Is any decency left in this world?

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Dagolas, Jan 18, 2013.

  1. SunnyE

    SunnyE New Member

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    I don't agree completely with that. Yes, that is the tendency, but it's not that there's almost no chance of moving up. It boils down to drive and opportunity. Opportunities abound, but many people living in lower socioeconomic situations don't have the drive to take them, or maybe don't have people with drive educating them about those opportunities. But if you look around, stories of people who literally came from the ghetto into a successful life are everywhere. But in those cases, they all decided they wanted a different life, and busted their butt to get there. It's unfortunate that a lot of people write people in the lower class off, as if there is no hope for them. As others have said, there are always exceptions.

    As for stereotypes in general, as a person who actually fits into a number of them according to some people, they are what they are. They've been around forever, and will likely remain. The sad truth is that they came from somewhere, and lots of people in those groups do indeed, fit into the stereotype. That doesn't make it right to point it out in an ugly fashion or to apply the stereotype to everyone across the board, but that tends to be what people do. I think they more often do it out of ignorance than malice. The best thing you can do is educate people. Shouting about it tends to turn people off. They don't want to listen. But if you patiently and articulately point out why the stereotype is wrong or doesn't fit, people often listen and change their views. I've had many people around me change their views about several groups of people based on what I've explained to them from personal knowledge and experience. Once they realized how offensive and wrong they were, they were willing to change their ideas about it. Many times I've had people pop off to me about a group of people, not realizing that I'm in that group, and when I patiently explained it to them they were embarrassed and admitted their ignorance about the matter. Honestly, people love to talk about things they know nothing about. But to say that nobody listens isn't fair. Plenty of people do, and over the past decade or so, I've seen a real shift in people's attitudes about certain groups and subjects.
     
  2. thirdwind

    thirdwind Member Contest Administrator Reviewer Contributor

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    Actually, in a lot of cases, there aren't many opportunities. Like I said before, the funding per student for a school in a low-income neighborhood is lower than that of a school in a wealthier neighborhood. This means there are more classes and electives and larger libraries in well-funded schools. And saying that people from a lower socioeconomic status don't have the drive to succeed is just plain silly.

    Yes, there are such stories, but they are extremely rare. They are exceptions to the rule.

    I'm not writing anyone off. There are a ton of people who work hard but never reach the goal they set out to accomplish. My point was that inequality in education does exist, and there have been many studies about this very topic. If you haven't read any of the literature on this subject, I highly recommend it. It's very interesting stuff.
     
  3. Knarfia

    Knarfia New Member

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    Vonnegut (sorry! I can work that man into any conversation) spoke of saints, defining them as "people who behave decently in an indecent society. Maybe this life is just a test to see if we can do right, regardless of what those around us are doing.
     
  4. JJ_Maxx

    JJ_Maxx Banned

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    Heh, I take a more universalist approach to all of this.

    Humans are not any different than viruses, or monakeys, or oceans, or planets. Humans do not create 'unnatural' things. Mama places humans higher than they should be. We are not important. Our planet is not important. Heck our solar system is not important.

    Our entire solar system could be crushed by a black hole and every pollutant, every car, every weapon of mass desctruction, every government and history of everything would be infinitely crushed and broken down into nothing but atoms. Humans, as well as our planet, is a drop in a vast ocean.

    In the end we could completely destroy our planet, every living thing, and there would still be beauty, still be life and time would continue on.

    Viruses are natural, we didn't create them, yet they bring death and disease for the sole purpose of furthering themselves. Nature evolved humans, and whatever the outcome of our existence, it the natural order of things.

    Just my thoughts..
     
  5. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    The darkness of human nature and the ability of some people to remain good and righteous in the face of constant adversity and evil is the subject of my current book.

    And yes, one day nothing will exist of anything we know, so all the good and all the evil ever committed will be lost in infinity as if it never even happened.
     
  6. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    you talkin' about me?... or mother nature?

    if me, i sure as bleep don't... ;)
     
  7. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    We're not exactly saints, we humans, but we're not demons either.

    Also, our fascination with the horror, the macabre and the ugliness has had the media spend more time on that than the good stuff. And I don't mean the 'Fireman rescues Billy from the well' thing. Not just that. I mean good things that have a huge affect on the human race. They tend to be pushed aside, so our perception often gets skewed.

    And its easy to give up when you see all the crap going down in the news.

    Just look for the happy bits, any happy bit. 'Cause its there if you know where to look. Our good side may be overshadowed by our bad side, but its still there. Doesn't have to be big. Doesn't have to be grand. Sometimes, it can be just as simple as looking at a photo of a grandmother rocking her infant grandchild in a rocking chair while humming an old lullaby from her infancy.

    And I will stop pulling a quasi-Captain Jean-Luc Picard on you all. :D
     
  8. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    The quote I am currently using to introduce my MS is by Hubert Selby, and is similar to what you're saying -

     
  9. thedarkknight

    thedarkknight Member

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    We had to watch this video in school. It's something only Bill Cosby could pull off.

    Google on:

    bill cosby on prejudice 1971 youtube

    If you view it, make sure you watch until the end or you might miss the point.
     
  10. SunnyE

    SunnyE New Member

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    While growing up in an upper middle class family, I lived in terrible poverty for most of my adult life following some hard knocks. I'm well aware that lower socioeconomic groups do not have the same opportunities as higher socioeconomic groups. That's fairly obvious. But that doesn't mean there are NO opportunities. They are just different, and as I said, many people are not educated about them. You have to look for them. I did, and it's what eventually helped me out of the terrible situation I was in. I won't even go into the underfunding of lower income area schools, because it's a huge sore point for me, and it drives a lot of the problems we have in this country, but that wasn't what I meant by opportunities. There are a number of people/agencies/programs out there dedicated to helping people in these areas have a more successful life. They come in many forms, from after-school programs to housing programs designed to help you get your finances improved to foster grandparent and big brother/sister programs to help kids find good role models. I've taken advantage of every one I could along the way. Opportunities come in many forms. As far as the drive to succeed comment, perhaps it was a miscommunication on my part. As I said, I've lived in some VERY poor areas and many people there have resigned themselves to a life of hard times. Many of them don't even really try because they don't think it will matter, or they don't think they'll succeed, or because everyone around them is telling them they won't. I wasn't saying that as a bigoted comment of ignorance, but as a terrible observation of people in chronically bad circumstances. I never said that NO people in lower socioeconomic areas have the drive to succeed. That would be silly. And ignorant. And ugly. I just said that many of them don't, and they don't. I've known them personally and heard them talk about it. I just never felt that way myself.


    That depends on your definition of success. I don't think you have to be a millionaire to be successful. To me, having a loving family, working hard to pay your bills and actually being able to pay them, living in an area where you don't have to constantly worry about violence and criminal activity, holding a job making an honest/legal living, are all indicators of success. And those stories are plentiful.


    You are absolutely right that many people do work very hard and never reach the goal they set for themselves. But most people that work hard can at the very least, improve their situation to some extent. Not always, but often. Sometimes life just keeps throwing people bad circumstances and they just can't seem to get anywhere. It happens. But the comment I was responding to said nothing about inequalities in education. I don't think anyone can look at our education system and say with a straight face they don't exist, or that they don't have a huge impact on the people stuck in them. That has nothing to do with what I was responding to, which was your comment that "Basically, if you're in the lower or middle classes, you're stuck where you are with almost no chance of moving up. Most of the time, it's who you know, and not what you know, that determines how successful you'll become." Based on your original comment, it did indeed sound like you had written those people off as having no hope of improving their lives. Yes, I have read literature on the subject of educational inequalities, but I didn't need to. I've lived in extremely wealthy school districts and extremely poor districts. I've experienced it first hand. I don't need to get my education on that subject from papers and books. My point was simply that people move up in socioeconomic classes all the time. Not so much from the bottom 1% to the top 1%, but certainly from extreme poverty into lower middle class and sometimes middle class. It does indeed happen. I've watched it. I've done it myself. It's just another stereotype that poor people will always be poor, no matter what. And to be perfectly honest, I think you'd be surprised at how many people in the top 1% were not born into the top 1%. Yes, there are many Hilton or Trump type families, but so many of them came from meager means and got there either by having a skill that they worked hard to perfect or they worked hard through business/invention. Well known examples include Tyler Perry, Oprah Winfrey, Stephen King, Sean Combs, Hilary Swank, Jim Carrey, Halle Berry, Dave Letterman, Howard Schultz (founder of Starbucks). The list is endless, as is the list of successful people (by my definition) that will never make the news or have an article written about them. There are millions of people that are born poor and die poor, it's just not always the case. And from my experience, poor people who grow up hearing people say things like you did, that they have no or almost no hope of moving up in life, are the ones that have a lesser chance of actually doing it. Unless they have serious drive. That's all I meant by my comments.
     

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