4 ms·

What society isn’t obsessed with success? No one wants to fail in hunting, farming, business or anything else.

dvanduzer 9y ago
Some societies seem to focus more on individual success than community survival. I want to live in a society that is obsessed with creating a future where every member can thrive. Canada seems to be working a little harder at this than the United States, but both countries still have frontier culture heavily baked in.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
  I want to live in a society where individual success is the obsession above all else. Society and community is made up of individuals after all.
  - saeranv 9y ago
    This seems a bit simplistic, or I'm not understanding your comment. It is trivial to prove that you have to sometimes deprioritize an individual's success in order to ensure group success. For example, it is beneficial to tax rich individuals to ensure the community has access to a social security safety net. Technically this penalizes a rich individual's success, however it is a critical factor in the success of the group.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
paganel 9y ago
> No one wants to fail in hunting, farming, business or anything else. The supporters of the football (soccer, for the Americans in here) club that I used to root for ever since I was 9 (I'm now in my late-30s) used to have this wonderful saying: "It's better to hit the post with a beautiful shot than to score an ugly goal". That saying was one of the many reasons why I loved that club, which didn't have that many trophies under its belt. For what is worth, the club has now been dead for 2 years (it was founded in 1923) for financial reasons, so there's also that (it sucks to be a football club nowadays in Eastern Europe). I'm also a Mets supporter, so I guess there's just a cohort of sports fans like me who get attracted to clubs for reasons other than the "obsession to win".

Some societies seem to focus more on individual success than community survival. I want to live in a society that is obsessed with creating a future where every member can thrive. Canada seems to be working a little harder at this than the United States, but both countries still have frontier culture heavily baked in.

ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
I want to live in a society where individual success is the obsession above all else. Society and community is made up of individuals after all.
- saeranv 9y ago
  This seems a bit simplistic, or I'm not understanding your comment. It is trivial to prove that you have to sometimes deprioritize an individual's success in order to ensure group success. For example, it is beneficial to tax rich individuals to ensure the community has access to a social security safety net. Technically this penalizes a rich individual's success, however it is a critical factor in the success of the group.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

paganel 9y ago

> No one wants to fail in hunting, farming, business or anything else. The supporters of the football (soccer, for the Americans in here) club that I used to root for ever since I was 9 (I'm now in my late-30s) used to have this wonderful saying: "It's better to hit the post with a beautiful shot than to score an ugly goal". That saying was one of the many reasons why I loved that club, which didn't have that many trophies under its belt. For what is worth, the club has now been dead for 2 years (it was founded in 1923) for financial reasons, so there's also that (it sucks to be a football club nowadays in Eastern Europe). I'm also a Mets supporter, so I guess there's just a cohort of sports fans like me who get attracted to clubs for reasons other than the "obsession to win".