Comment Re:ICE-9 confirmed (Score 1) 75
Interestingly, Vonnegut made it clear in interviews that the story Harrison Bergeron was deliberately intended to be an over-the-top parody of the claims made by Ayn-Rand style "meritocracy" folks, by stretching their belief system to the point of ridicule so he could make fun of it. Vonnegut himself tended towards socialism, as is clear from most of his works. You might want to try reading the story again with that interpretation and perhaps you will see it in a new light.
Some discussion here, and elsewhere.
Also, you might want to learn about Poe's Law.
Personally, I have often found that the people I have known who worry about things like "the tyranny of the weak" often tend to have some pretty tyrant-like ideas themselves, and may imagine that THEY are the best sort of people and deserve to be in control. They also tend to conveniently choose the criteria that "best" is judged by to include whatever they are good at, and not include the skills of others, particularly social skills.
By the standards of most cavemen, you yourself are probably pretty weak, I'd imagine. You probably wouldn't survive a one-on-one fight with one. Or with a gorilla for that matter. Or with a mammoth, or with a sabre-tooth tiger. And yet, weirdly enough, those aren't what rules the world today. It's almost as though the ability to work effectively in groups often outweighs the ability of individuals to excel at any particular skill...
It's not necessarily the strongest who survive. Sometimes they're the first to get taken out. For the safety of others who they might otherwise try to dominate and control. There is still strength in numbers, after all, and just because the strongest, or smartest, or most vicious, or whatever may think they have the right to be in control doesn't mean that everybody else is obligated to allow them into that position. People act according to their talents and protect their interests, and evolution works in far stranger ways than are dreamt of in Ayn Rand's rather simplistic philosophy. Sometimes societal evolution trumps individual evolution, and the battle is won by the most socially connected rather than by the strongest, because that is also a form of strength.
Something to think about.