3 ms·
Success is almost always a combination of both. No one is self-made but that tends to irk people who believe they are because they've spent years doing a lot of
by xenadu02 2mo ago
Success is almost always a combination of both. No one is self-made but that tends to irk people who believe they are because they've spent years doing a lot of hard work. Without that hard work they'd have failed! Yet hard work alone is not sufficient.
Where you grow up, what schools you attend, who your childhood friend group is, luckily not getting hit by a bus and put in the hospital, etc. A whole host of factors conspire to grant or deny you opportunities.
However once the opportunity arises you have to seize it. Many people have lots of opportunity yet accomplish nothing because they lack the skills, will, or both to do so. Conversely many people with the drive and skills never hit the right opportunity and end up nowhere.
For whatever reason the broader culture seems to bounce back and forth between both extremes. The whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "get a job you lazy bum" crowd acting as if you can get rich purely with hard work. Then on the other side there seems to be this well-intentioned idea on the left that if we simply give every under-privileged kid opportunity they'll be successful.
Real humans and real lives are far more complex than such simple notions.
- throwaway_7274 2mo agoAll well said. I would add that, while “giving every under-privileged kid opportunity” wouldn’t make them all successful, for just the reasons you said, I’m not sure that’s even the bottleneck! It’s like… how do you “give someone opportunity?” It’s a very subtle problem. It’s not easy. I doubt there’s any straightforward intervention where you can give everyone 10 units of opportunity, use them wisely please. School funding and clean streets and EBT and whatnot are sort of proxies for this, but it’s just really not that simple. (This isn’t a disagreement with anything, by the way.)
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 2mo agoIt’s not that simple but let’s see you lobby for the whole thing and get it done in a short time
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- throwaway_7274 2mo agoCouldn't agree more!
- atmavatar 2mo ago> Then on the other side there seems to be this well-intentioned idea on the left that if we simply give every under-privileged kid opportunity they'll be successful. I'd be surprised if more than a tiny minority of people actually believe that. It has more to do with believing that ideally, everyone should have access to the same opportunities. It seems rather straightforward and non-controversial that providing more people opportunities to succeed will inevitably lead to more people succeeding, even if only a small minority of people are capable of seizing upon the opportunities they are provided.
- qzw 2mo agoIn addition, it really matters when and for how long one has access to opportunities. If you wait until a poor child is an adult and then suddenly say, here’s an amazing opportunity, well, it’s not going to do much good. But if you start when the poor child is in preschool and consistently provide opportunities for learning and growth, then suddenly the likelihood of success goes way up.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 2mo agoThere’s no difference between what you’re saying and what the guy before you is saying. Not sure why you’re drawing lines
- pseudalopex 2mo agoMore is not every. Small minority is not every.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 2mo agoConsequentially there's no difference, you just debated the words
- atmavatar 2mo agoNo. The difference is I argue from an ideological standpoint that everyone should receive the same opportunities while acknowledging that only a fraction of people will be able to turn those opportunities into success. I should point out this ideal is core to the very founding of the US: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ...and while we've never fully achieved it, the hope is that we'll continue to push towards that goal. The original quote was a typical conservative dismissal intended to demoralize: since not everyone who's given opportunities will succeed, we shouldn't bother providing opportunity to the riffraff.