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Yes, this is my point. You are the people who want to believe that all it takes to be comfortable in life is to “follow some basic rules.” Putting aside that th

Yes, this is my point. You are the people who want to believe that all it takes to be comfortable in life is to “follow some basic rules.” Putting aside that the circumstances of your birth are already a huge matter of luck, I’ll point to the entire US working class and unemployed college graduates as evidence to the contrary. At some point those of us who have grown up in this economy stopped believing in fairy tales and bootstraps. There were a million points from my upbringing to now that could have diverted me from the middle class, so I’m not looking down on my underemployed peers as inferior beings for their struggles.

TapWaterBandit 6y ago
> Putting aside that the circumstances of your birth are already a huge matter of luck This is another one of those points that sounds superficially plausible on the surface but makes little sense once you think it through. The circumstances of my birth weren't a matter of luck. My (married) parents decided to have 4 children of which I was one. Before doing this they both finished high school, and stayed away from drugs. They also tried to live healthily etc (but certainly weren't monks). They weren't going to have sex and then a child might pop into existence in Uganda. The only way the whole "your birth was luck" thing makes any sense is if you perceive yourself to be an atomised individual with no deeper ties to the family you came from or the choices that were made by your ancestors who preceded you. Like I said, people are EXTREMELY comfortable with the handwaving of "it's all luck anyway". They won't even take responsibility for themselves and their own lives, so asking them to also feel responsibility to their children/grandchildren/descendants is even more of a foreign concept. As for "I'm not looking down on my underemployed peers as inferior beings for their struggles" those are your words, not mine. I certainly don't look down on my struggling friends/family either, but I am also not going to withhold judging them based on the actions they take. Because very often they also KNOW they shouldn't be doing what they are doing, but choose to do it anyway. Weakness corrupts as much as power, and it is wise not to forget that.
- jason0597 6y ago
  Before you are conceived, before you even become a zygote, who rolls the dice for which womb you'll end up in? Who decides whether you'll be in the womb of a Japanese mother, an American mother, or a Greek mother? Do we as individuals have any control over which country we are born in? To pretend as if this is not pure chance (luck) is bonkers.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - TapWaterBandit 6y ago
    The Japanese/American/Greek mother who had sex? Or are you saying it was just luck my mom got pregnant then? She just fell asleep one night, the stork visited, and then she woke up pregnant? I think you don't understand how sex or genetics work, I am 50% my mother's dna and 50% my father's. It's not like they were going to have sex and then I would be born with the genetic code of two entirely different people.
    - jason0597 6y ago
      I'm talking about YOU, not what your parents did. YOU personally had no ability to determine in which country you were born in.
      - TapWaterBandit 6y ago
        Well duh, noone who has ever lived has willed themselves into existence. But just because you didn't will yourself into existence, that doesn't then imply that the circumstances of your existence are based on luck. My parents chose to have a kid, where else would I be born except in the country where my mother chose to live? There was 0 luck involved, I wasn't going to randomly pop into existence in Mongolia when my parents decided to have a kid while both living in Australia. If you apply your reasoning to any other area in life you can see how silly it is. If you put in a lot of work/effort into building a car, is the existence of the car the product of "luck"? After all it had no more choice in where it was created than a person.

TapWaterBandit 6y ago

> Putting aside that the circumstances of your birth are already a huge matter of luck This is another one of those points that sounds superficially plausible on the surface but makes little sense once you think it through. The circumstances of my birth weren't a matter of luck. My (married) parents decided to have 4 children of which I was one. Before doing this they both finished high school, and stayed away from drugs. They also tried to live healthily etc (but certainly weren't monks). They weren't going to have sex and then a child might pop into existence in Uganda. The only way the whole "your birth was luck" thing makes any sense is if you perceive yourself to be an atomised individual with no deeper ties to the family you came from or the choices that were made by your ancestors who preceded you. Like I said, people are EXTREMELY comfortable with the handwaving of "it's all luck anyway". They won't even take responsibility for themselves and their own lives, so asking them to also feel responsibility to their children/grandchildren/descendants is even more of a foreign concept. As for "I'm not looking down on my underemployed peers as inferior beings for their struggles" those are your words, not mine. I certainly don't look down on my struggling friends/family either, but I am also not going to withhold judging them based on the actions they take. Because very often they also KNOW they shouldn't be doing what they are doing, but choose to do it anyway. Weakness corrupts as much as power, and it is wise not to forget that.

jason0597 6y ago
Before you are conceived, before you even become a zygote, who rolls the dice for which womb you'll end up in? Who decides whether you'll be in the womb of a Japanese mother, an American mother, or a Greek mother? Do we as individuals have any control over which country we are born in? To pretend as if this is not pure chance (luck) is bonkers.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- TapWaterBandit 6y ago
  The Japanese/American/Greek mother who had sex? Or are you saying it was just luck my mom got pregnant then? She just fell asleep one night, the stork visited, and then she woke up pregnant? I think you don't understand how sex or genetics work, I am 50% my mother's dna and 50% my father's. It's not like they were going to have sex and then I would be born with the genetic code of two entirely different people.
  - jason0597 6y ago
    I'm talking about YOU, not what your parents did. YOU personally had no ability to determine in which country you were born in.
    - TapWaterBandit 6y ago
      Well duh, noone who has ever lived has willed themselves into existence. But just because you didn't will yourself into existence, that doesn't then imply that the circumstances of your existence are based on luck. My parents chose to have a kid, where else would I be born except in the country where my mother chose to live? There was 0 luck involved, I wasn't going to randomly pop into existence in Mongolia when my parents decided to have a kid while both living in Australia. If you apply your reasoning to any other area in life you can see how silly it is. If you put in a lot of work/effort into building a car, is the existence of the car the product of "luck"? After all it had no more choice in where it was created than a person.