Joined: 6 Feb 2005 Age: 45 Gender: Male Posts: 24,533 Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
17 Jul 2022, 8:50 pm
A really good Thinking Ape discussion on what's in the air in the US, particularly the vibe almost like if you aren't rich or doing something high-status you're beneath contempt and that you deserve to be treated like dirt because you clearly didn't 'try as hard' as everyone else.
The video is about 21 minutes long and the gist of what he's saying - for as messed up as historical cultures were we never treated less fortunate people as having had massive character failures, rather we were used to the human condition being dominated by forced beyond our control. To some degree I think the sort of infantile solipsism that he's describing comes in large part from our lack of exposure to the unforgiving in nature and consequently people who've just lucked out assume it's because of their own inherent traits and that anyone else who didn't get the same results is less than they are.
TA's take is that we should really look at this as a sign of cultural degeneracy, especially in the US, rather than any sort of accurate indictment on ourselves. I think everyone knows how much effort they have or haven't put it, and when they've given things their relative all (by relative I mean didn't put themselves in the hospital) and things still didn't work - they at least know that where they found themselves couldn't strictly be their own fault.
Some of the comments on the video are great too, including a lot of people bringing up something Nial Ferguson has brought up on success - that it's largely the product of patronage networks and that if you're not connected you won't be able to get in almost regardless of what your level of competence looks like. Especially in that regard, socially tarring and feathering people as 'losers' for having had the wrong parents, or parents who weren't pure social climbers raising their kids to be so, really drives home the point as to what the current state of play is.
_________________ The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.
Joined: 15 Sep 2008 Age: 72 Gender: Male Posts: 12,278
18 Jul 2022, 8:20 am
The concept of the "undeserving poor" has been around in the UK for centuries. It's been used as a means of blaming the poor for their own poverty, of sidestepping the idea of improving the system that keeps them poor. The workhouses were deliberately designed to make people afraid of being sent to one. It didn't matter that you'd gone bust through no fault of your own.
The Daily Mail told us that a huge percentage of benefits claimants were cheating, but that number was actually the percentage of claims that were being turned down, not the percentage who had been successfully prosecuted for fraud, which is tiny. My experience of the benefits system is that they'll turn you down by default unless you've had expert help to create a bullet-proof case, and even then you'll probably get turned down and have to appeal. But no, according to the rich media owners, if you get turned down it's because you were trying to cheat. Actually it's quite simple - wealthy people just don't want to give anything back, and they'll say anything to hang onto their wallets.
The government seems powerless, or unwilling, to cut the undeserving rich down to size.
Politicians and a lot of the public in the USA like to tell us that anybody can "get to the top" - the American Dream of working hard and reaping the rewards. Well, the American Dream might have been more valid back in the boom days when you could walk into a relatively good job any time you liked. Even in the UK in the 1970s it wasn't that hard to find a job if you had anything like good school qualifications. I did OK, but I doubt I'd be able to repeat my performance under the current economic situation. These days you daren't quit a job because they're so scarce you might never find another one, so you just hope that the boss doesn't decide you're dispensable.
17 Jul 2022, 8:50 pm
