4 ms·

Makes enough sense to me... If you don't know anything about anybody... like the homeless man rummaging through my recycling bin right now looking for bottles.

Makes enough sense to me... If you don't know anything about anybody... like the homeless man rummaging through my recycling bin right now looking for bottles... It's easy to look down on them or just write them off. But if a neighbour told me anything about that same man... perhaps that he lost his job last year and thus just tries to supplement his income by picking up bottles in his spare time... I would feel immense sorrow even just looking at that man (who is still a stranger to me). Enough so that I would probably offer him some extra cash and a bite to eat if I had it. I witnessed a man break into my neighbor's house the other day... which enraged me at first (what if it were my house?!) but when I saw the man who did it... I immediately felt sorry for him. This was a desperate, dirty, homeless man with a smile on his face as the police dragged him away. He was probably just looking for some shelter to sleep that night. The house that he "broke into" did admittedly look abandoned. And I found myself trying to justify the reasons that he might have tried to break into the house, rather than hating him silently. All because I got a look at him.

jondubois 9y ago
Lack of resources can make the kindest, most altruistic person behave in extremely ugly, selfish ways. You don't know who someone is until you see them go through poverty. Also, you don't know who you are yourself until you experience that terrible feeling of scarcity. For me, greed is the worst human attribute. When I see rich people being greedy, I find it hard to imagine how much worse they would be as human beings if they were poor.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >You don't know who someone is until you see them go through poverty. The inverse is also true: you don't know who someone is until a) they get rich and/or powerful (and change), b) you go to poverty (and e.g. they prove to be only "fair weather friends"). And I would just more harshly someone who reveals themselves to do bad things or be a bad friend when they get rich or when you get poor, than someone doing bad stuff when THEY get poor. Because desperation can force one to do things they don't want or like (like borrow money and not give it back or even steal), but the others don't have that excuse.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    I think we vastly underestimate how much of an affect our environment-the circumstances we find ourselves in—has on us. Different aspects of our personality are revealed, or developed(?), in different settings. Temperature, time of day, how tense our muscles / tendons feel, how well we sleep, I think we underestimate how much all of these contribute to what we call 'personality'.
    - mtgx 9y ago
      This is also why I think statements like "being rich is a choice" don't come near telling the whole story, if they are even partially true. Our circumstances probably affect 90% of how we end up doing in life. What if you were born in Nigeria or Syria instead of the U.S.? What if your parents were very poor and without much education themselves, and therefore not only did they not afford to pay for a good education for you, but they also didn't give you the best education at home? And so on, and so on.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate
    - coldtea 9y ago
      >I think we underestimate how much all of these contribute to what we call 'personality'. I agree. But there are still people who are not changed much in important qualities despite big changes in their circumstances (e.g. from poor to rich, or from obscurity to fame or power, or vise versa) and others who change behavior totally with the subtlest of life changes. (E.g. now got a more high paying job, let me dump my lower earning friends for people more to my class).
      - 3pt14159 9y ago
        Just watch out that they dropped their poor friends for the reason everyone expects. I don't give a fuck if someone is rich or not, and I have a number of poor friends[1], but I made the conscious decision to cut out friends that I wouldn't befriend if I met them today. Many of the people I cut were poor, but it's not why I cut them. I cut them because they stopped growing after or during highschool. When I talk about politics or society I don't want to feel constrained. I don't want to have to explain things like the catch up effect. I don't want come over with an expensive scotch and have people mix it with Coca Cola. I understand that labour mobility and the internet have lead to a fracturing of society into different enclaves of intellectual and (usually) fiscal subgroups, but I don't want the only reason I'm hanging out with former highschool friends to be that I read Coming Apart and I'm worried about social cohesion. It's too high of a price. [1] Most of them are either PhD candidates or in a profession that they love that just generally doesn't pay well, like Singer Songwriter. To me and I feel to most people that cut their social group sometime in their 20s or early 30s class or culture is the critical distinction, not wealth.
- rsp1984 9y ago
  When I see rich people being greedy, I find it hard to imagine how much worse they would be as human beings if they were poor. They probably are poor, at least from their viewpoint, because humans like to compare themselves against their peers, not against the average person they have nothing to do with. So rich people compare themselves against other rich people in their social circle and then decide they want to have a little more. It's not greed from their viewpoint, it's "not falling behind".
ramblerman 9y ago
These are different effect imo. You are talking about the motivation behind a story, which might give you more compassion for the motives an individual held. That's quite different from saying that putting you in a room with said homeless man and sharing life stories for 45 minutes is going to build a significant connection between you two.

jondubois 9y ago

Lack of resources can make the kindest, most altruistic person behave in extremely ugly, selfish ways. You don't know who someone is until you see them go through poverty. Also, you don't know who you are yourself until you experience that terrible feeling of scarcity. For me, greed is the worst human attribute. When I see rich people being greedy, I find it hard to imagine how much worse they would be as human beings if they were poor.

coldtea 9y ago
>You don't know who someone is until you see them go through poverty. The inverse is also true: you don't know who someone is until a) they get rich and/or powerful (and change), b) you go to poverty (and e.g. they prove to be only "fair weather friends"). And I would just more harshly someone who reveals themselves to do bad things or be a bad friend when they get rich or when you get poor, than someone doing bad stuff when THEY get poor. Because desperation can force one to do things they don't want or like (like borrow money and not give it back or even steal), but the others don't have that excuse.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  I think we vastly underestimate how much of an affect our environment-the circumstances we find ourselves in—has on us. Different aspects of our personality are revealed, or developed(?), in different settings. Temperature, time of day, how tense our muscles / tendons feel, how well we sleep, I think we underestimate how much all of these contribute to what we call 'personality'.
  - mtgx 9y ago
    This is also why I think statements like "being rich is a choice" don't come near telling the whole story, if they are even partially true. Our circumstances probably affect 90% of how we end up doing in life. What if you were born in Nigeria or Syria instead of the U.S.? What if your parents were very poor and without much education themselves, and therefore not only did they not afford to pay for a good education for you, but they also didn't give you the best education at home? And so on, and so on.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >I think we underestimate how much all of these contribute to what we call 'personality'. I agree. But there are still people who are not changed much in important qualities despite big changes in their circumstances (e.g. from poor to rich, or from obscurity to fame or power, or vise versa) and others who change behavior totally with the subtlest of life changes. (E.g. now got a more high paying job, let me dump my lower earning friends for people more to my class).
    - 3pt14159 9y ago
      Just watch out that they dropped their poor friends for the reason everyone expects. I don't give a fuck if someone is rich or not, and I have a number of poor friends[1], but I made the conscious decision to cut out friends that I wouldn't befriend if I met them today. Many of the people I cut were poor, but it's not why I cut them. I cut them because they stopped growing after or during highschool. When I talk about politics or society I don't want to feel constrained. I don't want to have to explain things like the catch up effect. I don't want come over with an expensive scotch and have people mix it with Coca Cola. I understand that labour mobility and the internet have lead to a fracturing of society into different enclaves of intellectual and (usually) fiscal subgroups, but I don't want the only reason I'm hanging out with former highschool friends to be that I read Coming Apart and I'm worried about social cohesion. It's too high of a price. [1] Most of them are either PhD candidates or in a profession that they love that just generally doesn't pay well, like Singer Songwriter. To me and I feel to most people that cut their social group sometime in their 20s or early 30s class or culture is the critical distinction, not wealth.
rsp1984 9y ago
When I see rich people being greedy, I find it hard to imagine how much worse they would be as human beings if they were poor. They probably are poor, at least from their viewpoint, because humans like to compare themselves against their peers, not against the average person they have nothing to do with. So rich people compare themselves against other rich people in their social circle and then decide they want to have a little more. It's not greed from their viewpoint, it's "not falling behind".

ramblerman 9y ago

These are different effect imo. You are talking about the motivation behind a story, which might give you more compassion for the motives an individual held. That's quite different from saying that putting you in a room with said homeless man and sharing life stories for 45 minutes is going to build a significant connection between you two.