(11-30-2019, 04:18 AM)HandsomeRob86 Wrote:

(11-28-2019, 08:12 PM)americus 2.0 Wrote: It was a general response to what I've seen in my 47 years. I tend to see things from more than just my personal POV and experience. Not making excuses for anyone, just relating the circumstances I've observed. 

So sorry you took it so personally.

I think early in life the excuse you listed matter. But at some point early in adulthood things stop being your parents fault and become your responsibility. Not everybody gets a good path, but at least in the US there is a path for those who are willing to grind. I took a much longer path to my career than many others because of my background, and it stunk, but once I got over self-pity I made a plan to deal with my deficits and move forward. It was trogging thru crap, but eventually I started to make it.

Its like I tell my wife, when your born poor you only get two options: stay poor forever or work real hard and maybe get some moneyy when your older. Capitalism is the only reason we have the second option at all, and too many are just too dense to get that.

The real problem is that very few Americans have any understanding of what it really is to be "poor." We also have very few Americans who've ever had to face any real societal challenge. We've had no great war to fight, we've had no real challenge to overcome and, except for very few, no crippling poverty to defeat. That is, IMO, why we have such significant depression and mental illness in our society. We have it better than any people ever in the history of history...and we have a biological impulse to view everything in the most negative light. That's why people lose their [BLEEP] at the barista for putting the wrong milk in their coffee, never considering how privileged they are to have a choice. Or milk. Or coffee. Because they don't know real adversity in any form and have to manufacture victimhood for their self-esteem. Otherwise they have to accept that they are spoiled pansies living the fat life that billions of people before them (and billions in the present) could barely even dream of living. And we can't have the kind of intellectual honesty, the mind will not permit it.

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