5 ms·

I guess the idea is - money is not the only resource. Your dad's genetics and nurture combined to make him an ambitious person. Your best friend's genetics and

• bane 12y ago
  I don't know to be honest, and I agree I don't want to assume value of people on the whole of humanity based on their socio-economic conditions. For example, my Grandfather was absolutely dirt poor. But he had my father. My father, when he was in Korea, volunteered time at the orphanages. My father-in-law and his brother were orphaned during the war and fondly remember U.S. soldiers coming to their orphanage with candies and clothes and things. It might even be possible that my father helped my father-in-law at one of those institutions. Regardless, he was helped enough so that he didn't die of starvation or exposure and instead became an architect and helped house thousands of people in post-war South Korea, and had 5 children who've all gone on to be educated, successful, very productive members of society. In some way, my Grandfather, who was socio-economically at the bottom of the pile, by having my father, may have helped contribute to my wife's family in helping thousands of people put a roof over their heads and for my wife's generation to go on to do other good things. We're all connected in a way and it really is a small world. But if socio-economic condition is one axis to measure "success", being able to house and feed yourself and your family based on the money you earn from your efforts should be a minimal barrier to being considered "successful". And I wholly understand that there are simply people who don't have opportunities to seize at all, who never get the decent paying job or the cheap reliable car or the grant to go to school. Who make a bad decision once and it impacts them for the rest of their lives no matter how many right decisions they make afterwards. I think it's a pity that not everybody has opportunities to be upwardly mobile, but I also think it's a problem when opportunities are presented and continuously squandered, and years later, they sit there bankrupt and miserable and wonder why they can't get a leg up in life. As a person who is now (occasionally) in a position of creating opportunities, I'm cautious about who I help because I am afraid that the effort I might go through to create one, for people like my friend, will simply be wasted.
  • Retric 12y ago
    My father grew up poor, but well educated. He literally gained significant weight in basic training because he could eat as much as he wanted, at the same time his mother graduated from Harvard. It's hard being a single mother with kids and no savings. In the end it was not hard for him to become moderately successful. But, his view on success and money was vary far from what "successful" people think. Heath, Stable job, good clean house, kids, and enough food is success. Just not the kind your going to read about. IMO, as much as people look down on the middle class lifestyle there is little point to more because money is quickly just a number and unless you think you have enough it's never going to be enough. Which IMO raises an interesting question was my grandmother successful? Sure, she was living on the edge but she was self sufficient and her kids made it.
• id 12y ago
  Let me rephrase your question: Is there a free will? To me, determinism [1] is more plausible than free will. Events are always caused by prior events and in the end we have no control over our genetics and the conditions we were born into. Of course I could be wrong and there is a realistic chance we will never find out. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
  • logicchains 12y ago
    It depends on how you define free will. If you define it as being 100% the cause of an action, that's impossible. There are two possible causes for an action: either you caused it, or something external caused it. If taking action X at time T is entirely the result of your choice, why did you choose it? Because of whatever influences made you the person you are at time T. If these influences were external, by the definition in question your action wasn't entirely free will, as its root cause could be traced back to external influences. This means the person you were at time T-1 would have to be 100% responsible for the person you are at time T in order for you to be 100% responsible for taking action X at time T. The same also implies that the person you were at time T-2 would have to have been the cause of who you were at T-1, and so on recursively. Trace that far backwards enough, and you get to the point where in order for you to be entirely the cause of your actions at time T, the person you were at time Tb would have to have been the cause of who you were at time Tb+1, where Tb is the time you were still a baby and incapable of conscious thought. This is not possible, as a baby doesn't 'make decisions' in the conscious sense, it acts purely from the impulses condition by its genes and whatnot. Thus if you chase the causal chain far back enough in time, you see there's always an external root cause for an action.
    • jqm 12y ago
      "Thus if you chase the causal chain far back enough in time, you see there's always an external root cause for an action." I'm not sure I agree 100%, but I agree at least 99%. I believe humans have the possibility of free will. But it in practice it's very rare and most of the time is exactly what you state. See G.I. Gurdjieff for more on this. Probable crank, conman, and (I believe) probably correct on at least this point. He states (rather his pupil Ouspensky states from his teachings), that we have the potential to develop free will, but it is not a native attribute, and most of the time we simply respond to stimuli and conditioning. I tend to agree.