Okay, at work I was surrounded by tons of people who were bigots. They would randomly say how they didn't want free college because then who would serve at restaurants, while they would say that they care about the environment. They would casually say that the confederate flag was not a big deal. They would casually comment on how they didn't have any black people in their schools when I sat down at the table. Whenever I sat down they would complain on how men salaries are higher than women, which I would have agreed on if it was not for the fact that the only people always discussing this was middle class white people, who only said this when I black man sat down, and statistically black people make the lowest salaries, so to me it felt like if someone from a buffet came to only complain to starving people that the next person at the buffet got more food than they did.
They made fun of my Mexican coworker who once got mistaken by the guy who was painting the stairs because he was Mexican. And many other microaggressions that are too numerous to tell.
But going to the point of my question: These people were pure asses, but they were brilliant at programming. They did so much better than me, and I was trying my best. It bothered me so much not just because their performance was better, but that they were bigots and their performance was better. It just felt like universal injustice. Made me wonder what was the point of trying if all your effort can just be surpassed by bigots.
I have to admit that I was pretty ignorant of corporate American culture, and had no idea what area I wanted to concentrate on. But somehow these people just knew all that shit. Like, I have no clue how they knew so much.
Which makes me wonder how do you deal with this feeling, and what gives you the motivation to keep trying, when even your best effort can be surpassed by people with terrible attitudes that you hate. Like, I know that I will never surpass people like that, and I don't think the point of life is being in an endless scoreboard, but it literally just feels like pure ass, and I want to hear others experiences. I also hate feeling behind all the time.
The likelihood is they got education/opportunities/connections/etc. that you didn't and (if they are actually more knowledgeable and it's not just your perception of them) this made them more knowledgeable in their specialized field of choice. I use the word knowledgeable for a reason though. The usefulness of knowledge can be highly relative. How much I know about MMOs, for example, is largely useless in a job (unless I were to work on an MMO and those jobs are rare with tons of competition for few roles, I'm sure). But knowing the ins and outs of a commonly-used-in-business programming language could make a huge difference in my life. That one is useful and one is near useless as jobs and making a living are concerned is decided by society and by the conditions of what makes money and so on. Point I'm trying to get at here is, one is not inherently "better" as knowledge. Neither is the person who has it.
What capitalist society values and what people value in each other is not necessarily the same, even if the pervasiveness of it can warp how people see each other sometimes.
Take heart in what you know about revolutionary politics! That is likely something they know jack shit about. You are learning to be more aware and capable in the world as a whole when you become politically studied and experienced. Politics ties into everything (that pervasiveness I mentioned). Work on building a world where people are valued not for their position in an elitist ladder of skill levels at whatever is most profitable, but instead are valued both intrinsically for existing and for how their work contributes to the betterment of all.
You are valuable and important just for existing, as are we all, and they demean and undermine humanity by being so bigoted. It's our task to build a world where society backs us up on that, not just in platitudes, but in material support.