It sounds like your half brother is suffering from poor life choices made by his mother. And I don’t say that in a sarcastic way. And of course some people have terrible things thrust upon them by no fault of their own. But the reason that this country has been such a powerful magnet for immigrants is that there is a reasonable likelihood of starting with nothing and prospering. And a great many of them do exactly that.
For my family’s many fults, that is a lesson I feel they stamped pretty soundly on me. Then again they also keep trying to pres into my head I’m the one that needs help and I’vegot nothing to offer in way of helping others. So make of that as you will.
Hell even the blindschool I went to reenforced that. I was one of the people that was sighted, so I was sorta obligated to help, even if that help was ‘get the hell out of theri way so they can do for themselves.’
Funny how that ‘help others as you would like to be helped’ mantra seems to evaporate when you’re one of the big fish in the world.
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Dude poor staying poor and rich staying rich isn’t something that can be attributed to parenting or upbringing. About the only relevent word in your contention that it is a factor is the word least and it wasn’t in the right place.
You trying to point out that such forces only affect those who allow it is both incorrect and ridiculous, especially after you disallow outlier anecdotes as you did in a previous post.
Your entire premise is outlier, bro.
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If it comforts you to believe that parenting decisions have little or no effect on a child’s success or failure, then we will probably just have to disagree.
You didn’t choose your parents, but it was fortunate that you got the ones you did right?
No one is saying your lot in life was unfair, the article talks about some people’s inability to acknowledge the more lucky, I prefer the word fortunate, happenings in their lives.
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You are dangerously close to saying that unsuccessful children are due to bad parenting, and it shows how secluded you are.
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Secluded?
This is unpersuasive because its conclusory and contradicts the basic experience reported here that keeping faith with relatives who own stuff — esp. real property in particular cities — is a better predictor.
Spoiler: The under-examined, coded term in this context is the “smart” in smart choices.
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What possible choice do children have about the type of parent they have? That’s absurd.
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Privileged denying dude man where is that meme…
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Probably all of us have views on this subject that are heavily influenced by our own experiences, and those related to us by our parents. When I say smart choices, I am not trying to use those words as code words for anything. Those are literally the words my father has used all of my life. That, and the phrase “I have always been a very lucky man, and I have found that the harder I work, the luckier I get”. I do not think that those words are original to him, but he used them enough that when he retired, he was given a bronze plaque with that engraved on it. And I absolutely understand your viewpoint, and where it comes from. the President gave a speech recently that contained the following words-
“Yes, you’ve worked hard, but you’ve also been lucky. That’s a pet peeve of mine: People who have been successful and don’t realize they’ve been lucky. That God may have blessed them; it wasn’t nothing you did. So don’t have an attitude”
I understand his point, that luck plays a big part in how things turn out, if you believe in luck. in that sense, I am lucky that I was not born a housecat or a first century Roman slave. I am lucky that the sniper in Mogadishu did not have better aim. There have been two times where I committed to working aboard ships, but circumstances kept me from going. One of those ships was lost in a fire with serious loss of life, the other had the crew held hostage by a warlord for months. So I am lucky. If you tried to tell my Dad that his success was all about luck, he would likely disagree. He and six siblings grew up in terrible poverty, but they all managed to overcome that. You would probably say that they all had an amazing and fantastic streak of luck, as they all started with literally nothing except a common work ethic, sense of morality, and an inherited accent that made them incomprehensible to english speakers.When you tell someone from that sort of background that success is all about luck, chance, or ethnicity, you are probably going to be met with some skepticism.
And having relatives who own a bunch of stuff is primarily helpful if they give you a lot of it.
I don’t know your dad. He sounds important to you.
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They primarily do. Primarily throughout, and most often in the end, they give you all of it.
The vanishingly small numbers of those that do not make the incredibly small nuber of people that possess the wealth in the West, particularly the US, seem like a reasonable number.
This is why your stories, as much as they are intended to impress, fail to do so, at all.
Because statistics are among the many reasons why no one has to accept your micro as representative of the macro, no matter how much you insist.
You do know that accepting that your claim of contradiction is an outlier may contradict a stance you took before, but is the only graceful exit. Replace luck with chance, remember that chance relates well to things like math that demonstrates the macro, and now dear old Dad doens’t have to disagree with the fact that chance was a factor.
BTW, “all about”? No one, because macro discussion. No one has said it is all about that in relation to any individual.
Would your dad be more likely to call that argument myopic, or would he as you perhaps inadvertently suggest resist the notion that chance was a major factor?
Clearly my experience is considered an outlier here. I probably have very different influences than most of the people commenting here, and that has certainly influenced my worldview. I grew up believing that I could achieve pretty much anything, if I put enough planning and effort into it, and that failure meant that I had not followed through with the planning part, the work part, or both. It may be a sort of self deception, but it worked great for my Dad, has turned out fairly well for me, and seems to be working so far with my kids. I know that my parents have mentored a number of troubled kids, and their influence seems to have made a big impact there as well. But for this discussion, I give up. You win.Excluding situations like mine, we can all just accept our lot as a matter of random chance.
One question- Is there a word for that theory of human achievement. Where random events play a larger part in the condition one ends up in than would hard work and careful planning?
Yes, you are an outlier, as about 99% of the people in your situation didn’t achieve your success level, in spite of their hard work.
Read about David Sarnoff (head of RCA) to learn about another famous immigrant outlier. He was one of a kind. Lucky? Hard worker? Sure, no one else in his neighborhood worked as hard as him.
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, likes to talk about the power of positive thinking that caused him to achieve success. Ask him how a poker game of four positive thinkers will end.
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I told you what was wrong with that idea! You should have will see the look on your face when I told you.
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So, I know a guy who makes a lot more than me now. Staunch republican.
His parents: wealthy, both from some combination of insurance and real estate.
Mine: middle class, one a career engineer and later manager, the other an 3rd grade ex-teacher. My dad retired in 2012 making 90kish. Lots of company stock which financed no small part of my education.
Now. Said guy flunked out of college a bunch of times, but still got a high paying (for a 22 year old) job when the rest of his peers were pulling in 10 to 12 an hour in 2002. Both parents execs in some form. With 0 college degree and a shit academic record, pulled some strings and got into an MBA program a few years back.
Insists that since he did it from scratch and that anyone could do it. Oh yeah. His wife’s family are also business moguls.
He thinks I am a “retard” for suggesting he did not wholly earn his status.
For me, I have been blessed to be born of middle class white educated people. I am male. And not gay. Execs instinctively like me (I am told). I am not hard to look at, I am told. How much of this have I really earned? Some of it, without doubt. But an awful lot is just the benefit of circumstance. Some is dumb luck, too. I ended up dating a gal who was a boss at salary negotiation when I was switching jobs. She still makes more than me by a lot (and that is perfectly fine–I only ever wanted to avoid being a “scrub” in the relationship).
Strictly by the numbers both him and I were really born into our income brackets. Lucky eggs, or sperm if you like.
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Unless you’re stuck watching umpteen bajillion digital animator of the 32nd animation companies names roll by. Then you don’t feel so lucky. Then come the caterers.
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There’s no dichotomy there. For many reasons, one of which would be that paths that contain hard work and careful planning are determined first by chance occurences before the work and the plans, and that, you say you soldier, what can happen to battle plans, when the battle begins?
No one is particularly looking for some order that would allow for complete social mobility for any individual without regard for personal attributes just as no one is suggesting that anyone accept their lot as a matter of random chance.
I think of it this way sometimes, in the past social mobility was largely pre-determined for reasons that were made clear to every individual. Give fuedalism it’s credit, everyone knew where they stood, at least in general. And it sucked and people broke that mold and did away with it, generally speaking again.
These days, the danger could be less that you are told to accept your lot, than that we would if given the chance, and are encouraged to, and even somewhat decieved into, ignoring what factors are the primary contributors and discouraged from working against them where possible.
The reason the Army dumped that ridiculous ad campaign they had, that stupid “Army of One” business sometime in the last decade? If only we could break that larger ad campaign within our culture so easily, and for the same reasons.
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Are you saying what I think you’re saying?
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