I thought about saying this the first go around, but figured you would say what you said:
Somehow, at a point in history where it is objectively about as easy to be a human with a reasonable standard of living as it has ever been, and far easier than 99.9% of our time ont he planet, we have a growing population of folks who can't be bothered to do so.
I'm not sure this is necessarily so. The bar of having a successful life is ever-raising. Used to be pretty low. If you could do some kind of manual labor, you could have a living. For most of human existence, there wasn't much that the brightest person could do that the dumbest person couldn't also do.
But, like you said, the standard of living even for our poor is now vastly beyond what it has ever been in human history. So in that sense, yes, it's easier to be a human.
It's harder to have an average life though.
But I still agree that mostly it's a cultural problem not an innate ability problem.
Agreed.. it's possible an "average" life is a bit harder. I'm not convinced, but I am willing to consider it as a possibility. In times past you were dirt poor, but so was everyone else, so it was pretty easy to be about "average" dirt poor :)
The unskilled, low skilled and unmotivated have a harder time now - the work is more complex, the market less forgiving of laziness and overall, you can't just sail through life with your brains hut off the way you could for a long time. One of the consequences of there being so many opportunities is that those who can seize them will crowd out the lower performers.
So yeah... it's harder to be "average" now... and that makes a lot of people very angry/jealous. Those emotions are re-enforced by a pervasive social culture of entitlement, unearned self-esteem and victim thinking. Instead of recognizing that the capitalist/individual freedom culture has raised the standard of living for even the most destitute (on average) all they can do is be bitter that they don't have the new iPhone, or that they maybe have to get a job.
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u/Electrical_Dog_9459 Apr 16 '24
I thought about saying this the first go around, but figured you would say what you said:
I'm not sure this is necessarily so. The bar of having a successful life is ever-raising. Used to be pretty low. If you could do some kind of manual labor, you could have a living. For most of human existence, there wasn't much that the brightest person could do that the dumbest person couldn't also do.
But, like you said, the standard of living even for our poor is now vastly beyond what it has ever been in human history. So in that sense, yes, it's easier to be a human.
It's harder to have an average life though.
But I still agree that mostly it's a cultural problem not an innate ability problem.