As a former gifted kid who has had their fair share of struggles around identity, competency, and success, having to redefine each multiple times as the world shifts around me and ladders are either yanked up or burned down just as I arrive to climb them:

It sucks. It sucks ass. It has lead to many a night shouting in rage, anger, depression, and malaise. It continues to incense me as I see reprehensible actions receive phenomenal rewards in the short term for inflicting harm, and ignorance of their consequences of the long-term. It sucks.

You’re not alone, at least, and acknowledging that reality helped me rally around more social causes as I accepted that individual success was more luck than talent or effort, at least at present. It doesn’t really get easier to accept that reality either, even as I work to create a better one that’s built more around objectivity than individuality. Still, I’ve been far calmer, more productive, and even happier as I acknowledge the reality around me instead of reject it out of some notion of “specialness” or exceptionalism.

Acknowledging the reality around you is, in its own way, quite liberating, even if it’s also frustrating and lonely at present.

20 different British Prime ministers went to a single school ( high school I think in US terms ) - Eton.

The way you get into Eton is largely via money and social connections - not excellence ( though it's a good school ).

What's interesting is that 18 of those were before 1964. Then there was a gap of ~50 years, and then we got 2 in quick succession recently.

So social mobility ( and the idea of a meritocracy ) flourished for a bit, but we've gone in reverse recently.

I see the same happening in the US - Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer, Trump is a billioniare, Hilary ( the almost president ) was the wife of previous president, George W Bush was the son of a previous President.

One of the problems is that many successful people now seem to believe it's all down to them, and therefore the world can be split into the deserving and undeserving.

That's simply not true - life is more complex than that - and sure talent and hardwork matter - and matter a lot - but Jeff Bezos isn't worth ( measured in output ) ~1 million times more than his average employee - there is nothing Amazon has created that wouldn't have happened anyway without Jeff - he didn't invent online shopping or cloud computing - though he did execute very very well.

And let me be clear Jeff is very good at his job and deserves to reap the benefit of that - but ~250 billion in one persons hands isn't proportionate - he's not worth that, and he has spent some of that putting Katy Perry into space - I'd argue not the best use of the worlds resources.

I think the big mistake is to assume that the landscape remains static during your lifetime. This hasn't really been true for a hundred years now (and possibly a bit more than that), and that rate-of-change is only accelerating.

I sort of relate. I suspect the misplaced confidence one can develop from early successes in one's career eventually manifests as a lot of beliefs needing to be unlearned later in life (especially when facing challenges requiring resilience). I think I am a better person for it (and that is the point).

I've watched those ladders disappear at least twice and come back over my life (Dotcom bubble and the Global Financial Crisis). These things are cyclical and for somethings we are at a low point. But in the long run there will always be opportunities for talent to florish.

But isn’t being special rather… lonely?

When you're a rising star, they blend narcissistic personality disorders into your paycheck. The only metric you need in order to feel that societal love, is a good performance review and a bonus.