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I'd say smart, disgruntled people aren't as smart as they think they are. The societal problem is convincing everyone that they're a genius. When life hands t

I'd say smart, disgruntled people aren't as smart as they think they are. The societal problem is convincing everyone that they're a genius. When life hands them less than the best and they have to overcome it, they just get disgruntled, because "they're too smart" to deal with it. Parents, remind your children that there's always going to be someone smarter/faster/stronger/etc than them, and that they should focus on doing as well as they can with the circumstances they're given. There's more good in being the best you can be than there is in being the best; for a lucky few, those things are identical, but for the rest of us they aren't.

jcromartie 17y ago
> there's always going to be someone smarter/faster/stronger/etc than them However in this country (the US) the gaps are wider and the deck is stacked more than in any other industrialized nation in pretty much every category.
- eru 17y ago
  Don't pretend America is the worst nation in the world. A lot of people want to go there because it's better than where they came from. Try complaining against the state in an industrialized nation like China.
  - Sukotto 17y ago
    Why don't we hear more about people flying planes into buildings in China? Or students (or even teachers!) losing it and shooting up their schools? Is it just that they have better control of their media (so we don't hear about it), better control of the people (so they don't get a chance to do it), or something else?
    - eru 17y ago
      Less guns per citizens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_ownership http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_owners...) and less access to planes? By the way, there were also some incidence of pupils shooting up their schools in recent years in Germany. I guess you are just much more exposed to American incidents than to the rest of the world. (E.g. have you heard of the whole ugly neo-nazi stuff in east Germany in the 90ies? It still goes on, though at a much lower level of intensity. It's quite hard to find English language sources on the anti-asylum-seekers riots in Hoyerswerda in 1991 but http://www.jstor.org/pss/4146935 http://www.jstor.org/pss/4146935 is on.)

jcromartie 17y ago

> there's always going to be someone smarter/faster/stronger/etc than them However in this country (the US) the gaps are wider and the deck is stacked more than in any other industrialized nation in pretty much every category.

eru 17y ago
Don't pretend America is the worst nation in the world. A lot of people want to go there because it's better than where they came from. Try complaining against the state in an industrialized nation like China.
- Sukotto 17y ago
  Why don't we hear more about people flying planes into buildings in China? Or students (or even teachers!) losing it and shooting up their schools? Is it just that they have better control of their media (so we don't hear about it), better control of the people (so they don't get a chance to do it), or something else?
  - eru 17y ago
    Less guns per citizens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_ownership http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_owners...) and less access to planes? By the way, there were also some incidence of pupils shooting up their schools in recent years in Germany. I guess you are just much more exposed to American incidents than to the rest of the world. (E.g. have you heard of the whole ugly neo-nazi stuff in east Germany in the 90ies? It still goes on, though at a much lower level of intensity. It's quite hard to find English language sources on the anti-asylum-seekers riots in Hoyerswerda in 1991 but http://www.jstor.org/pss/4146935 http://www.jstor.org/pss/4146935 is on.)