Check this out and tell me what you think: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/ Crazy, clear, truth.
Quite enjoyed this. Although to the contrary, many people who display social skills and are likable or "nice" around the office (in many offices) can get away with not doing much and keep their jobs and have girlfriends or boyfriends, even if all they have to offer is being nice. And there's the people who work really hard with lots of skills to offer and earn less than them. The world isn't as black and white as the blog makes it seem. But in the situation where there's a guy in the street needing instant surgery - of course they're not going to let a random person operate without the skill just because they're a nice person.
That was inspiring. Made me want to write, pick up the guitar, work on my punch-kick combos, draw, and hone my target acquisition all at the same time. It's like what my dad told me when I was a boy, we had a father son talk, and he told me that if I want girls to like me when I grow up, I need to be somebody. A writer, a guitarist, an athlete, whatever, as long as I am somebody. I figured out girls (if a guy ever can), but becoming somebody is still a work in progress. Luckily all it takes is a little bit of patience. In the meantime I guess I'll work on plotting the current WIP while listening to some Screaming Headless Torsos...
It's just five minutes of neo-capitalist bs. My tennis coach did a much better job and didn't need to flash a Rolex to prove his point. Frankly, I find the worship of consumerism in this revolting.
the premise is idiotic and the writing 99% the author's self-aggrandizing bs... nothing you read or are told can possibly make you a better person... only what you DO can!
I'm not entirely sure that's what he's saying... what he's saying is that what you are read or told means nothing to anybody else unless it manifests itself in a useful way. Being wise and knowledgeable is largely insignificant unless you use your wisdom and knowledge to change your actions or lifestyle for the better.
This is going to sound like I'm one of those people he's complaining about, but here goes: I kinda hate this article. In the first place, it shouldn't be called "6 Harsh Things ..."; it's really just ONE harsh thing. And he repeats it over and over and over until he's filled his required word count. It's boring. In the second place, this guy comes off (to me, anyway) as someone who would never have written anything like this until he got his book published and onto the NYT bestseller list, and THEN decided to shit all over anyone who hasn't done so yet. He was one of us (those of us who are still unpublished) once, working some job or other, having family issues, worrying about money, etc. etc. etc., and trying to squeeze in some writing when we can. Then he got successful, and suddenly he thinks we're all crap because we aren't, yet. I've encountered this kind of snotty attitude in some people before, and it drives me nuts. His one point, though, is valuable. We have to do something, not just say we're going to do something someday.
This is very true. It also reads like one of those really annoying twenty somethings who has just discovered the writing of Ayn Rand and thinks they are the next John Galt. It reads like someone who doesn't have any life experience, but has been lucky enough with some early success. I've read this article before, many months ago, and honestly about the time this article came out I was moving away from Cracked. I can't be the only one who has noticed that nothing Cracked has put out since about mid last year has been very good.
It's a common trait of successful people, even those who have been crapped on just as hard as everyone else, this kind of a trait is still common. And yet they get everything they could ever want. So maybe it's dickish, but frankly, that's just a pointless statement.
"Lucky"? The guy has been grinding away for years and years. I dislike it when years of hard work and rejection that finally end in success is discounted as "luck". Is anyone who ever achieves success in life simply "lucky", then? I found the article's message to be simple and obvious, but it's also not wrong. It's one particular mindset towards life and work, and one that is frequently successful. Some parts of it, like the inertia we all feel to be lazy and do nothing, are objectively true.
Maybe it shouldn't be boiled down only to "luck" - but there are some people who grind away for years and years and deserve success like anyone else who grinds for years, but aren't successful. Sometimes luck is the deciding factor and is the difference between those who work hard and are successful and those who work hard and aren't successful.
Of course. Being a mathematician by education, I view it in more mathematical terms; if we look at a graph of a system of differential equations, in some cases chaotic/uncertain regions ("luck") have considerable effect on our curves, and other cases very little. The direction can also vary. So yes, circumstances/luck matter. But hardly anyone becomes successful without years of struggle and hard work, luck or no luck. And that's doubly true in David Wong's case (what a silly pseudonym, by the way!), who has been writing on the Internet since 1999 (barely out of college), worked his ass off on Cracked and other sites, and finally achieved success in the last few years. The guy is now almost 40.
Exactly. The reek of it permeates the article. Complete with Fight Club references, the whitest white guy movie ever made. The end is the cowardly way of anticipating possible responses and wrapping himself up in the cloak of self-righteousness. A summary might be: your actions and results are what matter. Except he masturbates through the entire message, just like a lot of articles on that site, and pretty much every article on the net that has the old '5 Ways to Spice up Your.... 10 Ways you could Be ruining your....5 Things Men Do Wrong on 1st Dates' thing going on. Those titles are what bloggers refer to as Cookies; they should refer to them as trough.
I wasn't aware books and movies had skin color. Can you tell me which movies are "Asian guy movies" and "black guy movies", by any chance? As for Fight Club, it was a short reference in his article relating to the infamous quote "you are not your job". He spent one whole paragraph on it. Dismissing an entire article because there was a brief reference to a movie you didn't like would be like me dismissing everything you say because you wear a hat indoors. Except that's not actually what he is arguing at all. Cracked is actually a parody of such link-baiting, and writes purely humorous articles on subjects like "6 Most Outrageous Pro Wrestling Entrances". Have you ever read much of the site?
I read this article when it first came out, and while I agreed with some points of it, there was a lot that made me uncomfortable, and that italicized portion was the biggest one. You as a person have intrinsic value above and beyond your perceived utility to other people and society at large. Stating that you're only as useful as the things you can contribute can be true in a workplace setting, but in life in general, that's a seriously damaging method of thought. It places your agency and autonomy not strongly in your hands, but in the hands of others; it's saying that you are not useful or good because you find it in yourself, but because other people find it in you. It takes all the agency away from your own hands (in essence, it's saying that self-confidence and self-love don't really factor in) and puts it in others - you are only as good as what other people see you as, not what you see yourself as. That's pretty disheartening and not a healthy way to look at yourself.
I'm sorry to burst the bubble, but that's exactly how society works. You can look at yourself positively for all your good qualities, but the vast majority of other people will only look at you positively based on what they can get from you. That's just a fact.
Enter the Dragon and Friday. Or look up the Patrice Oneal bit about Fight Club. I know the site. I hope the Shock Master was on that list. I also like the idea of parodying something while simultaneously indulging in it. He's a real no filter guy. Step back, because he's going to tell it like it is folks.
[MENTION=55095]jmhoffer[/MENTION] -- unfortunately I agree. Most people, including ourselves, introduce people into our lives based on what need they serve at the time. Or maybe the universe drops them in because we need them but don't recognize it. And we repay them by leaving them behind. @WeAreCartographers -- and hopefully, those qualities are attractive to someone. Makes you wonder why there are so many lonely people in the world.
Precisely. Wong even mentions that one's internal attributes do matter, but that simply saying isn't the same as showing it. Anyone can call themselves a good person. Very few can demonstrate that through their actions. Enter the Dragon is an "Asian guy" movie? I have watched it over 100 times since I was eight years old, and was borderline obsessed with it. Everyone else I knew that loved the movie was white, too. Back in the 70s, it was a huge box office hit, but only in Europe and the US. In Asia itself? Practically unknown. It was solely produced for the Western market. As for "Friday", most people I knew that quoted and loved the film growing up had a color complexion somewhere between whole milk and snowflakes.
I think the author has some wise things to say. It looks like generally those that don't are younger. Interesting.
The whole point of living in a society, which intrinsically prefers the collective over the individual, is negotiating, healthily, individual goals, freedoms and contentment in such a way that you don't allow yourself to be objectified, while still being a productive member. A disabled child, who can't care for themselves is still valuable and should be made to feel just as valuable as anyone else. A person who becomes ill, or an invalid, isn't immediately a 'burden', like most neo- conservatives who never had a health problem tend to believe. It is an unintelligent argument, aware only of the first half of the overall issues, that views people as well as abstract concepts such as 'worth' and 'value' and 'contribution' in a very immature and superficial way. When the society is dominated by these values, we get monstrous social policy that tries to figure out how to make people die as soon as possible after retirement, so the state or a corporation doesn't have to pay them pension for too long. People aren't things, and in fact, the greatest inventions and shifts in consciousness weren't motivated by cash, and weren't encouraged or socially accepted. In fact, most of the visionaries we can credit for development of our civilisation are likely to have been judged, scorned, ostracised if not threatened and systematically obstructed by the society of their time. This probably harmed their friends and families and sometimes even killed them. Such is the power of unintelligent mob ('society') - it follows where it's led and the ones in charge are usually so recalcitrant, they work tirelessly to keep the status quo. So I would argue that his kind of rabid conformism, as advocated in this article, is harming the society perhaps even more than the individual. As our current collapse of economy proves anyway.
Ridiculous conspiracy theories about neo-conservatives aside, the original intent of retirement was to only allow people with exceptionally long lives to retire. The vast majority of people worked until they were so sick and so close to their death bed that they couldn't work anymore or they even died working. Our current retirement model is such a massive economic burden that it jeopardises our children's future. And it needs to be noted that the only places in the world where people lose access to health care for being too old are places with public health care, like Britain.
Luck has an immense impact on things that we do, be it good or the bad kind. And no, not superstitious luck, but the luck of random chance. Surely no one who is crushed by an asshole driver worked hard to end up in that position. Surely people who win the lottery are lucky to have beaten immense odds. Work matters, of course. But alas, there are plenty of hard workers who fail. THAT realization hurts more than anything. You can try your best, give it your best, and still end up with shit. That's how the world works sometimes.
