A Japanese idiom that means people who have strong opinions or are extreme will be knocked down a peg, this phrase is a good representation of the difference between Asian cultures and U.S. cultures. Both my wife MJ and I are what I would consider "reserved" people, where we don't express our opinion too strongly to others. MJ actually has strong opinions about how people should act, but she saves her complaints for home when she tells me about them. I generally don't have strong opinions except on certain issues like money and studying techniques, which is because I accept that I might not have thought of everything yet. MJ and I are reserved for different reasons, but a common reason is we were raised in Asian family households that did not reward having strong opinions and speaking out about them.
I used to think U.S. society wasn't that much more extreme than Asian ones, but it seems like more and more that people have very strong opinions and won't be convinced by anyone else's arguments. It's fashionable to show a strong opinion on social media (one of the few places people have conversations anymore), and some people online will even berate those who don't have a strong opinion on something. Often I wonder if the strong opinions people take are even truly their own or just motivated by the opinion that they think society WANTS them to have, so in reality they're actually the ones being nailed down to what society wants them to be. Maybe the more courageous and bold thing to do now is actually NOT to take strong and bold stances and be willing enough to hear both sides of the story to seek to understand what the other side wants and where it is coming from. Just imagine the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump this week if each side actually listened to the other side; we certainly wouldn't get 2 seemingly completely different versions of the facts of what Trump did as well as Senators just voting down party lines, except for Mitt Romney.
"Nail that sticks out" also refers to people in a company or a group who try to lead and do stand out among the other employees, and here I do think the American style is better, to find one's own path and seek to become a leader. Lots of innovators like Marc Zuckerburg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, were trying to do something new that other people hadn't tried before, that they probably took on a lot of riks to believe in something that wasn't popular in their circle of friends or co-workers. In Asian societies, the nails sticking out might have been hammered back in to conform to everyone else and to have a collectivist society, but luckily for iPhone users, Facebook users, and plenty of other great technological inventions, those leaders went against the grain and didn't mind being hammered back down. That's the kind of conviction and strong opinions we need to have in today's society.
Another "nail" in the stock market recently has been TSLA..... the stock is just on a ridiculous run, going from $170 to $900+ price in just several months, including doubling from $400 just this calendar year (since January 1, 2020). It's routinely up 20% or so before I've even finished my morning milk (instead of morning coffee, I have morning milk). This kind of rapid move up Is not very sustainable, and because the stock market has the saying "bulls make a little, bears make a little, and hogs get slaughtered," TSLA came down substantially today, losing 20% on a day all other NASDAQ stocks are up. It doesn't mean that TSLA's a bad investment, or that it won't go back up, but once in a while a stock just needs to get beaten down a little bit; it can't just keep going up in a straight line, of course.
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