unwritten words

 Ever notice how much of our world is built around the fact that everyone's different? Some folks pick up new ideas in a flash, others need things explained five different ways. Companies make products for a "target user," but there are always people who find them too complicated or too dumbed-down. It's the beautiful mess of cognitive diversity. But what if it wasn't a mess? What if, hypothetically, everyone shared the exact same mental toolkit? Let's say, a solid, practical IQ of 90. No one's a rocket scientist, sure, but no one's struggling to keep up either. Think about it: instruction manuals that everyone gets first try. Software that feels intuitive to every single user. Educational programs with a 100% success rate because they're perfectly tuned to how every student thinks. Sounds almost... utopian in its efficiency, doesn't it? A world of perfect cognitive calibration. What would life really be like there? What would they value? Ho...

 I recently encountered a historical fact that, on its surface, was just information: during a certain period in China, privileged urban youth were sent en masse to remote mountainous areas or farming villages, tasked with learning from the workers and farmers there. What struck me wasn't just the policy itself, with all its complex socio-political ramifications, but the profound jolt it sent through my own unexamined worldview. In my mind, 'urban people' and 'countryside people' were almost distinct categories, existing in their own spheres, shaped by their environments and choices. The idea of them being components that could be deliberately and massively interchanged by an external force felt almost like a violation of a natural order—I had implicitly categorized them as fixed, unmovable parts of the societal landscape. The surprise stemmed from the sheer audacity of the act. It was a stark demonstration of societal structures, which I had perceived as deeply roo...