Stereotypes Apply Until Proven Otherwise
My one-sentence rule for navigating life:
Every stereotype is accurate until the individual personally demonstrates otherwise.
Society shouldn’t have to contort itself to accommodate every personal choice. If you decide to live, dress, speak, eat, or behave differently from the cultural norm, that’s your prerogative - but the burden is on you to prove you’re the exception. Not on everyone else to pretend the pattern doesn’t exist.
This isn’t cruelty. It’s efficiency. It’s how humans have always operated until very recently. We use patterns because they save time. The person who wants to be seen as an individual carries the responsibility of showing it.
Business lunches prove the point
After enough client meals, one thing becomes obvious: Western cuisine dominates corporate tables for a reason.
It’s clean. No heavy spices, no lingering garlic or curry on your suit, no messy sauces that stain.
It’s practical for people who need to move straight into meetings without broadcasting what they ate.
lenty of ethnic cuisines are delicious. But many leave a scent that clings for hours. Choosing one anyway isn’t oppression it’s a deliberate decision.
You’re prioritizing flavor over professional optics. That’s fine, just own it. Don’t demand the rest of the table pretend the smell isn’t there.
The lobbyist who wants everything
Here’s where the rule gets sharper.
Imagine a donor or lobbyist who pushed hard for military action in the Middle East. Now the war is “won,” but key shipping lanes are unstable, energy prices stay elevated, and equity markets are jittery.
Yet this same person wants the geopolitical outcome, the oil flow, and a rising stock market — all at once.
When reality won’t give you every prize, the response is often to force it: push more policy, inject more liquidity, talk up sentiment, anything to keep the indices climbing.
You want the war result and the bull market.
You want the disruption and the smooth capital flows.
You want everything.
Greed is Good
The stereotype of the connected insider who rigs the game for personal gain fits perfectly here — until that person shows me concrete actions proving otherwise. Most never do.
Life is about incentives
Look at what people’s incentives actually are, not what they say their incentives are. The patterns become obvious very quickly.
Some people have skin in multiple games at once and they’re trying to win all of them simultaneously.
When that happens, someone else usually pays the price through higher prices, market volatility, or squeezed opportunities.
This isn’t conspiracy thinking.
It’s pattern recognition.
Stereotypes exist because they’ve been right far more often than they’ve been wrong.
The burden of disproving them sits squarely on the individual who claims to be the exception.