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It's relatively easy to sit on the sidelines of someone's life and compare the choices they've made, to your own, especially when we're aware of the consequence

by gregd 11y ago

It's relatively easy to sit on the sidelines of someone's life and compare the choices they've made, to your own, especially when we're aware of the consequences after the fact. What isn't so easy is to admit to yourself, that not everybody has the same choices available to them as you.

notacoward 11y ago
Oh, I'm well aware of that, but thanks for the ad hominem. I came from a background no more privileged than his. I had to make some hard choices, which among other things is why I don't even have a degree. I'm sure Lee Siegel had different opportunities and different aptitudes than I did, but those don't seem to have been the dominant factors here. Even with those opportunities and aptitudes, a better attitude would have allowed a better outcome without the need for a loan default. He wasn't willing to compromise on his choice of college or his choice of a first job. Other people who do make such compromises often do just fine, and eventually get into the career they wanted, despite an equal level of opportunity or aptitude. It's unfair that some people have to make such compromises while others don't. I've written plenty about that. Nonetheless, those who choose poorly deserve no sympathy from those who were faced with the same or equivalent choices and still managed to do the right thing.
- gregd 11y ago
  Ad hominem? Really? How do you know he hasn’t made any hard choices? As I stated, it’s relatively easy to sit on the sidelines and have the benefits of hindsight, to call someone out on their choices. What’s unfair is the absurd cost of college and why it’s primary ethos has been to make money.
  - notacoward 11y ago
    When you tried to imply that I had "sat on the sidelines" that was ad hominem. It suggests that I'm unqualified to have an opinion, which is not only inherently fallacious but also absurd in light of how closely my own experience actually does match that of the author. Next time, instead of making assumptions and then using them to undermine the source of a statement, try addressing the statement itself.
    - gregd 11y ago
      I wasn't suggesting that you were unqualified to have an opinion. We are all sitting on the sidelines of each others lives. I am no more a part of your life, than you are of mine. But what I was suggesting is that it’s easy for us to sit in judgment of the choices he articulated, as well as the outcomes of those choices, and say that he, “can’t make good choices”. It doesn’t matter what you think your background was in comparison to his. You’re still projecting your reality and the outcomes of your reality, onto another complete stranger and coming to negative conclusions about his life. I call this judgment. Each of our lives is nuanced enough to affect outcomes even given very similar circumstances or “choices” as you call them. Because Siegel’s outcomes ended in him defaulting on his student loans and articulating that, doesn’t mean he can’t make good choices.
      - notacoward 11y ago
        Conflating circumstances and choices is absurd. Siegel's default wasn't the inevitable result of circumstances. It was a choice. Whatever the outcome, he can't deny agency. He can't say it was all somebody else's fault, and that he only did what he had to do. He had to do one of several things, and he chose one. Millions of people, none of them in identical circumstances but statistically close enough, made different choices and had those choices work out fine, without the life of self-loathing Siegel predicted for himself if he had chosen differently. That prediction was convenient, but ill-founded in fact.
- themartorana 11y ago
  First job? "Years later, I found myself confronted with a choice..." It wasn't his first job, it was a career you want him to give up. "Forty years after I took out my first student loan, and 30 years after getting my last, the Department of Education is still pursuing the unpaid balance. My mother, who co-signed some of the loans, is dead. The banks that made them have all gone under. I doubt that anyone can even find the promissory notes. The accrued interest, combined with the collection agencies’ opulent fees, is now several times the principal." Unless I'm reading this wrong, educational debt is still debilitating 40 years later. After a repayment plan of over a mortgage's worth of lifetime. But if he had a better attitude...
  - notacoward 11y ago
    "It wasn't his first job, it was a career you want him to give up." Go read it again. That "years later" comes immediately after the part where he mentions transferring to a different school, and before he mentions working at The Wild Pair immediately after college. So yes, it was his first job and not a whole career as you supposed. "Unless I'm reading this wrong, educational debt is still debilitating 40 years later." 40 years is a long time. It's long enough to have had many opportunities, even as a writer, to stem the accrual and compounding of that debt. As I've said over and over, there are serious problems with our student-loan system. Those problems weren't nearly as bad 40 years ago, and they're only "debilitating" now because of continued poor decision-making well after the fact. Whining about an outcome that's largely, even if not entirely, under the author's control doesn't help to solve today's student-debt problems. Au contraire.

by gregd 11y ago

notacoward 11y ago

Oh, I'm well aware of that, but thanks for the ad hominem. I came from a background no more privileged than his. I had to make some hard choices, which among other things is why I don't even have a degree. I'm sure Lee Siegel had different opportunities and different aptitudes than I did, but those don't seem to have been the dominant factors here. Even with those opportunities and aptitudes, a better attitude would have allowed a better outcome without the need for a loan default. He wasn't willing to compromise on his choice of college or his choice of a first job. Other people who do make such compromises often do just fine, and eventually get into the career they wanted, despite an equal level of opportunity or aptitude. It's unfair that some people have to make such compromises while others don't. I've written plenty about that. Nonetheless, those who choose poorly deserve no sympathy from those who were faced with the same or equivalent choices and still managed to do the right thing.

gregd 11y ago
Ad hominem? Really? How do you know he hasn’t made any hard choices? As I stated, it’s relatively easy to sit on the sidelines and have the benefits of hindsight, to call someone out on their choices. What’s unfair is the absurd cost of college and why it’s primary ethos has been to make money.
- notacoward 11y ago
  When you tried to imply that I had "sat on the sidelines" that was ad hominem. It suggests that I'm unqualified to have an opinion, which is not only inherently fallacious but also absurd in light of how closely my own experience actually does match that of the author. Next time, instead of making assumptions and then using them to undermine the source of a statement, try addressing the statement itself.
  - gregd 11y ago
    I wasn't suggesting that you were unqualified to have an opinion. We are all sitting on the sidelines of each others lives. I am no more a part of your life, than you are of mine. But what I was suggesting is that it’s easy for us to sit in judgment of the choices he articulated, as well as the outcomes of those choices, and say that he, “can’t make good choices”. It doesn’t matter what you think your background was in comparison to his. You’re still projecting your reality and the outcomes of your reality, onto another complete stranger and coming to negative conclusions about his life. I call this judgment. Each of our lives is nuanced enough to affect outcomes even given very similar circumstances or “choices” as you call them. Because Siegel’s outcomes ended in him defaulting on his student loans and articulating that, doesn’t mean he can’t make good choices.
    - notacoward 11y ago
      Conflating circumstances and choices is absurd. Siegel's default wasn't the inevitable result of circumstances. It was a choice. Whatever the outcome, he can't deny agency. He can't say it was all somebody else's fault, and that he only did what he had to do. He had to do one of several things, and he chose one. Millions of people, none of them in identical circumstances but statistically close enough, made different choices and had those choices work out fine, without the life of self-loathing Siegel predicted for himself if he had chosen differently. That prediction was convenient, but ill-founded in fact.
themartorana 11y ago
First job? "Years later, I found myself confronted with a choice..." It wasn't his first job, it was a career you want him to give up. "Forty years after I took out my first student loan, and 30 years after getting my last, the Department of Education is still pursuing the unpaid balance. My mother, who co-signed some of the loans, is dead. The banks that made them have all gone under. I doubt that anyone can even find the promissory notes. The accrued interest, combined with the collection agencies’ opulent fees, is now several times the principal." Unless I'm reading this wrong, educational debt is still debilitating 40 years later. After a repayment plan of over a mortgage's worth of lifetime. But if he had a better attitude...
- notacoward 11y ago
  "It wasn't his first job, it was a career you want him to give up." Go read it again. That "years later" comes immediately after the part where he mentions transferring to a different school, and before he mentions working at The Wild Pair immediately after college. So yes, it was his first job and not a whole career as you supposed. "Unless I'm reading this wrong, educational debt is still debilitating 40 years later." 40 years is a long time. It's long enough to have had many opportunities, even as a writer, to stem the accrual and compounding of that debt. As I've said over and over, there are serious problems with our student-loan system. Those problems weren't nearly as bad 40 years ago, and they're only "debilitating" now because of continued poor decision-making well after the fact. Whining about an outcome that's largely, even if not entirely, under the author's control doesn't help to solve today's student-debt problems. Au contraire.