Claim. A person can spend a lifetime convinced the better thing will prevail, watch the inferior thing win everywhere, and be ground down into never resolving what they believe — disillusionment is a slow erosion, not a single event.
Elaboration. Gabriel “spent the majority of his career betting on the fact that Lisp would eventually win… but then watching it not win.” He wrote “worst is better,” rebutted himself under a pseudonym, then wrote a third essay judging the prior two — and “never decided.” His own company, founded on the elegant ideal, “ended up writing an IDE for C++… just to keep the lights on”: the man who explained why the worst thing wins now shipping the worst thing to survive. The pastoral interest is not the technology but the soul. Faithfulness to “the right thing” is hardest not under open persecution but under the quiet, decades-long experience of being right and losing anyway. That erosion is where many believers actually lose conviction — and where holding one’s portion (believers-responsibility) is tested most.
See also. what-spreads-beats-what-is-perfect