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• Reader Comments (11)

  Page 1 of 1 pages

  This is especially true! I’m so glad I have a forum for expression!

  Posted by poopooface on Mar 29, 2005 at 4:33 PM

  One wonders: is success in the US even a good thing or is it a sign of being tainted somehow? Further, is success related to hard work and “good” values and intelligence, or is it all just class status at birth, mixed together with race and luck?

  Insomuch as hard work is correlated with success, can we further correlate it with morality in any way? Or have we come to believe that hard work is in no significant way associated with success and furthermore failure is in no significant way associated with laziness? (Similarly for morality, such as engaging or abstaining from promiscuous sex and thus reaping or avoiding possible negative consequences, etc.)

  At root is whether we believe we are in charge of our fates or not (or more precisely, what fraction of our fate are we as individuals are able to affect). Some think they are masters of their fate, others believe they are merely passive floaters on the river of fate.

  Posted by Monica on Mar 29, 2005 at 4:36 PM

  “Against all evidence to the contrary, most Americans imagine they could and should be rich, that any day now their ship will dock in the port of great fortune.”

  This preposition really substantiates what was racing through my mind prior to the Nov. “election”. In my area, the majority of lower economic class Hispanics were going for Bush.  It boggled my mind until I realized that life for them IS so much better here than in their homelands.  They believe that Bush will continue to cause our nation to prosper and they will, one day, also be rich.  Not to mention that half of their families had members in Iraq or Afghanistan plus, of course, Bush must really love the Hispanics and want to provide every safety net for them, since his brother is married to a Latina.

  I wonder how long it will take America’s Hispanic community to realize that Bush has set them up to be a continuous source of cheap labor and war fodder.  I hope not too long, because it breaks my heart to see such hard working, family-loving people used in such a heinous manner.

  Posted by MARGARET on Mar 29, 2005 at 5:31 PM

  Hello Monica,

  Thanks for the thoughtful post, I’ve given a great deal of consideration to this question of whether initiative or circumstance carries the day in shaping a person’s quality of life; I’ve debated and argued with friends about it numerous times. I’m reflecting that if class- or race-based obstacles to success could be removed, utterly negated, those people who believe that they have no real directive influence over their lives will be far less likely to do what it takes to make those lives better. Whether it’s pursuing more money (which, I confess, I don’t see as being inherently downfallen or morally suspect, even if wealth by itself can’t guarantee personal fulfillment), or it might mean some other non-money pursuit that could help bring about a more fulfilling life; the more fatalistic ones will be more likely to wait for “good luck” and to let new opportunities go by, disbelieving that their own efforts will bear fruit. And those who have the other view, that it is their own energy and willingness to get busy that shapes their lives most, seem less likely to feel as though circumstances beyond their control can hold them back, and so they will remain active.

  In response to the author, I suggest that “the delusion of individual agency”, for all its limitations, is more conducive to improvement of one’s life than focus upon “the constraints of class and structural inequality”; though such constraints may be real. I would certainly say that when social and economic conditions truly are in hand that systematically prevent a person’s hard work and renewed efforts from paying off, that is the real tragedy.

  Perhaps it could be agreed that, in the absence of hard work and the desire to go for “something better”, no one can have a fine life unless they’re already born to advantage…? That’s how it appears to me.

  Anyway, to the extent that those barriers really exist, my hard work and ambition (as provocative as some people find those concepts) take me nowhere and I may well abandon them in favor of looking to “society” or whatever to pony up and ensure that my life is satisfactory regardless of what I do toward that end myself. Honestly, that way of thinking would stall one.

  There’s the central debate; whether in America those barriers are completely imaginary or, in fact, objectively measureable. “Completely imaginary” seems farfetched, but as for mindset, I’d prefer that more people go with initiative over circumstance. Seems more energizing.

  Posted by Kuya on Mar 30, 2005 at 1:56 AM

  How’s that old saying go?

  If yer so smart, why ain’t you rich yet?

  or

  It ain’t a sin to be poor…but it might as well be.

  
  When I was a kid I used to get shocked when I heard about the “dark ages” when serfs could never rise above their rank.  They were born poor, they toiled, and then died poor. I was happy that I lived in a better time.

  Then I grew up and realized that not much has changed, only that now you’re promised gold at the end of the rainbow if you work hard enough. And if you don’t get rich it’s cause you’re a lazy good-for-nuthin.

  Thanks alot Adam Smith…you prick.

  Posted by lefty canuck on Mar 30, 2005 at 6:16 AM

  Adam Smith was a flamin’ liberal…capitalism is indeed a shade better than feudalism or mercantilism. 

    But I digress.  What is the next path?  Since we are limited by systematic failures, what can one do?  Sustainability?  Is this a pipe dream to offer people with no discernable constraints on their lives (that is, if you think you’re free, why succumb to regulation of any kind?)

    Articles like these do well to remind us all we’re in prison.  But does anyone know a way out?
  And until then, will you think less of me for trading up for more smokes?

  Posted by rocco72 on Mar 30, 2005 at 12:26 PM

  Somebody needs to get the word out to all those second- and third-generation wealthy Asian-Americans to forget what they were taught. It might LOOK like the hard work and unflagging motivation of their parents and grandparents was responsible for the rather commonplace transformation of poor immigrants into successful entrepreneurs, but it’s all one big fluke. Their initial lack of wealth, their minority status, and the lack of others willing to give them handouts by all rights should have prevented them from reaching success at all.

  What will REALLY work is a society in which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else!

  Posted by Kent on Mar 30, 2005 at 4:58 PM

  and I suppose that someone else should tell all those millions of americans up to their eyeballs in debt just trying to live The American Dream that they’re doing just fine….

  Posted by lefty canuck on Mar 31, 2005 at 6:03 AM

  For a history of the workethics from a sociologists perspective read Zygmunt Bauman´s Work, consumerism and the new poor
  (Open University Press, 1998, 99 s., ISBN 0335201555)

  Posted by Pär on Apr 3, 2005 at 4:01 PM

  I’ve known many people, some friends, others not, who I consider to be financially wealthy.  Every one of them was/is a crook.

  Posted by Lefty on Apr 7, 2005 at 9:20 AM

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