Senate Humanity's Relationship with Work (aka the Bootstrap Myth)

Sigh.

What does everyone think various creation stories reflect about the relationship of earlier generations to work? Do any of them appeal to you?

This is an example of a question that fits neatly under the rubric of this thread and has nothing to do with the benighted dualistic notion of "capitalism vs ZOMG SOCIALISM" that you keep wanting to talk about exclusively. I'm not the one being myopic here.

 

Thanks for the contribution.

While it's hard to sound humble when a person lists off some accomplishments, it's also false modesty to pretend that work didn't play a majority role in our position in life...that somehow we'd be here at this stage and position only by the simple passage of time? That's simply not true. At least not in my case. And I suspect not in yours as well. And you do a disservice to those still grinding by telling them it doesn't matter, when they are old they will have the life they want regardless. That's a falsehood.

As I tried, as failed, to state earlier; Working gives you options. You get to live how you want. Because you are paying your own way. Want to drive a pickup? Ride a motorcycle? Make sure your grandbabies don't have to suffer daycare? These are the options open to you if you work hard/smart enough to make it happen.

 

A few things before I get to your points:
1) I love hearing the personal stuff.

2) I, conversely, wasn't a good student. I had to go with my strengths. I'm visual, visceral. Action and reaction. My hands are my focus. Loud noise, primary colors. A typical NASCAR fan.

While I'm excellent in teaching in a classroom setting and often called upon at work to do just that (ironic, I understand) I'm not best at learning in a classroom setting. In typical male fashion, I'm better at discovering than I am at being taught.

I have a college credit for blueprint reading, for example. I know how to read one. And like most, looking at a blueprint will help me understand how a part works. But disassembling the part will help me more.

3) Also, conversely, I had no financial support or assistance. I was a **** up and a loser with nothing going for me other than grit and faith. I had burned through everything else by the time I realized my addiction.

4) Your example of the guy working 60 hours at McDonald's implies that that person doesn't have any other strengths or abilities. That's not true. That guy's laziness shows up in the fact that he will just work that job instead of bettering himself and moving on. Most of us start there. If you stay there, there is something you aren't reaching for.

Now let's look at your points:
1) Hard work doesn't just "help." For most of us it's a requirement. I had none of those advantages you listed. You don't need them. I'm not even of average intelligence. My alcoholism had driven my family from me. and I had no money. In fact I was selling plasma just to buy food. Literally giving blood to eat.

The only advantage I have is that I know if I want to succeed I will have to work harder for the same results than most anyone else. As a result I have conditioned myself to dig that ditch faster and deeper than most people around me.

I can and will outwork anyone.

2) Poverty isn't a character flaw. Long term poverty is. Go to the poor part of town. It doesn't take a dime to clean your yard. Pull weeds. Pick up trash.

And it takes less money than the tattoos that the home owner has to paint your home. And does poverty cause crime? Or does the attitude of criminals cause poverty. Because it isn't a coincidence that the poor areas are also the high crime areas. It is a character flaw in many many cases.

It's ok to recognize this.

3) A work/life balance is subjective. Some people (many people?) are more content and satisfied working more hours than when they have more down time. It's why these "happiest countries" lists are subjective and not quantitative. Working fewer hours doesn't = being happier.

 

You've accidental stubble onto the broken windows theory.

 

What's that theory?

 

It is to do with escalation of crime, basically in poor and neglected areas. If someone sees a building, with a broken window and it doesn't get repair, vandals are likely to break more. Once all the windows are broken, and nobody fixes them, squatters will move in and start a fire to keep warm; the more fires set, the likelihood the building goes up in flames. In other words, petty crime leads to more crime.

If an area looks like ****, people will treat it like ****.

 

that single mother who's working a 40 hour week at near minimum wage and has taken a second part time job to help make ends meet just can't win literally, but also in the eyes of J-Rod, who thinks she's fundamentally lazy for being unskilled even though she's working 60-70 hours a week or more.

My sibling's household income is about 60x my household income. I take your point that it's not just that s/he's worked 60x harder than I have, but also is about 60x more ambitious, just as my wife and I have worked 10x harder and 10x more ambitiously than the single parent working 70 hours a week at $8/hour. I pity her, because is she's just upped her game tenfold, she'd be where I am today, just as I'd be as wealthy as my sibling if only my wife and I had increased our effort by 6000%.

 

I mean, there's definition psychological value in the contributions made by working, which is why as an insurer we strongly support return-to-work rehabilitation options. Doesn't matter if it takes two years, that end goal has demonstrably positive benefits to the affected party because of the satisfaction work brings. No doubts there.

@J-Rod, the issue I think you have here is assuming your experience is a normative one. It was not. You almost seem to resent that you put in the effort to elevate beyond the socio-economic limitations imposed upon you, without acknowledging that actually most cannot.

It's not because they're lazy. It's not because they're content living literally hand to mouth, pay cheque to pay cheque.

It's because they're innately not wired with the same levels of psychological resilience as others. If you read that Wikipedia piece, you'll note that resilience is found across the average spectrum of people. Dig a bit deeper and you'll find studies conducted confirm that there's a disproportionate weighting between lower levels of resilience and coping mechanisms in people from lower socio economic strata.

In other words, they're not poor because they're lazy. They're not consciously chosing to not follow your lead and seek upwards mobility and stability. You did that because you could. They cannot. They may want to, they're just not wired in a way that makes escaping the poverty trap possible.

The way in which we as a society manage this needs to be with understanding and compassion, not judgement and scorn. That you've turned your life around in the way you have is an absolute testament to you, and frankly if it's not said enough (because people are instinctively put off by your Reaganite politics), then I'll say it now - it's a massive step and you should be proud of everything you have done. It cannot have been easy but you did it, and you get to reap the benefits daily.

The people you left behind? They can't have what you have. Not because they're lazy and don't want to put in your effort. Mostly, it's because they're just not wired to cope with shrugging off the blows associated with short term setbacks.

Spare a thought for how lucky you are, and spare some compassion for people who are back where you started and actually, literally, and through no fault of their own, trapped.

Bear in mind that the guy saying this to you is, in a few hours, flying business class* to an elitist race, where marques such as McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari, TAG-Heuer, Rolex and Aston Martin are key sponsors. I'm not a socialist. I just enrolled my 4.5 month old daughter at an AU$30,000 a year school for when she starts the 7th grade. If I can see this as something that obligates us to act with decency over scorn, you have no excuse for not.

* Yes ok so it's an hour but I bought the flight entirely on points and that meant there were only business class seats available I do feel like a bit of a tw@ but also I mean it actually suits the story to mention it so look! Over there! //runs

 

Ender the champagne socialist

 

I'm sort of in a weird no mans land of being a liberal social democrat.

I guess I'm a Bernie socialist - shirt, tie, cufflinks today are brough to you by Thomas Pink of Jermyn Street, London SW1Y 6JD.

 

Nah, you can't be a Bernie socialist - you have no problem with African Americans.

 

We're voting today. City Council. For the first time ever, I didn't look at party programmes but at who'd gotten what done. Which people specifically. Because you can have great goals, but suck. You can be in a middling party, but rock.
I voted for someone in the Socialist Party

 

So long as it's not PvdA we're good.

 

That's how I approach local elections. Not about party politics, but about who is going to get what done.

 

This guy has built public housing in a time when that almost doesn't happen. He's seen to it that the poor aren't pestered by predatory debt collectors as much.
Yay that guy.

 

Gosh the Dutch are sensible people.

 

I disagree with your first point; the connection between work and morality is VERY religious in nature.
After all, laziness ("sloth") is one of Christianity's Seven Deadly Sins. Plus there's the fact that the Bible itself has numerous stories about the lazy and shiftless being cursed by both God and society....and those actually come from JESUS of all people.

Among Jesus' parables dealing with laziness....
- The tale of the Prodigal Son, who demanded his portion of his father's estate and is given it, only to go out and squander it in wild living to the point of starvation, where he winds up scavenging food from pig troughs, which is doubly damning when you consider that for devout Jews (as well as a devout Jules), pigs are unclean animals.
- The tale of the Talents. An estate owner gives three of his servants a sum of silver coins. The first two put their coins to work and when the master returned, they gave the master his money back with interest. The third simply buried his coin and gave it back to the master....who scolded the man for being a "lazy, evil servant!"

Now the second part of your statement, of wealth being a measure of virtue, is actually a recent development.... most likely due to one man in particular....

Andrew Carnegie, founder of Carnegie Steel (later incorporated into U.S. Steel)
And I cannot lie, even though the man had some glaringly terrible faults, I still can't help but admire him a bit.
Case in point...Carnegie wrote The Gospel of Wealth, in which he promoted the idea that the wealthy had a responsibility to spread that wealth outward to the community as a whole. (side note: yes I realize there is a huge irony in the fact that while he actively promoted spending on education and the arts and denounced exuberant inheritances....at the same time he was cutting Carnegie Steel employee wages and forcibly breaking up strikers and attempts to unionize)



Though to be honest....I think nowadays we're seeing the pendulum swing in the opposite direction, thanks to people like the Trumps and Kardashians. Nowadays, being overly wealthy isn't seen so much as a virtue anymore; it's a condemnation.

 

Seems there are reams of research on Psychological Resilience. Most of it seems to look for ways to quantify what I'm talking about. And nothing concrete seems to have come out of it yet. But I can agree that we all have different levels of resilience.

Hell. I feel like I have more now than in my 20's. One of the opening statements from the wiki page seems to support this: Resilience is not a rare ability; in reality, it is found in the average individual and it can be learned and developed by virtually anyone. Most of what my recovery has taught me could be considered resilience.

But claiming that someone born with low resilience causing him to feel defeated can't grow and move on is like saying that someone born with Alpha Male characteristics driving him to dominate women can't change and therefor society should live with his behavior...

Neither situation is acceptable. Both people, born with characteristics and motivations that aren't of their own doing, need to learn, change, and move on or society will suffer.

I know that changing is hard. But it has to be done in many cases. For me it's daily prayers and meditation. I begin each and every morning by making out my gratitude list after my meditations. I list everything and everyone I'm grateful for. I maintain a feeling a gratitude as much as I can throughout each day.

And everything must be internalized. Everything. No matter what happens to me, I must find my part in it. I'm not just a spectator in life watching stuff happen to me...I'm not a victim.

I am responsible to everything in my life.

And in reality, most everyone is.

I appreciate the kind words.

Life happens. I know that sometimes people find themselves in situations that's hard to get out of. Being a single mother is rough. I was raised by one. As hard as this is to say, society doesn't owe anything to my mother simply because she chose a man who left her with 3 small children.

I know that it'd be easier for me if society gave her a retirement. But she worked as we got older and now has a small pension and Social Security. She has an amount of satisfaction and I help make sure she has a bit of a lifestyle to enjoy.

Understand, millions of teens work flipping burgers. They are learning about money and responsibility. In no way should that job provide a wage where they can pay rent and bills for a household. It's a job for children, not grownups heading a household.

Even if it did pay that much, you are hampering the person working a job meant for kids by allowing the wage to be artificially inflated to make it an adult's job. As a career, adults should be better than that. They should feel enough pain to move on from that kind of gig.

Let's talk about giving blood just to eat: It was my fault. Mine. and I was grateful to have the avenue of giving blood for money so that I could eat. It's a needed part of my past.

I need to remember how hard that first year was. Anything that you would have considered "help" would have only hurt me, slowing or maybe even preventing my recovery. It needs to be part of my story.

That first year, as magical and wonderful as parts of it were, contained the darkest moments of my life up until I lost my bride. And I have to remember that darkness. I have to remember giving blood. I have to remember sitting on my hands in my apartment that was 3 months behind on rent, at 10:30 at night rocking back and forth crying because I want to drink so badly that I can't even trust myself to leave the room because I know I'll end up at a liquor store.

I need to remember those times. I need to know that they are also my future should I allow myself to forget my past.

My last year drinking I made $6,000. Because of my character flaws. Flaws which are responsible for much (most?) of the poverty we see in our society.

 

J-Rod, you are strong, right?
Stronger than average.

Follow that thought through.

 

This why there is always a hazard of putting people into neat boxes/painting with broad brushes. When I met my wife to be she was 19 and the single mother of a three year old. When she got pregnant at 16 (See @anakinfansince1983's post- lack of education even up north) she had to drop out of school because the father of the baby bounced. She had no other familial support network. When we met, she was holding down 3 separate jobs just to pay the rent and feed her and her daughter. No laziness here at all I assure you.

She had very limited resources for child care and had neither the money nor the time to complete or further her education, though she did become an asst. manager in one of her jobs, fast food, but even that doesn't pay well.
We met at one of her three jobs-the Dunkin Donuts Drive through.

The woman had a work ethic and put in the hours. There can be such a thing as circumstances conspiring against your upward mobility.