we do with that warning?
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Oh, oh yeah, we turn it into the blueprint.
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Meritocracy is the foundational myth of our free, democracy -based society.
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The idea that everyone begins at the same starting line.
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And how far you get from there, your position in the race of life is determined by only one thing: your merit, how hard you work.
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It's the myth that success is earned, not inherited.
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That the playing field, while not perfectly level, is level enough to consider effort the first and primary variable.
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the right hustle and the right place and the right time, would get you to something called success.
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What we forgot though was what success actually looked like once you got there.
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We never asked when we could stop and be satisfied.
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There is a particular texture, a sour taste to being a high achiever in today's world.
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Someone your age has probably done extraordinary things.
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Things you can only ever dream of doing.
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Things you know that in this lifetime you could probably never do.
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And while that kind of makes you feel inspired, it mainly just makes you feel like shit.
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Like when measured against someone else's extraordinary things, your extraordinary things are pretty ordinary.
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Someone in the room has done it better, earlier, and with more credentials than you have.
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And with social media, it has never been easier to fact check that.
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Merit has become equivalent to our worth.
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And when merit becomes equivalent to worth, things get scary.
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Michael Sandel, a philosopher, professor at Harvard, and author of The Tyranny of Merit, can help us out with this.
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His core argument is this.
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Meritocracy becomes tyrannical when it stops being something like a hiring principle
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and starts looking more like a cosmic verdict on your worth as a person.
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winners and losers.
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We tell the losers that they deserved to lose.
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That their failure isn't a temporary outcome, it's a permanent character flaw.
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And that produces something genuinely terrifying.
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The hubris of the winners and the humiliation of the losers creates a trap of believing
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that every failure and success is a reflection of who you are, rather than any external circumstances.
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Every metric that isn't actively growing is proof that you're not working hard enough, you're not smart enough, you're just not enough.
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Sandell calls this the tyranny of merit.
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And the worst part is that it never goes away.
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When you're failing, it's there to remind you that this is all your fault.
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And when you're succeeding, it makes you feel like you haven't actually arrived at success.
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It creates a deep fear of failure because at any time, your entire worth could be stripped from you.
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And you'll just become one of the losers.
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Let's take a quick step backwards.
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Why was this system created in the first place?
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How did we get here?
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Here is where we're gonna get deep in the political theory.
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Don't worry, I've written down all my notes.
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They're all here on Notability.
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Shout out Notability, by the way.
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This app genuinely saved my life this past semester, guys.
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I would not be here without it.
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Being able to handwrite all of my notes
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and have them automatically converted to text and be searchable is such a game changer.
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Also, the most amazing annotation and summarization capabilities for literally any PDF in the universe.
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And it came especially in clutch for this video where I'm pulling from not one, not two, not three, but four different PDFs.
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Four different books, girls.
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I did my research.
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most shocking and uncomfortable thing I've read in a long time and by far the most inspiring.
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His argument is that liberalism didn't fail.
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It wasn't implemented badly.
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Actually, it was implemented successfully.
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And this is what its success looks like.
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Okay, quick clarification before we go any further.
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When I say liberalism, I don't mean left -wing politics.
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Danine and I, yes my good friend Danine, mean something much older.
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The entire philosophical tradition going back hundreds of years that defines freedom as the absence of constraint on the
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AKA the right to pursue your own dreams, your desires, your own definition of the good life.
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It is the giant communal pool that both the left and the right, all of America, swims in.
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Dineen argues that when you build an entire civilization around the individual, around the idea that you should be free to do whatever you want, unbeholden to anyone, you don't actually get people who are free.
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Instead, you get isolated people.
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People with access to every right in the world and no idea what to do with all of it.
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a good life look like?
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The local community, your family, the traditions passed down through generations.
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When you take all of those preconceived notions away, you're liberating people from those constraints, but you're simultaneously locking them into a new kind of confinement.
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What does a good life actually look like?
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How do I know?
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What am I supposed to be working towards?
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And in this lostness and confusion, the only guiding light is the market.
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It provides a clean and simple answer to all of these questions.
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What does a good life actually look like?
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It looks like getting more.
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It looks like getting better.
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It looks like getting better than the people around you you always always wanting more
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because now success is something
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that you can buy as long as you have the money
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to pay the price of course nothing's for free in the meritocracy but what
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if you don't want to just buy your success you want something more satisfactory more nourishing where do we find that?
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We don't have an answer.
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So what we're running towards isn't success.
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We're just running towards a direction.
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Maybe the direction of money or status.
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But those directions don't have finish lines.
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We have been running for so long in those directions that we've forgotten where we're even going.
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Okay.
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Pause.
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So what does this mean for us now?
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You might be thinking to yourself, Deneen, Sandell, and Young are just really well -credentialed Debbie Downers who are telling me the game is rigged
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and that I should stop playing.
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Is that it?
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Does this mean that I should just not try at all in life?
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That we should all fight against the system and become unemployed chuds?
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Let me be clear, that is not what I'm trying to say.
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Don't use this as an excuse to just become an unemployed chud.
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Unless you really want to, then it's your free will.
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I'm also not saying that we need to tear all of society down right now
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and restructure it from the top to the bottom.
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What I am saying is this.
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The way that we think about and internalize success needs to change.
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Eventually we'll get to out there, but let's start with In Here.
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Dineen actually provides a super useful framework in his book Regime Change.
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He calls it bottom -up localism.
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The importance of rebuilding what he calls thick communities.
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Tightly knit, local -rooted networks of people who know each other, show up for each other, and define each other by something other than just what they've achieved on paper.
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The kind of community that meritocracy quietly destroys.
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Because when the goal is to constantly get somewhere better, you never invest in the place that you currently are.
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Think neighborhoods, local volunteer groups, recreational clubs, close family networks, long -time friendships, being present in the communities that are literally around you.
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We can't keep sacrificing the now for the later." Deneen calls this the "Tocqueville option" named after Alexei de Tocqueville,
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the 19th century French thinker who observed that what made American democracy actually work wasn't the federal government.
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It was ordinary citizens showing up for their community, their neighbors, their family.
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Deneen argues that because of meritocracy we've lost that, but we can get it back.
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However, getting it back requires effort.
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In the meritocracy way.
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It requires showing up consistently, giving support selflessly, and being present with the people and places that you already claim as yours.
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Having a community and a support network that sees you as a person rather than a portfolio, produces something that meritocracy cannot prevent: the feeling of unconditional worth.
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The people who love you are completely immune to the metrics.
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They love you regardless of if you're succeeding or failing, regardless of whether you think you're enough.
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They love you just because, and they won't stop.
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So lean into them.
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And I mean actually lean in.
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Respond to your texts, make those plans, actually show up to those plans, don't bail.
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Do the volunteer work, sign up for that club, invest in the neighborhood where you live.
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As a way of reminding yourself that you exist outside of your output.
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The community piece is only half of it
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because you can have all of that publicly
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and still be suffering privately beyond
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and before showing care to others You have to learn how to show care to yourself loving yourself wholeheartedly
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and unconditionally is the greatest achievement It is the biggest Success of life
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and we should all be actively working towards it every single day
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because at the end of the day the only person who will be spending each
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and Every moment of your life with you every high
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and low every win and loss every failure
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and every success is you I'm saying that when you fail
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and you will we all will it's inevitable in the way
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that we talk to ourselves when it's two in the Morning
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and we feel like we're not doing enough in the jealousy
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that we feel towards others when they succeed at something in the way that we
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We're told that the antidote to all of this is just working harder, achieving more, being smarter, but it's none of those.
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It's learning to actually be on your own side, to dispel thoughts that don't serve you, to do away with needless comparison because not everyone needs to be an Olympian, okay?
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Learn to be as patient with yourself as you would be with someone that you love, to look at your own life and tell yourself that you can work with this, that you are enough.
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Not because you've earned it, not because you've done everything right, just because you are.
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that with every fiber of your being and you act upon that, you are going to be able to achieve anything you want.
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And if you do fail, you will never be too scared to get up and try again, because you know that you're already enough.
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Okay, everyone, that's all that I got today.
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Thank you so much for staying until the end.
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If you enjoyed this video essay, please give it a like and subscribe and stick around.
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Let me know what topics you want to see me talk about next.
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I love you all so, so, so much.
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See you in the next one.
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Bye bye!
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Bye.
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本课的词汇与口语要点
这节 C1 级别的口语课以视频“a warning for high achievers”为素材。 这段视频共有 214 个句子、2520 个单词可供跟读。 讲话部分时长为 12:17。 说话人语速较快，每分钟约 205 个词，会出现较多连读和弱读。 84% 的单词属于英语最常用的 3,000 词，其余的词建议在练习前先学一下。
视频中的重点词汇
视频中最难的 15 个单词，附发音和释义：
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| meritocracy 名词 | /mɛɹəˈtɑkɹəsi/ | 精英政治, 精英管理 |
| merit 名词 | /ˈmɛɹɪt/ | 功勞 /功劳, 功績 /功绩 |
| loser 名词 | /luzɚ/ | 輸家 /输家 |
| credential 名词 | /kɹɪˈdɛnʃəl/ | 证书 |
| satisfy 动词 | /ˈsætɪsfaɪ/ | 滿足 /满足 |
| constraint 名词 | /kənˈstɹeɪnt/ | 約束 /约束 |
| sociologist 名词 | 社會學家 /社会学家 | |
| liberalism 名词 | /ˈlɪ.b(ə.)ɹə.lɪz.əm/ | 自由主義 /自由主义 |
| tyranny 名词 | /ˈtɪəɹəni/ | 僭主政治, 獨裁 /独裁 |
| flaw 名词 | /flɔ/ | 疵 |
| hierarchy 名词 | /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/ | 等級制度 /等级制度, 階層 /阶层 |
| metric 形容词 | /ˈmɛt.ɹɪk/ | 公制 |
| unemployed 形容词 | /ˌʌnɪmˈplɔɪd/ | 失業的 /失业的 |
| observe 动词 | /əbˈzɜːv/ | 遵守, 遵循 |
| myth 名词 | /mɪθ/ | 迷思 |
视频中出现的短语动词
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| do away with 动词 | 廢除 /废除, 終止 /终止 | |
| fall behind 动词 | 遲到 /迟到 | |
| get up 动词 | 起床 | |
| go away 动词 | 離開 /离开, 走 | |
| go back 动词 | 回去, 返回 | |
| look up 动词 | /ˌlʊk ˈʌp/ | 仰, 上看 |
| show up 动词 | 露面 | |
| wake up 动词 | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | 醒, 醒來 /醒来 |
值得反复跟读的句子
视频中简短而完整的句子，可以直接用在日常对话里：
- Does that sound like you?
- Why was I never satisfied?
- Why was I always jealous of other people's achievements?
- Why couldn't I for once just be satisfied?
- How did we get here?
视频中的语法
说话人最常用的结构，并附上视频中的原话：
| 结构 | 视频中的用法 |
|---|---|
| 现在完成时 have/has + 过去分词 — 过去发生但与现在仍有关联的事 | I've spent · has probably done · has done |
| 被动语态 be + 过去分词 — 强调发生了什么，而不是谁做的 | be satisfied · wasn't built · is killed |
| 定语从句 who / which + 从句 — 补充说明人或事物 | Someone who stacks · Someone who gives · people who are |
需要注意的发音
说话人用了 67 次缩略和弱读形式，例如 you're, don't, I'm。请按听到的简短形式来说。
- “th” 音: myth /mɪθ/, worthless /ˈwɜːθ.ləs/
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: credential /kɹɪˈdɛnʃəl/, annotation /ˌæn.əˈteɪ.ʃən/, foundational /faʊnˈdeɪ.ʃə.nəl/, nourish /ˈnʌɹ.ɪʃ/, clarification /ˌklæɹɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/
- 长单词——注意重音位置: meritocracy /mɛɹəˈtɑkɹəsi/, liberalism /ˈlɪ.b(ə.)ɹə.lɪz.əm/, hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/, annotation /ˌæn.əˈteɪ.ʃən/, aristocratic /ˌæɹɪstəˈkɹætɪk/
如何用这段视频练习
- 先完整听一遍视频，不要开口，记下不认识的单词。
- 先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟读，熟练之后再回到正常速度。
- 录下自己的声音并与原声对比，特别注意 meritocracy, merit, loser 这类单词。
什么是跟读法？
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。