81–90 of 150 posts
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Wow, no, this is almost insulting. Having to raise a family, maintain one's well-being, and being a good community member all while having to live in dour conditions that are never likely to improve , I would argue is actual adversity .
>> that are never likely to improve In the United States, your effort towards this goal have an insanely high correlation with actually making it happen. Perhaps the best in any country in the world, in fact.
I guess if you ignore climate change and homelessness and migrants in cages then yeah everything is cool. I know there’s a huge market for telling rich people it’s ok to be complacent but have some self-respect.
Steven Pinker basically exists to tell rich people everything is fine and getting better actually via curated statistics. I mean hey did ya hear? Scurvy cases have dropped substantially! The future is amazing. I wouldn’t pay attention to anything from the brookings institute either.
It's more than news; it's everything else as well. Even the music. Go ahead and listen to pop music from any previous area - there is a lot of happy music, and a lot of slower tempo, beautiful music. 'Beautiful' stopped being cool in the 1990's, since then everything has to be trounced in some kind of faux-noir or whatever. Even sad songs by Simon and Garfunkel are beautiful, honest. Even the slightly cheezy soft roc…
Was this coincidentally around the time when your adventure through puberty came to an end?
There has been plenty of 'happy music' in the past two and a half decades. It's likely you just view as cheesy saccharine garbage because you didn't listen to it during a formative time of your life.
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This point also confirms my relativity of perception thoughts. Yes, compared to me, the bottom 50% certainly has more adversity. But why stop there? The bottom 50% in America is likely the top 20% somewhere else (I'm making all of this up, of course). Then the bottom 50% of that 20% is likely the top 1% somewhere else. And on and on it goes. I don't believe that thinking about nameless, faceless people thousands and…
"I don't believe that thinking about nameless, faceless people thousands and thousands of miles away is particularly effective " But this is what is implied by the opening statement 'The Average American' etc. etc. , no? The 'The Average American' does face 'adversity', because most people are barely getting by. Imagine middle aged parents without spectacular health care coverage, someone gets a cavity and needs a ro…
> ...
> It means no car trip to Myrtle Beach
were you trying to make the point that people concoct adversity where it doesn't exist? because i think you're doing good work on that front. keep it up.
I have another point of view here - there's power in overcoming adversity. Nearly every movie produced tells you that. But your average American doesn't face real adversity anymore. We are extremely comfortable. Extremely safe. But there's something inside us that needs this adversity, it needs to triumph, to overcome challenges. This is why we run marathons, punish ourselves in the gym, climb mountains. Some of us,…
I have another point of view here - there's power in overcoming adversity. Nearly every movie produced tells you that. But your average American doesn't face real adversity anymore. We are extremely comfortable. Extremely safe. But there's something inside us that needs this adversity, it needs to triumph, to overcome challenges. This is why we run marathons, punish ourselves in the gym, climb mountains. Some of us,…
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>> that are never likely to improve In the United States, your effort towards this goal have an insanely high correlation with actually making it happen. Perhaps the best in any country in the world, in fact.
"the american dream"
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"I don't believe that thinking about nameless, faceless people thousands and thousands of miles away is particularly effective " But this is what is implied by the opening statement 'The Average American' etc. etc. , no? The 'The Average American' does face 'adversity', because most people are barely getting by. Imagine middle aged parents without spectacular health care coverage, someone gets a cavity and needs a ro…
> The 'The Average American' does face 'adversity', because most people are barely getting by. > ... > It means no car trip to Myrtle Beach were you trying to make the point that people concoct adversity where it doesn't exist? because i think you're doing good work on that front. keep it up.
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Not necessarily disagreeing with you but skid row in LA looks and feels like a third world country.
Skid row isn’t the bottom 50% though. It’s the bottom 0.01%
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I agree for many of us ... but I think 'life is not easy' for the bottom 50%. Most people sling coffee, serve food, work in factories, panic around in delivery vehicles all day, and with one wrongs step or bad health outcome they could be in doom. Lack of job stability, longer retirement, lack of community ... these things take their tole. Kind of a permanent existential anxiety. Just 'keeping on doing', facing the d…
This point also confirms my relativity of perception thoughts. Yes, compared to me, the bottom 50% certainly has more adversity. But why stop there? The bottom 50% in America is likely the top 20% somewhere else (I'm making all of this up, of course). Then the bottom 50% of that 20% is likely the top 1% somewhere else. And on and on it goes. I don't believe that thinking about nameless, faceless people thousands and…
This is if you don't take into account purchasing power parity and the relative expense of things like education, medical care and housing.
Being homeless in San Francisco isn't going to be as fun than being, say, lower middle class in Uruguay even if your nominal income is higher.