Comment by Aeolun
2 years ago
I guess what we learn from this is that not everyone is as enterprising as you? While on some level I’d say that, of course you can do it if you want to. There’s many people for whom that is just too much of a leap, and it feels unfair to say they don’t deserve happiness just because they can’t make themselves seek it.
> unfair to say they don’t deserve happiness just because they can’t make themselves seek it.
You and I have very different ideas about what's fair.
Really? Do you think it's fair that some kids will be able to command historic levels of political and capital power by being born and never need to work, most kids will need to work at this point it seems until death, some kids will achieve "needing to work until death" status by working harder than anyone else while being hungry and housing insecure, and many kids will simply live and die in squalor whether they work or not?
Considering we seem to be discussing the USA, the richest nation in human history, this seems very unfair to me. It seems to me at minimum we should easily be able to remove squalor conditions no matter how little someone works.
well... that's a completely different point than the one they were disagreeing with, no?
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> it feels unfair to say they don’t deserve happiness just because they can’t make themselves seek it
While I’d agree, you’ve read the OP’s comment in a significantly darker light than I did, or than I can get the text to support
Ah, I wasn’t necessarily trying to imply anything about OP’s post.
Just that what worked for him might not work for many others. I’m still happy to hear he did ;)
I think I agree on your take. Mental strength in people in adverse conditions is not the rule, it is the exception. Most won't have enough of it to overcome the difficulties and will instead fall prey to easy traps like drugs etc. It is easy for most of us, who have managed well enough to be commenting here which probably implies a baseline amount of mental strength, to take the shining examples and think that these examples are universal tools of motivation. To a person that is dealing with the deep-seated problems we are talking about, that could be, indeed, motivation but also could feel like we are mocking them or trivializing their struggles. Only you can feel your toothache, me saying other people experience it and get over it, doesn't lower your pain (obviously this is a scale and this analogy isn't universal).
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OP sounds too servile to appreciate the hatred we have for Horatio Alger.
yeah, I mean, I made it (what was it?) I think I became conscious and awake at 16, and with a computer did anything imaginable. We have all became 10x with the internet, and will probably be 100x with AI.
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The whole point of this study is to show that a well off person can do the bare minimum and a disadvantaged person could be doing way more than minimum, and the disadvantaged person will end up being disparaged as must have been doing the bare minimum.
It's as if you're responding to a different comment than the OP. GP talks about dealing with many years of hardship, no food, losing their house and car, and so on. Tolerating that and coming out stronger doesn't seem like doing "the bare minimum" to me.