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Your perception of who is and isn't a victim is skewed. While I don't advocate for people playing the victim, I find that you can't always avoid being a victim of some wrong doing. How you react is obviously equally as important, but sometimes crap happens and you're going to vent about it. Are you going to sit here and claim to have never, in your entire life, complained or vented about something that happened to you that was out of your control or not what you had wished to happen?
He is just another one posturing for superiority. He has done everything right. He has never vented or complained ever. Lets all give him a pat on the back.
He is just another one posturing for superiority. He has done everything right. He has never vented or complained ever. Lets all give him a pat on the back.
No. I am in control of my destiny. Like anyone else, I've made tons of mistakes along the way. I learn from them, move forwards, and don't repeat them. This isn't posturing. It's how mature adults live their lives.
Let me ask... Did you get A's in High School? If you didn't, why not? Did you go to college and take a "hard" major that is in demand with employers? If you didn't, why not? At work, did you always strive to be the best person in the building? Take on extra responsibility? If you didn't, why not?
No. I am in control of my destiny. Like anyone else, I've made tons of mistakes along the way. I learn from them, move forwards, and don't repeat them. This isn't posturing. It's how mature adults live their lives.
Let me ask... Did you get A's in High School? If you didn't, why not? Did you go to college and take a "hard" major that is in demand with employers? If you didn't, why not? At work, did you always strive to be the best person in the building? Take on extra responsibility? If you didn't, why not?
I graduated high school 3rd in my class with a 3.9/4.0. I graduated from a top university that is revered worldwide and nationwide as a first gen college student. People always come to me at work for help because I have an advanced skill set and have a reputation for streamlining and improving processes. It doesn't mean that I haven't been screwed over or treated unfairly from time to time. I, and anyone else here, has a right to be PO'd about that sort of thing. And it also doesn't mean that if you've been screwed over, that you had it coming.
The arrogance from your post is astounding. On one hand, I get that you're trying to tell people to take control of their lives and don't let themselves embrace the victim mentality. I agree, that's no way to live your life. But your accusatory tone of people essentially always deserving what they have coming to them is complete and utter BS. I took a job 1.5 years ago and it has been a nightmare. I've had zero mentorship or advocacy from management, because we've had unusually high amounts of turnover and a lack of leadership in our department. I've tried moving out of the department, just to be sabotaged by a former manager who didn't want to let me go. So now I'm working on finding a job outside the company, but I have some people lecturing me on job hopping and how it's going to ruin my career, and so I should stick it out in this s*** storm of a situation because somehow I owe it to them. Do you think I, or anyone else, deserves this kind of treatment? Do you think this is a result of my poor decision making? Or do you possibly think that these are circumstances beyond my control that have royally F'd me over?
Meanwhile, I'm going to be an adult and deal with it appropriately in due time. However, I'm allowed to be angry that this didn't work out the way I intended, and I don't need to be lectured how this sort of thing is a result of my poor decision making. It's not; it has been completely out of my control up until this point. I know people like you who portray themselves over social media to be impervious to defeat. I have a cousin who's always boasting about this sort of thing Facebook. He's a middle aged, junior college drop out who's never had a steady FT job who's just now going back to community college to start a career. I'm very happy for him and proud of him for finally making these choices, but I also find his online exuberance and posturing to be a little absurd given the circumstances. I think sometimes people hide behind excessive positivity and confidence to conceal their own insecurities. Or they're just extremely aloof and sheltered, which I suspect is why you are what you are.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffD
I was born fairly bright and had all the opportunities of an upper middle class upbringing. I can make bad decisions and recover from them. I recognize that this isn't the reality for many people.
But it's fine, because I realize that people who've had life handed to them on a platter take things like this for granted and may slip up as a result, while the hunger continues to be alive and well within me, which has contributed to my relative success compared to those who started much further ahead in life.
Last edited by Left-handed; 09-20-2017 at 08:57 AM..
The interesting question is why they make those bad decisions? The pure libertarian view is that everyone is equal. If you make good decisions, you prosper. That's the basis of today's Republican doctrine. The contrary view is that we're not actually all equal. We're born with very different levels of intellect. We have very different parenting, role models, and education depending on the environment we happen to be born in. If you're born with low-average intellect and don't have the strong parenting, you probably make endless bad decisions and are a have not your whole life.
I was born fairly bright and had all the opportunities of an upper middle class upbringing. I can make bad decisions and recover from them. I recognize that this isn't the reality for many people.
We're all going to make at least some bad decisions. Whether or not we recover depends on a lot of factors - how severe the mistake was, how long its consequences last, whether or not we understand what led to the mistake, if we can avoid repeating the behavior that led to the mistake, etc.
A high school crush of mine got married when she was 19. The baby was popped out by 20. Was having a baby that young stupid with no real career or way to care for the child? Probably. In hindsight, it was a mistake, but one she could have probably "recovered" from.
A year or two after that, she came down with colon cancer and ended up having a partial colectomy out of the blue. Husband moved on and divorced her. She was on disability and unable to work for months, if not a year. I don't remember how long it was at this point, but it was a significant amount of time. She lost everything she had up to that point. She has since returned to work, but her and her son live in a trailer. They're fairly poor and the dad isn't really in the picture.
I could name dozens of people like this. They may be poor, but not on the dole. While we all make mistakes, many may not have made critical ones. Many were brought up poor to working class themselves and that's all they know. Plenty of people in this area are fine with being working class. They don't have lofty aspirations. As long as they aren't breaking the law or on the dole, I don't really care.
I struggle with anyone who can't recognize that context matters. It's not all that matters, and recognizing that things, events, decisions, etc., occur in and are shaped by context doesn't conflict with advocating that people take personal responsibility. Both matter.
Whatever might be John's influences, if he's passed out drunk on a downtown sidewalk at 3 AM, I believe that he's made some atrocious decisions and making different decisions is the only way that his life will improve. I also believe that he knows that, and the real question for me is why doesn't he make better choices? Who in their right mind, meaning fee of addiction or mental illness, would end up laying there? Slapping him sober and telling him to make better choices is about as useful as telling someone who is on fire that they shouldn't play with matches.
Really, now how does one see 20, 30, 40 years into the future to know what is going to happen?
You don't. You make lots of contingency plans. The outcome is usually quite a bit better than your worst case plan. My life is all about strategy. I try to plan those 20, 30, 40 years out.
No. I am in control of my destiny. Like anyone else, I've made tons of mistakes along the way. I learn from them, move forwards, and don't repeat them. This isn't posturing. It's how mature adults live their lives.
Let me ask... Did you get A's in High School? If you didn't, why not? Did you go to college and take a "hard" major that is in demand with employers? If you didn't, why not? At work, did you always strive to be the best person in the building? Take on extra responsibility? If you didn't, why not?
If I had done better in high school, I would have finished up with a college degree and in about a quarter of the time it took me to get as far as I did. As it is, I failed math classes from 6th grade on and spent years in night classes at the community college trying to catch up again. That has held me back my whole life.
But why did I do so bad in high school? Well, I was having problems with my parents and with an abusive father. I ended up in foster homes, a group home, and a lock up. I finally quit school and left home at barely 17 to get away from my family. I can tell you that when you have problems at home - school? Forget school.
If I had had someone to mentor me or take the time to talk to me, things might have been very different. But I had only myself to rely on and my knowledge of the world was lacking a lot.
So sometimes things happen that you can't plan for. I took night classes for as long as I could afford them, but was never able to work more than low paying jobs. And when I went back home for a visit 5 years ago, I still had to listen to my mother complain about why I couldn't be like my cousin who has a well paying job and who also had to have a Bachelor's degree to get it, something both of us told my mother and she still doesn't get it.
Maybe it's just me, but I know a lot of "have nots," and honestly most of what I see is self-induced.
That's what I notice, too.
Some of the attacks are out of sheer frustration, I think. Watching people do self destructive things in their lives is just so frustrating. If I have ever come off that way in my posts, it's NOT because I don't care about the have nots. Au contraire...I care very much. At least some of the anger that gets expressed by people on these boards is just out of sheer frustration at seeing people all around them--acquaintances, friends, and family members--in an endless loop of self sabotage.
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