Really that was nothing more than the answer that I was expecting from you. But yes, the discussion was primarily centered around individuals in first world countries, since that is where most of us here will be raising our offspring, but also applicable to the global population. As for quality of life, I'm just going to quote wikipedia:
"...one can assume with some confidence the higher average level of diet, shelter, safety, as well as freedoms and rights a general population has, the better overall quality of life said population experiences."
So, in order for your statement to be true, it would be sufficient to show that most of those factors have remained constant for all populations and that one or a few have consistently decreased. Then, as health is a factor in quality of life, argue that the advances in medical science of the last few centuries (my original stated timeframe) are outweighed by the regressive tendencies of the other factor(s).
Can't do that? Hmm. Maybe what you say is ridiculous on its face then. Maybe that means you shouldn't have said it...
Everything in that wikipedia quote is debateable.
I could make the case that quality of life has gone down, that we have a lot less freedoms than the previous generation had. That life is far more complex and a lot less rewarding than the previous generation. That the obesity,cancer and heart disease rates are proof that our diets are not as good as the previous generations or even as good as some of the developing countries.
I'll agree with you that science has advanced a lot, but I'd say science has just made it easier for our bosses to keep track of us and keep us working longer hours. Can we really say that science is improving our quality(not quantity) of life?
The truth is, we don't live in a society where this is possible. We don't live in a society where going to college is an option.
The options that todays youth have are
1. Go to college 2. Go into the military/law enforcement/government/church 3. Go to prison
We do not live in an environment where opportunities are free. In order to get something from this society you have to give up a part of yourself. You must play the game, and play to win.
I know this is hard for people to accept. I did not instantly accept reality, but reality is what it is. Opportunity is not free. Happiness is not free.
Why ? Because we don't have universal healthcare. Healthcare is not free. We don't have universal college education, so creating opportunity is not free. The truth is, you have to sacrifice parts of yourself to survive in a world which demands more and more from you.
Now the world is demanding a masters degree from you, and threatening you with life in a ghetto if you don't get one. The world also threatens you with death if you don't pay for health insurance, and the world will let your kids die if you can't afford to protect them.
We do not live in a world where success is free. This is why a lot of the time the most successful people are the least happy. It seems the people at the very top and very bottom are the least happy, and the middle class has some kind of happiness but at the same time the middle class has this ridiculous sense of entitlement, as if you just deserve to have a job, or physical security, just because you are born and are happy.
Don't you realize that if you don't sacrifice your happiness for success, that the billions of the worlds poor in Asia and Africa would gladly be willing to get Masters degrees and take your place? What are your kids supposed to do when your kids have to compete with people from Africa and Asia who speak 5 languages and who all have MBA's?
It's simple. The America middle class will not exist in 50 years because the American middle class has a sense of entitlement, a sense that this middle class will always exist, and that they can focus on being happy.
Well guess what? This middle class life that you have now, the people in Asia and Africa are coming to take that from you. Why? Because they WILL become machines, and WILL sacrifice their happiness, and WILL work 80 hour work weeks, and WILL get MBA's and learn 5 languages.
And they will do this because they want a better life than the one they have. And to top it all off, they'll work for less money than you will.
I had the same issue a few years ago. So, I did not change fields I joined a rather strange organization. The USA government. If I had not done so I do not think I would have realized how good I had it and have it now.
another thought would be to try a non-profit. Pay is not as good but it can be fun. Why work for the US gov if the pay is not good? I do understand the US gov provides healthcare and retirement, but some corporations provide similar benefits.
You think you're being anti-capitalist, but you are in fact participating in the strongest rhetoric which protects and reproduces capitalism: the desire for stability, understood in material terms.
The entire narrative you are participating in, that we sacrifice ourselves for the well-being of our families and sell our labor to create a secure future for them, is the narrative upon which the complicity with capitalism is ensured.
I refer you to the slogan of the Situationist International: "the society which has abolished all adventure makes its own abolition the greatest adventure." The way you abolish a society is, first and foremost, by dismantling its ideological shackles - and you're deeply in the grip of them. You cannot change material conditions and propagate ideological ones at the same time. I'm not anti-capitalist. It is what it is. I grew up under capitalism, and I'm going to survive in the environment I was given.
However, if you aren't a capitalist you should move to Sweden, because the very foundation of American society is based on values which you obviously do not have. You can't have it both ways, you can't tell a child to shut up and seek happiness if you've helped to create an environment where it's next to impossible to find happiness because survival keeps getting harder and life keeps getting more complicated.
People like Paris Hilton, they can live the simple life. But if you aren't Paris Hilton, if you are in fact an immigrant, or a first generation or second generation, it's really not a melting pot in this country, it's every family for themselves here.
If you are weak, you'll die and not even be a memory, or you'll get caught and end up in prison, but you'll be broke and have nothing to show for it in the end. If you are strong then you'll collect a lot of wealth, and you'll pass it on to your children.
The government of this society rewards the strong. The government and capitalism itself defines the strong as the people who have the wealth. The more wealthy you are, the stronger you are, the less wealthy you are, the weaker you are.
If you are weak, it doesn't matter if you are a good person or not, it doesn't matter if you love your kids or not, they (the governments, corporations, etc) are going to punish you.
If there is a war you'll be the one who has to fight it in the front lines. And then you'll be the person they raise taxes on to pay for it. You'll be the person who can't afford the lawyer, you'll be the person who has the brilliant idea but can't afford a patent.
And if you break the law and you are weak, you will be going to prison, because you will be too weak to defend yourself.
Despite what people like to believe, the USA is still a place where the bullies win, and where the strong survive. The poor are completely ignored, as we saw during hurricane Katrina.
If you are poor, you are weak, and if you are weak, it doesn't matter what you did in your life, when disaster strikes no one comes to help you because you can't afford it.
As long as we are a capitlaist country, everything I said in my post will remain true.
Did you forget about the FCC? FDA? SEC? Or any of the other regulatory organizations whose underlying purpose is to enforce fairness to the common man in situations where a 100% capitalist system would be inhumane?
The government does not exist to enforce fairness. If anything the government promotes unfairness.
The market is not a fair place, even the President says life isn't fair. And life is not fair.
Some people are born with more opportunities than others. Money is liquid opportunity.
The FDA is corrupt. There are drugs approved that will kill you. The same goes for the USDA and food. Why does this happen? Because governments don't care about people anymore than the corporations do.
The only person who can protect you and your family is you. You have to protect your family from the governments, from the corporations, from the pollution in the environment, and from poverty, and lack of opportunity.
If you don't protect your children from poverty, then the people who have more than you will shift all the risk into your neighborhood because they know you don't have the money to pay for risk management.
You do realize that the world is way more dangerous than it used to be, and that your kid could die, or go to prison for something stupid all because the kid wasn't sheltered?
I'm not saying sheltering kids is always good, but lets be realistic, most kids aren't strong enough to survive in the unsheltered environment.
I'm sure there are many single parents living in the ghetto or inner city raising their daughter, who love their daughter just as much as you love yours, but what is society doing for them?
Not a damn thing!
Society tells them to pull themselves out of it by their bootstraps? Well the only way to do that is through sacrifice, blood sweat and tears. There is no easy way to pull yourself up, and society does very little to help people trying to pull themselves up.
You can lose everything you have in a hurricane. That's not fear mongering, it happened.
Re:If you people really believe this then what now
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Disillusioned With IT?
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The full story comes out! You're so pessimistic about the US and capitalism because you've gotten crushed under its foot. Unfortunately, there's always someone who draws the short straw, regardless of the intended economic system. But you might consider researching moving to a different nation, if you think it'll improve your lot in life.
And our kids wont have much time to play either because they have to go to school on the weekends and during the summer to compete with those Asian kids.
...and any sympathy I could have had for your predicament has immediately evaporated, upon seeing such a stupid racist comment.
I'm not a racist person, but I'm a bit of a nationalist. I'm American, I'm not Asian, and you aren't in China either, so all of your kids have to compete with the Chinese and the Indians for jobs as well, and theres nothing racist about it.
In a global economy, this is what you should expect to happen.
If happiness were free, shouldn't the people in Africa starving and struggling be the happiest people on earth? They have all the free time while we work 40-80 hours a week.
You assume everyone likes something that pays a lot of money. Most people like stuff which COSTS money and which wont earn them a dime.
Also, why do you say we should focus on being happy but you, and others who think like you, aren't doing anything to reduce the current 40-80 hour work week down to 20 hours?
What if spending time with my family makes me happy? In that case in order to be happy I'd have to work less. So it becomes impossible to find happiness while also being a provider.
Well, unless I can play sports or make music, but really how many people get to do this?
I was reading your comments on the topic and couldn't agree with you at all. I couldn't quite figure out what made me believe the exact opposite of what you believe in, until the very moment I read that quote. You have some very good points about responsibility to your family, which should never be ignored, but that one thing you said is simply utterly and completely wrong, regardless of how you look at it.
Survival can't possibly come before happiness. What the hell is the point of living if you're not happy? So you spend your entire life in a job you hate just so you can make sure your children have the greatest possible opportunities in life...and then you expect your children to be miserable their entire lives to give security to their children, and the cycle of complete unhappiness continues. Why? If we're all supposed to be miserable all our lives, why are we so concerned about continuing on with our lives or our children lives? Why not just let humanity end?
The exact opposite is true. We continue on living because things in life makes us happy. Now, I do agree with you, and recommend anyone in a good paying job to be responsible enough to make backup plans while changing careers. Not because sacrifice of happiness for security is something one should aim for (on the contrary, you can sacrifice anything for happiness, but you should never sacrifice happiness itself), but because you're not going to be happy if your new venture fails and you end up in the poorhouse. So plan things wisely if you're making that move.
And it's okay that you are irrational, but putting any emotion before survival is irrational.
Of course they'll go to Harvard and get the MBA and probably hate it. But they'll have kids who will be able to go to Julliard for music or to art school.
You cannot just skip from poverty to the upper middle class in one generation unless you get rich. Usually it takes a couple generations to do it, the first generation sacrifices themselves in order to get that first house, and the second generation sacrifices themselves in order to get a house in the "good" neighborhood to put their kid in the "good" school so they can go to the "good" university.
And as long as all the educations, schools and degrees aren't equal, it's going to be our desire for us to sacrifice to get our kids into these "elite" schools. There are kids coming from asian who don't do anything else besides study, and who have parents to hold them to high standards.
Westerners just aren't going to be able to compete because westerners are too focused on being happy that they'll lose the competition in the end.
I was born into poverty so of course my priority #1 is to move up. And you are right, not everyone is born into the ghetto, but the majority of the world is born into the ghetto.
I'm speaking from the view of the person at the bottom trying to make life better for their family, the African struggling to survive in Africa, or the immigrant.
If you come from a family that owns lots of property, and that already has wealth, then you probably wont understand a word of what I'm saying but we can agree on one thing, we work too many hours per week and we should shorten the work week to 20/hours a day per week.
This would provide room for a balance that everyone talks about. Until that happens, you can't blame a person who IS in the ghetto if they work 2 jobs and sacrifice their happiness, or if they are doing everything they can to buy their first or second house.
People who own multiple houses and live in the nice neighborhood already, all you have to focus on is being happy.
I'm not saying that happiness isn't optional, if you have enough money and security where all you have left to focus on is how to be happy.
But the majority of us just aren't going to have that kinda job and make that kinda money where we can raise our kids in the right neighborhood and get them in all the right schools while also being happy while we do it.
It's just not realistic to expect people to have the perfect life.
I don't see your point. Just because you have more free time, it doesn't mean you'll be able to avoid a divorce.
To all you people who think that the way things are is wrong, that life is not about sacrifice, why don't you focus on making the work week shorter so we don't have such long hours, then we can spend more time with our families.
Otherwise you have no right to complain if you are a capitalist pushing longer working hours and at the same time complaining that folks have no free time for their families.
If your parents were musicians, following their dream, and as a result they become drug addicts,
Now they are raising you in a ghetto with your 3 brothers. And they use drugs and are musicians because this is what makes them happy, even though they aren't ever going to get a record deal.
And now one of your brothers drops out of school and starts selling drugs because he believes his situation in life is completely hopeless. And maybe he gets killed selling drugs, now you lost a brother, and say your dad overdoses on drugs so now you lost your dad, and now you have two brothers who want to follow their dreams and make music like their mom and dad.
This is the life you want for your offspring?
I'd rather not have kids at all than give them that life.
Long term going back to school to get an MBA or more training will make up for the provider factor.
Right now I make didly squat and my wife brings in alot more. This is fine for me as I am a college student and I know in the long term it brings in more money and its what needs to be done. I plan to really scale back and maybe live with my parents for my 1.5 year MBA program. However within 5 years I could be making 100k a year for their college... or I could make 25k a year and work 70 hours a week with 2 jobs? I think I will take the later.
In 25 years I can retire in luxury and not have my kids go through the pain of blue collar work because they could not afford to go to college.
It hurts my ego but its all sterotypical that a man must bring in the money. Go ask your wifes whats more important in a man? I bet you money will be ranked low verses time with the family and happiness. The wife most likely wants the man to make her feel loved as well as provide. But the whole point is, while a man should try to do both, a man is REQUIRED to provide while the making her feel loved part is very important, there are a lot of marriages which while they aren't perfect, she stays with him because he works hard and is a good father.
Happiness is not going to make life better for the children. Even the wife's happiness wont make life better for the children. And I do recognize that it's very difficult to raise children on a paycheck alone:
BUT IT IS NOT MY IDEA TO HAVE A 40 HOUR WORKWEEK.
People who talk about how a man should spend more time with his kids need to either stop complaining and do something to reduce the hours that men have to work in order to provide, or they can just accept the fact that society is just demanding more and more from people.
But why blame the man for working hard? It's not like you can say it's his fault if he has to work 80 hours, or 40 hours, and if I could make $100k a year working 20 hours a week I'd rather do that than work 40 hours a week and make $200k.
But when you talk about the below $100k range, well, I'd rather sacrifice my happiness to get into the $100k range so my kids can go to Yale.
If you really believe this is how society should be.
Should the work day be reduced from 8 hours to 4? Should the hours per week be reduced from 40 hours to 20?
So far the trend you older people are making for my 20 something generation, is that you are giving us longer working hours, harder more sophisticated work, a longer work week, and to top it all off our quality of life is even lower than what you and your parents had because in our generations we barely will get to see our kids at all because of the long hours and both parents always working.
And our kids wont have much time to play either because they have to go to school on the weekends and during the summer to compete with those Asian kids.
To capitalism and to American society, a father is just a paycheck. To the government the father is just a paycheck to be taxed and the father is represented by a social security number.
You act as if we live in a fair society where everyone gets the perfect job, which allows them to do what they love while making bundles of money.
The cold raw truth of the matter is, the world is nothing like that and has NEVER been like that. Our parents worked in factories, and before that there were slaves in this country. So what the hell are you talking about?
I am in the exact same boat as I have been in IT for 15 years and have 4 kids under 10 years of age. If you think teaching your kids that money is the prime motivator in life and living for others' benefit is the right thing to do, you are creating monsters. That is what is wrong with the world today. People sacrifice themselves for money. I will not teach my kids that money is more important than the time I spend with them. I moved out of a pager crazy support role into testing to spend more time with my kids. I am now looking to move out of IT all together. I can't stand it when people think that latch-key kids are a sign of a good parent. Show them that they matter, spend time with them and teach them to follow what makes them happy. America is a capitalist country. Under capitalism, people sacrifice themselves for money.
Under capitalism, society does not care whether or not happiness is increasing, thats why we keep working 8 hour days even though we don't have to work 8 hours a day. Thats why 2 parents work 8 hour days even though we don't have to work so hard.
Why do we work so hard, if it's just about being happy, why don't we all work 4 hours a day and get paid enough to provide for our children?
I'll tell you why, because society does not care about human feelings, and neither does capitalism, and while you can say you disagree with what I'm saying, the truth is simple
As long as we are a capitlaist country, everything I said in my post will remain true.
Slashdot Mirror
So, in order for your statement to be true, it would be sufficient to show that most of those factors have remained constant for all populations and that one or a few have consistently decreased. Then, as health is a factor in quality of life, argue that the advances in medical science of the last few centuries (my original stated timeframe) are outweighed by the regressive tendencies of the other factor(s).
Can't do that? Hmm. Maybe what you say is ridiculous on its face then. Maybe that means you shouldn't have said it...
Everything in that wikipedia quote is debateable.I could make the case that quality of life has gone down, that we have a lot less freedoms than the previous generation had. That life is far more complex and a lot less rewarding than the previous generation. That the obesity,cancer and heart disease rates are proof that our diets are not as good as the previous generations or even as good as some of the developing countries.
I'll agree with you that science has advanced a lot, but I'd say science has just made it easier for our bosses to keep track of us and keep us working longer hours. Can we really say that science is improving our quality(not quantity) of life?
The truth is, we don't live in a society where this is possible. We don't live in a society where going to college is an option.
The options that todays youth have are
1. Go to college
2. Go into the military/law enforcement/government/church
3. Go to prison
We do not live in an environment where opportunities are free. In order to get something from this society you have to give up a part of yourself. You must play the game, and play to win.
I know this is hard for people to accept. I did not instantly accept reality, but reality is what it is. Opportunity is not free. Happiness is not free.
Why ? Because we don't have universal healthcare. Healthcare is not free. We don't have universal college education, so creating opportunity is not free. The truth is, you have to sacrifice parts of yourself to survive in a world which demands more and more from you.
Now the world is demanding a masters degree from you, and threatening you with life in a ghetto if you don't get one. The world also threatens you with death if you don't pay for health insurance, and the world will let your kids die if you can't afford to protect them.
We do not live in a world where success is free. This is why a lot of the time the most successful people are the least happy. It seems the people at the very top and very bottom are the least happy, and the middle class has some kind of happiness but at the same time the middle class has this ridiculous sense of entitlement, as if you just deserve to have a job, or physical security, just because you are born and are happy.
Don't you realize that if you don't sacrifice your happiness for success, that the billions of the worlds poor in Asia and Africa would gladly be willing to get Masters degrees and take your place? What are your kids supposed to do when your kids have to compete with people from Africa and Asia who speak 5 languages and who all have MBA's?
It's simple. The America middle class will not exist in 50 years because the American middle class has a sense of entitlement, a sense that this middle class will always exist, and that they can focus on being happy.
Well guess what? This middle class life that you have now, the people in Asia and Africa are coming to take that from you. Why? Because they WILL become machines, and WILL sacrifice their happiness, and WILL work 80 hour work weeks, and WILL get MBA's and learn 5 languages.
And they will do this because they want a better life than the one they have. And to top it all off, they'll work for less money than you will.
Do you see the problem with your story now?
Median lifespan for who? Rich individuals in first world countries?
Yeah, you life longer, but your quality of life is getting lower with each generation. Enjoy.
another thought would be to try a non-profit. Pay is not as good but it can be fun. Why work for the US gov if the pay is not good? I do understand the US gov provides healthcare and retirement, but some corporations provide similar benefits.
So tell us what the perks are?
People who don't need money end up dead or in prison. Everyone else is either swimming in money, or figuring out how to get money.
The entire narrative you are participating in, that we sacrifice ourselves for the well-being of our families and sell our labor to create a secure future for them, is the narrative upon which the complicity with capitalism is ensured.
I refer you to the slogan of the Situationist International: "the society which has abolished all adventure makes its own abolition the greatest adventure." The way you abolish a society is, first and foremost, by dismantling its ideological shackles - and you're deeply in the grip of them. You cannot change material conditions and propagate ideological ones at the same time. I'm not anti-capitalist. It is what it is. I grew up under capitalism, and I'm going to survive in the environment I was given.
However, if you aren't a capitalist you should move to Sweden, because the very foundation of American society is based on values which you obviously do not have. You can't have it both ways, you can't tell a child to shut up and seek happiness if you've helped to create an environment where it's next to impossible to find happiness because survival keeps getting harder and life keeps getting more complicated.
People like Paris Hilton, they can live the simple life. But if you aren't Paris Hilton, if you are in fact an immigrant, or a first generation or second generation, it's really not a melting pot in this country, it's every family for themselves here.
If you are weak, you'll die and not even be a memory, or you'll get caught and end up in prison, but you'll be broke and have nothing to show for it in the end. If you are strong then you'll collect a lot of wealth, and you'll pass it on to your children.
The government of this society rewards the strong. The government and capitalism itself defines the strong as the people who have the wealth. The more wealthy you are, the stronger you are, the less wealthy you are, the weaker you are.
If you are weak, it doesn't matter if you are a good person or not, it doesn't matter if you love your kids or not, they (the governments, corporations, etc) are going to punish you.
If there is a war you'll be the one who has to fight it in the front lines. And then you'll be the person they raise taxes on to pay for it. You'll be the person who can't afford the lawyer, you'll be the person who has the brilliant idea but can't afford a patent.
And if you break the law and you are weak, you will be going to prison, because you will be too weak to defend yourself.
Despite what people like to believe, the USA is still a place where the bullies win, and where the strong survive. The poor are completely ignored, as we saw during hurricane Katrina.
If you are poor, you are weak, and if you are weak, it doesn't matter what you did in your life, when disaster strikes no one comes to help you because you can't afford it.
The government does not exist to enforce fairness.Did you forget about the FCC? FDA? SEC? Or any of the other regulatory organizations whose underlying purpose is to enforce fairness to the common man in situations where a 100% capitalist system would be inhumane?
If anything the government promotes unfairness.
The market is not a fair place, even the President says life isn't fair. And life is not fair.
Some people are born with more opportunities than others. Money is liquid opportunity.
The FDA is corrupt. There are drugs approved that will kill you. The same goes for the USDA and food. Why does this happen? Because governments don't care about people anymore than the corporations do.
The only person who can protect you and your family is you. You have to protect your family from the governments, from the corporations, from the pollution in the environment, and from poverty, and lack of opportunity.
If you don't protect your children from poverty, then the people who have more than you will shift all the risk into your neighborhood because they know you don't have the money to pay for risk management.
You do realize that the world is way more dangerous than it used to be, and that your kid could die, or go to prison for something stupid all because the kid wasn't sheltered?
I'm not saying sheltering kids is always good, but lets be realistic, most kids aren't strong enough to survive in the unsheltered environment.
I'm sure there are many single parents living in the ghetto or inner city raising their daughter, who love their daughter just as much as you love yours, but what is society doing for them?
Not a damn thing!
Society tells them to pull themselves out of it by their bootstraps? Well the only way to do that is through sacrifice, blood sweat and tears. There is no easy way to pull yourself up, and society does very little to help people trying to pull themselves up.
You can lose everything you have in a hurricane. That's not fear mongering, it happened.
The full story comes out! You're so pessimistic about the US and capitalism because you've gotten crushed under its foot. Unfortunately, there's always someone who draws the short straw, regardless of the intended economic system. But you might consider researching moving to a different nation, if you think it'll improve your lot in life.
...and any sympathy I could have had for your predicament has immediately evaporated, upon seeing such a stupid racist comment.
I'm not a racist person, but I'm a bit of a nationalist. I'm American, I'm not Asian, and you aren't in China either, so all of your kids have to compete with the Chinese and the Indians for jobs as well, and theres nothing racist about it.In a global economy, this is what you should expect to happen.
If happiness were free, shouldn't the people in Africa starving and struggling be the happiest people on earth? They have all the free time while we work 40-80 hours a week.
Would you like to trade places with them?
You assume everyone likes something that pays a lot of money. Most people like stuff which COSTS money and which wont earn them a dime.
Also, why do you say we should focus on being happy but you, and others who think like you, aren't doing anything to reduce the current 40-80 hour work week down to 20 hours?
What if spending time with my family makes me happy? In that case in order to be happy I'd have to work less. So it becomes impossible to find happiness while also being a provider.
Well, unless I can play sports or make music, but really how many people get to do this?
Why further your education if you just want to be happy? Why get an MBA or do some boring degree if you just want to be happy?
No one stops you from being happy, you can be happy if you have freedom to do whatever you want to do.
I was reading your comments on the topic and couldn't agree with you at all. I couldn't quite figure out what made me believe the exact opposite of what you believe in, until the very moment I read that quote. You have some very good points about responsibility to your family, which should never be ignored, but that one thing you said is simply utterly and completely wrong, regardless of how you look at it.
Survival can't possibly come before happiness. What the hell is the point of living if you're not happy? So you spend your entire life in a job you hate just so you can make sure your children have the greatest possible opportunities in life...and then you expect your children to be miserable their entire lives to give security to their children, and the cycle of complete unhappiness continues. Why? If we're all supposed to be miserable all our lives, why are we so concerned about continuing on with our lives or our children lives? Why not just let humanity end?
The exact opposite is true. We continue on living because things in life makes us happy. Now, I do agree with you, and recommend anyone in a good paying job to be responsible enough to make backup plans while changing careers. Not because sacrifice of happiness for security is something one should aim for (on the contrary, you can sacrifice anything for happiness, but you should never sacrifice happiness itself), but because you're not going to be happy if your new venture fails and you end up in the poorhouse. So plan things wisely if you're making that move.
And it's okay that you are irrational, but putting any emotion before survival is irrational.Of course they'll go to Harvard and get the MBA and probably hate it. But they'll have kids who will be able to go to Julliard for music or to art school.
You cannot just skip from poverty to the upper middle class in one generation unless you get rich. Usually it takes a couple generations to do it, the first generation sacrifices themselves in order to get that first house, and the second generation sacrifices themselves in order to get a house in the "good" neighborhood to put their kid in the "good" school so they can go to the "good" university.
And as long as all the educations, schools and degrees aren't equal, it's going to be our desire for us to sacrifice to get our kids into these "elite" schools. There are kids coming from asian who don't do anything else besides study, and who have parents to hold them to high standards.
Westerners just aren't going to be able to compete because westerners are too focused on being happy that they'll lose the competition in the end.
I was born into poverty so of course my priority #1 is to move up. And you are right, not everyone is born into the ghetto, but the majority of the world is born into the ghetto.
I'm speaking from the view of the person at the bottom trying to make life better for their family, the African struggling to survive in Africa, or the immigrant.
If you come from a family that owns lots of property, and that already has wealth, then you probably wont understand a word of what I'm saying but we can agree on one thing, we work too many hours per week and we should shorten the work week to 20/hours a day per week.
This would provide room for a balance that everyone talks about. Until that happens, you can't blame a person who IS in the ghetto if they work 2 jobs and sacrifice their happiness, or if they are doing everything they can to buy their first or second house.
People who own multiple houses and live in the nice neighborhood already, all you have to focus on is being happy.
Security/safety should always be first.
I'm not saying that happiness isn't optional, if you have enough money and security where all you have left to focus on is how to be happy.
But the majority of us just aren't going to have that kinda job and make that kinda money where we can raise our kids in the right neighborhood and get them in all the right schools while also being happy while we do it.
It's just not realistic to expect people to have the perfect life.
I don't see your point. Just because you have more free time, it doesn't mean you'll be able to avoid a divorce.
To all you people who think that the way things are is wrong, that life is not about sacrifice, why don't you focus on making the work week shorter so we don't have such long hours, then we can spend more time with our families.
Otherwise you have no right to complain if you are a capitalist pushing longer working hours and at the same time complaining that folks have no free time for their families.
If you aren't involved in your kids life, don't be surprised if your kids turn to organized crime, or gangs.
It's parents who think like you who are part of the problem, not being involved enough is why we have so much crime.
If your parents were musicians, following their dream, and as a result they become drug addicts,
Now they are raising you in a ghetto with your 3 brothers. And they use drugs and are musicians because this is what makes them happy, even though they aren't ever going to get a record deal.
And now one of your brothers drops out of school and starts selling drugs because he believes his situation in life is completely hopeless. And maybe he gets killed selling drugs, now you lost a brother, and say your dad overdoses on drugs so now you lost your dad, and now you have two brothers who want to follow their dreams and make music like their mom and dad.
This is the life you want for your offspring?
I'd rather not have kids at all than give them that life.
Right now I make didly squat and my wife brings in alot more. This is fine for me as I am a college student and I know in the long term it brings in more money and its what needs to be done. I plan to really scale back and maybe live with my parents for my 1.5 year MBA program. However within 5 years I could be making 100k a year for their college.
In 25 years I can retire in luxury and not have my kids go through the pain of blue collar work because they could not afford to go to college.
It hurts my ego but its all sterotypical that a man must bring in the money. Go ask your wifes whats more important in a man? I bet you money will be ranked low verses time with the family and happiness. The wife most likely wants the man to make her feel loved as well as provide. But the whole point is, while a man should try to do both, a man is REQUIRED to provide while the making her feel loved part is very important, there are a lot of marriages which while they aren't perfect, she stays with him because he works hard and is a good father.
Happiness is not going to make life better for the children. Even the wife's happiness wont make life better for the children. And I do recognize that it's very difficult to raise children on a paycheck alone:
BUT IT IS NOT MY IDEA TO HAVE A 40 HOUR WORKWEEK.
People who talk about how a man should spend more time with his kids need to either stop complaining and do something to reduce the hours that men have to work in order to provide, or they can just accept the fact that society is just demanding more and more from people.
But why blame the man for working hard? It's not like you can say it's his fault if he has to work 80 hours, or 40 hours, and if I could make $100k a year working 20 hours a week I'd rather do that than work 40 hours a week and make $200k.
But when you talk about the below $100k range, well, I'd rather sacrifice my happiness to get into the $100k range so my kids can go to Yale.
If you really believe this is how society should be.
Should the work day be reduced from 8 hours to 4? Should the hours per week be reduced from 40 hours to 20?
So far the trend you older people are making for my 20 something generation, is that you are giving us longer working hours, harder more sophisticated work, a longer work week, and to top it all off our quality of life is even lower than what you and your parents had because in our generations we barely will get to see our kids at all because of the long hours and both parents always working.
And our kids wont have much time to play either because they have to go to school on the weekends and during the summer to compete with those Asian kids.
To capitalism and to American society, a father is just a paycheck. To the government the father is just a paycheck to be taxed and the father is represented by a social security number.
You act as if we live in a fair society where everyone gets the perfect job, which allows them to do what they love while making bundles of money.
The cold raw truth of the matter is, the world is nothing like that and has NEVER been like that. Our parents worked in factories, and before that there were slaves in this country. So what the hell are you talking about?
Under capitalism, society does not care whether or not happiness is increasing, thats why we keep working 8 hour days even though we don't have to work 8 hours a day. Thats why 2 parents work 8 hour days even though we don't have to work so hard.
Why do we work so hard, if it's just about being happy, why don't we all work 4 hours a day and get paid enough to provide for our children?
I'll tell you why, because society does not care about human feelings, and neither does capitalism, and while you can say you disagree with what I'm saying, the truth is simple
As long as we are a capitlaist country, everything I said in my post will remain true.