Mastodawn

Erika Hammerschmidt Mar 22, 2023

"Harrison Bergeron" is a dystopian story in which equality is achieved by a Handicapper General who works to reduce any unfair natural advantage anyone is perceived to have.

Sturgeon's Law is the claim that 95% of all creative work is crap.

A merging of the two ("Harrison Stergeron") would be a world where the abnormal 5% of works that are not crap would be forcibly edited to crap level.

One might imagine regretting this, but fear not: the name spelled backward reads "No regrets, no sirrah."

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mataliandy

I just heard about a book named "Harrison Bergeron" in which "equality is achieved by a Handicapper General who works to reduce any unfair natural advantage anyone is perceived to have." (h/t Erika Hammerschmidt)

The trope that making society better for all necessarily means making it worse for some, is one of the cornerstones of eugenics and other bigoted philosophies.

I'd probably have a hard time reading a book that promotes that premise, even if it's very well written.