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Reminds me of the (trite?) conservative talk points that if you 1. finish high school 2. don't have children outside of marriage 3. hold down a job, then you sh
by BadassFractal 8y ago
Reminds me of the (trite?) conservative talk points that if you 1. finish high school 2. don't have children outside of marriage 3. hold down a job, then you should more or less have a successful middle class existence.
- stcredzero 8y ago1. finish high school 2. don't have children outside of marriage 3. hold down a job, then you should more or less have a successful middle class existence. What's wrong with that? I think that's a fine way to plan one's life. It's over simplifying some things. Not all high school educations are equally valuable, for one thing, which then also relates to point 3.
- dabbledash 8y agoPeople who don’t start out committed to socially conservative ideas are suspicious about the direction of the causality.
- stcredzero 8y agoI test center-left politically. However, I still think that education and stable family life is quite important for raising children to be successful. As for the direction of the causality, Chinese emigrants the world over have arrived on distant shores with very little money, often less that the general populace and often less even than the local poor. Yet they prospered, maintained a high regard for the value of education, then in subsequent generations have sent their children to good schools. This has been happening for many hundreds of years. The mother's side of my Cane River creole ex-girlfriend's family had values like this. I knew some very graceful people of African American descent who also had values like that. In my experience, it's such values, however they come about, which are the causal origin. I find your apparent preconceived notions on who gets to hold which ideas disturbing. Ideas are ideas, not flags or arm-bands.
- dabbledash 8y agoYou seem pretty worked up. I am also left of center politically and a fan of education and marriage and the whole bourgeois shebang. That doesn’t really have anything to do with my comment, which describes the state of the debate.
- stcredzero 8y agoMy apologies. I thought you were labeling me based on which side gets which ideas. I'm very glad that you are not doing that.
- dabbledash 8y agoI can see how I gave you that impression, sorry. My personal guess re causality is “it’s complicated” (always a good bet).
- missingcolours 8y agoFor anyone who wants to read more about this claim it's most commonly referred to as the "success sequence".