They have to believe it is a choice. If not, they are equally at risk of losing everything and becoming homeless and that terrifies most people. Picard’s “you can do everything right and still fail” is not something most people want to know. No one wants to be impoverished, homeless, sick, mentally unwell. Instead they find it comforting to believe that this is happening to others simply because that person made the wrong choice. The same happens for success. The one who make it would have everyone believe that if they made the exact same choices, they too would be rich and that opportunity, chance, luck have nothing to do with it.
Also, many people simply don’t want to acknowledge the safety nets that they have had surrounding them. Ever moved back in with your parents after a breakup or because you couldn’t afford the rent? Ever got a lead on a job because you knew someone who already worked there?
People tend to think of safety nets as government handouts, but the reality is that the vast majority of safety nets are social. And some people don’t have strong social circles (like family or friends) to rely on.
I seriously think this is the reason why everyone got so mean post-Covid. They realized it can always get worse; there is no rock bottom. Everyone was forced to accept that things can always suck WAY more tomorrow than they do today, and they/we can’t handle knowing that.
It broke a social contract.
Alternatively everyone realized it could be a lot better.
Way too many chucklefucks sat at home collecting pay “working” remotely for almost 0 hours per day
Those people got to bake bread, go outside, learn to be themselves, be happy.
Then despite hitting every goal for their department/whatever - they were told to come back in.
Post COVID is an attempt return to normal. Except it’s not even normal. It is worse in every quantifiable way. Everyone is more stressed out. Money is tighter.
Nobody is in a good mood when they are hungry, and tired
Well said.
This comes from the same mindset that states:
“If you don’t like the interest rate on your credit card, just pay it off and close it”
“I am a self made man. I started with nothing, and had to take a small 10 million dollar loan from my father to get started”
“If your job doesn’t pay you enough, then quit and get one that does”
People are sooooo out of touch with reality.
my favorite is “Just take risks, and success will find you”
Yeah, its real easy to take risks when you parents worth 45 hojillion dollars, who can throw a million bucks at every one of your dumb ideas until one sticks without even noticing as more than a rounding error.
For the average american, if they take a risk and fail, their life is utterly ruined forever.
I usually counter those arguments with “So how come you’re not a multimillionaire?” “How come you’re not (CEO, Foreman, successful business operator, position of leadership)?” “How come you didn’t buy your house with cash?” Etc.
They feed us this shit in our media for decades, and then people conduct studies and find that the indoctrination is working.
Most of the modern media I consumed in my lifetime had this basic message behind it. Surprise, surprise, people believe the shit they read, view, and listen to even if the evidence isn’t there to support it.
70% of Americans still believe angels exist, so yeah… We’ve got a long fucking way to go.
The inescapable conclusion to draw from that is most people are fucking stupid.
Edit: from not form
Individual choices of the few keep the many in poverty needlessly, yes, indeed.
You’ve done a wonderful job helping the line go up. But in an effort to further grow, we must innovate further by shedding unnecessary weight. It’s nothing personal, but it’s time for you to go now.
Leonidas spartan kick
The soul crushing machine demands cruelty and suffering for the line to go up.
(All system do, that’s nature, but without having optimisers to change the red line indicator from money to societal progress we for some reason just keep feeding this baby killing machine.)
Most adults can’t read at a high school level (usa.) World full of idiots.
“Life is fair” is magical thinking.
Was listening to a podcast this morning discussing BlueAnon and why people believe in conspiracy theories so readily. There was a quote discussing actively believing or non-believing being so much more attractive than basic disbelief. The activity makes us feel like we have some power or control over a situation instead of it just being an immutable way things are.
There was a decent bit of sympathy for the conspiracy believers, because many of them just are grasping for some shred of hope, as unbelievable as it may be. If our choices got us into our bad situation, surely if we make better choices, we can get ourselves out. If we think 99% of us are systematically entrapped in an oppressive system led by the most powerful, where is our hope?
The article was not as hopeless as I expected, which is a little reassuring. It was just slightly over half saying homelessness is an individualistic issue, while 40+% said it’s systematic, so we’re not too far off the deep end. The victim blaming leans hard conservative, as you probably suspect already.
Seeing the homeless can be bothersome to people for a variety of reasons, but I’d have to think if you’re also part of the same group that leans against removing those social safety nets while also being in the same group that limits workers protections and preventing us from having healthcare provided to us as a human right, there’s some self-aware part of the subconcious that knows they’re one misstep, accident, or medical event from them being there, and seeing these people can be a painful reminder that those face-eating leopards are out there waiting.
Fancy seeing you here! 😉 I’d be interested that podcast, if and when you have time to post it.
I’m always here, I just only try to post when I have something useful to add that I feel people would likely be receptive to.
Here are some links for you:
It Could Happen Here
BlueAnon: Alt National Park Service (This is the one I think discussed the ideas in my comment.)
BlueAnon: Assassination False Flag and Liberal Election Denial (This is basically the Part 1, but not really necessary to listen to first. I started with the Alt NPS one since that sounded more interesting.)
Is this garrison from behind the bastards podcast?? They were talking about researching blueanon in the Lee Atwater episodes lol
I think the NPS one was Garrison and the other one was Mia. The Atwater episodes were very helpful in seeing how we got to where we are with political news and social media today.
Garrison is the host for both episodes, and Mia is on the first one, and there’s a different guest (AltWatcher?) for the NPS one. Was just listening to these this morning! The Cool Zone peeps do good work
Thanks for the correction. I never trust my own memory anymore. 🤪
I learn so much important stuff from them. I listened to BtB for a long time and would check out different ICHH segments, but now I listen to near all of them. The Darien Gap stories were so amazing, I think everyone should listen to those, and It’s the only place I ever hear about things like Myanmar and what actually goes on at the border camps in America.
Thank you!
U.S. Corporate Capitalism is a cult. Adherents worship the Market as god and believe it is the sole arbitrator of wealth and worth. They believe that if you give your time, money, labor, and life to the Holy Market and follow it properly it will reward you with wealth and importance, but if you do wrong by it, it will punish you with poverty. If you are rich, you must be a good person who should be listened to and emulated. If you are poor, you must have done something wrong and need to do right by the Holy Market by giving it more of you time and labor. The poor must be lazy because if they worked properly the Holy Market would surely reward them.
Thus, welfare, which separates the poor from the consequence of their economic sins, is evil.
Stock brokers are the priests. They commune with the Holy Market on behalf of people in exchange for a tithe (commission.) Billionaires are the saints. They have been greatly blessed by the Holy Market and thus are the best of all people and should be followed and emulated. The U.S. Federal Reserve chair is the Pope and the rest of that board are the cardinals. They represent the Capitalist orthodoxy and are often at odds with the more radical believers.
Donald Trump… is the messiah. The faithful believe he is here to bring in a second coming of U.S. financial greatness. They bring him offerings of gold. He travels the world in a (soon to be golden) flying chariot, wielding vast financial powers in order to extract tribute from other nations.
This is actually very cohesive. Well done.
The proliferation of Randian Objectivism as a personal belief system has damned society.
Individual choices, like being born poor, not being able to afford higher education, or worse, having any long term illnesses! They made their bed they can lay in it
/s I guess
I mean, why didn’t they just try to not be poor?
Well, if it can happen to anybody then it can happen to them, and that’s scary.
But if you can blame choices, then they just never make that choice and live safely in their judgemental bubbles, because it’ll never happen to them.
This thinking also “protects” from a multitude of other terrible (potential) life events.
The story of Procrustes should be taught from early primary school and studied in-depth through required philosophy courses in secondary and post-secondary education.
Why Procrustes? I admit I didn’t recognize the name at first, but I still don’t know of its philosophical applications.
Edit: but I totally support mandatory philosophy courses (my country had them during high school, it’s great to teach reasoning and “independent” thinking)
They made their bed they can lay in it /s I guess
His story is the origin of the saying.
Well, yeah, they’ve been indoctrinated for decades to think Money = Merit by those who want them to think that Rich People are only Wealthy because they’re superior to the rest (which is a hilariously false idea given that almost the Wealthy come from Wealthy or at least Upper Middle Class families - they were born at or past the finish line in the race for success, not all the way back like the rest), and the other side of that exact same coin is the idea that it’s the fault of the Poor for being poor.
Forget decades. Try millennia. Historically people didn’t even think being wealthy came from working hard and good decisions… but that God willed it that you be rich.
Well yeah, for ages, literally the richest dude, be he king, emperor or great Khan or what the hell ever was “blessed by heaven and god and had the divine right”.
My family’s income rose by about 300 dollars per month a few months ago. We immediately lost about 250 dollars per month in rental assistance and SNAP benefits. But it’s totally individual choices that keep us in poverty. If we just budgeted better we cou- Wait. No, scratch that. We also get in trouble for having too much money in savings and assets. We’d actually lose all our benefits before we managed to save up any appreciable amount of money.
Silly, all you need to do is set up a shell company in the Caymans to hide all your assets!
(/s if it wasn’t obvious)
Because we have all been thoroughly propagandized to believe this. I think a lot of people even feel this way about themselves-- a kind of internalized hatred of themselves for being poor. Purely coincidental that everything keeps getting more expensive relative to wages!
This reminds me of one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes.
Expand quote
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/158414-america-is-the-wealthiest-nation-on-earth-but-its-people
Damn, that’s a banger!
Love me some Vonnegut. I earnestly (albeit temporarily) convert to Bokononism every time I read Cat’s Cradle.
That’s the cool part about following Bokonon. Buncha chill folks always happy to see you, no matter how long it has been.
👉🦶🦶-🦶🦶👈❓
The ignorance of opulence
