Azelma wrote:
Fair enough, and perhaps they do owe it to you. But is it really helping you?
It's helping insofar as it keeps me off the street. I have pressed them many times, and still do, to help me gain the means to be self-reliant. They are completely not interested no matter how they are approached or even if it is proven that doing so would save them money in the intermediate future. They flatly don't care.
Azelma wrote:
I don't follow what this has to do with my statements.
The point is that for many people better than you (as in millions) it just doesn't work that way.
Azelma wrote:
Definitely not. Though you conveniently forget I grew up in poverty in Philadelphia, witnessed gang fights outside my window, and actually had a mother who was on welfare and I knew her mentality very intimately. So...there's that.
Having a mother on welfare and hearing shit outside is not comparable to actually understanding these people.
Azelma wrote:
When did I say that I think life is promising for anyone and everyone? Did I ever say that? Please find the quote.
That is a necessary corollary of your views about self-help.
Azelma wrote:
And of course I don't deserve what I have...you don't deserve what you have. None of us deserve what we have. We all deserve to be squatting bare-assed in the dirt in some impoverished African village. But we were lucky, we were born American (or Canadian).
Wrong. Anyone who pays it forward deserves what they have.
Azelma wrote:
1.) Never claimed I contribute to society more than you guys. I do, however, support myself and love my parents. You don't. Again, contribution to society is not being discussed here as I fully admit I contribute little other than my tax dollars and giving people jobs.
2.) What bureaucracy? I am a partner in a small business with less than 20 employees. If you're talking about EDU in general, then point taken.
3.) Kiss my manager's ass? I don't have a manager. There are other partners who own more of the company than I do, and I have to go with what the group votes (which isn't always what I would like to do). My "boss" is a partnership group (well maybe the CEO, but again, he's a partner too and just owns more).
Never said anything about contributing to society, though your point is right. You refuted something I never stated. I was merely talking about living on my own and supporting myself.
"Support" is a funny word. I could say I support myself by way of my parents. It's the same exact thing, the money comes from somewhere, right?
Whether it's the edu system or irrational parental behavior, it adds up to exactly the same thing which is getting by because of wholly arbitrary things that serve us but do no one else any good.
Azelma wrote:
Aestu wrote:
My parents by turns insist that I'm crazy/evil/a generally bad person and say "you have unlimited potential", "you're very gifted", etc, but then refuse to trust me or take me seriously.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I was saying. That's where your parents differed from mine. They trusted me and took me seriously.
Yes. That is why I despise my parents. They do not trust me, they do not take me seriously, they impose their opinions about things they provably do not understand but I know well, they lie to me, they destroy my property, they give no thought to my future, they blame me as an excuse for their own laziness, and they give all kinds of insincere praise aimed at making themselves look like better parents and conveying blame for inevitable failure.
React could probably relate.
I have come to blame the Greatest Generation. Why? Because they raised the Baby Boomers. The Baby Boomers had it better and easier than any other group of people in the history of the entire world. Any Homer Simpson could get a jerb and move into middle management and get a suburban house and two cars. The Greatest Generation gave the Baby Boomers EVERYTHING except...the knowledge and wisdom to raise their own children in turn, to pay it forward.
The Baby Boomers had everything handed to them in a way none of us ever did. And so the Baby Boomers never really grew up. It was that generation that developed all these crazy, shortsighed, self-serving, self-indulgent policies and ways of thinking, from "tax revolt" to Botox to turning psychology into "How To Blame Your Child For Everything".
When you tell Baby Boomers that things are not so easy, they're baffled, their immediate instinct is to insult. Of course that is their immediate instinct. Why? Because they have no frame of reference that life JUST MIGHT be harder for some people. The Greatest Generation lived through the Depression, when unemployment levels were comparable to what they are now and many good and willing people simply didn't have jobs. They saw bank rushes and all sorts of BS. They knew the big hats didn't have all the answers. They knew life wasn't fair.
Learning that life is not fair, that one does not always get what one wants, is the hallmark of maturity.
The Baby Boomers, as a class, never learned that lesson. They never grew up.
