Re: Humanity's limiting factor?
I think it can be a bunch of stuff. A lot of the time it's just blind luck, but a lot of advantages help people out. Money and social status is a huge one (I'd say one of the biggest), but hard work and intelligence can still help you succeed. Still, at the end of the day, a lot of hard working, smart people never make it, no matter how hard they try, while a lot of fairly lazy and stupid people succeed just because they already had the resources to begin with. I wouldn't call money and social status the limiting factor, though, because people still get by without it and people still fail with it (albeit less often). I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think we have any one limiting factor. We are a very complex species and I think what pushes us forward or keeps us down is equally complex.
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I stand behind this as well. I -could- be a lawyer. I could also easily be in finance (I did well enough in business school, at least). But I can't think of anything less appealing to do with my life.
I think our definition of "success" (by our, I mean our culture's) kind of sucks, to be honest. There are more important things than money. I'd far rather have enough to lead a comfortable life, but still have time to spend time with my family and have a personal life than be super rich and be at work all the time. Maybe some people see a CEO with a string of divorces and major heart problems as "successful," but personally, that's not my definition of success. What use is money if you can't enjoy it? Do you just hoard it like a dragon holed up in a mountain?
On top of that, a lot of the jobs that add a lot of value to society aren't always the best paid. Teachers and nurses are paid pretty terribly compared to investment bankers, but they are a million times more important. To me, someone who takes the time to teach kids is far more successful than someone who just manipulates money, even if their paycheck isn't as big. Arts are also highly undervalued. A visible minority might be paid a LOT of money, but for every musician making millions, there are thousands who can't make even a basic living off of their work. Yet, arts jobs are professions that require a huge deal of time, training, and skill to do at even a pretty average level. We as a society demand constant entertainment, but we rarely actually value the people who create that entertainment. Artists, musicians, writers, and so on rarely fit anyone's definition of "successful," but that's probably because our definition of successful blows.
I think it can be a bunch of stuff. A lot of the time it's just blind luck, but a lot of advantages help people out. Money and social status is a huge one (I'd say one of the biggest), but hard work and intelligence can still help you succeed. Still, at the end of the day, a lot of hard working, smart people never make it, no matter how hard they try, while a lot of fairly lazy and stupid people succeed just because they already had the resources to begin with. I wouldn't call money and social status the limiting factor, though, because people still get by without it and people still fail with it (albeit less often). I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think we have any one limiting factor. We are a very complex species and I think what pushes us forward or keeps us down is equally complex.
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Originally posted by B. de Corbin
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I think our definition of "success" (by our, I mean our culture's) kind of sucks, to be honest. There are more important things than money. I'd far rather have enough to lead a comfortable life, but still have time to spend time with my family and have a personal life than be super rich and be at work all the time. Maybe some people see a CEO with a string of divorces and major heart problems as "successful," but personally, that's not my definition of success. What use is money if you can't enjoy it? Do you just hoard it like a dragon holed up in a mountain?
On top of that, a lot of the jobs that add a lot of value to society aren't always the best paid. Teachers and nurses are paid pretty terribly compared to investment bankers, but they are a million times more important. To me, someone who takes the time to teach kids is far more successful than someone who just manipulates money, even if their paycheck isn't as big. Arts are also highly undervalued. A visible minority might be paid a LOT of money, but for every musician making millions, there are thousands who can't make even a basic living off of their work. Yet, arts jobs are professions that require a huge deal of time, training, and skill to do at even a pretty average level. We as a society demand constant entertainment, but we rarely actually value the people who create that entertainment. Artists, musicians, writers, and so on rarely fit anyone's definition of "successful," but that's probably because our definition of successful blows.
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