Your Vision of Human Nature

Have you ever taken into consideration unperceived plight that may be causing some to be unhappy? Obviously you would be the wrong person to complain/talk to. Laziness is not always the reason for peoples unhappiness.

 

Meanwhile you haven't produced a single supporting document in support of your position.

 

Of course there are other considerations. We all have limitations.

 

Hmm..See, that contradicts your earlier point.
"
When someone fails because they do not try hard enough, I blame them for their failure just like I blame myself when I do not succeed because I did not try hard enough. If they try and fail, that is a different matter. I congratulate them for trying. However, if they give up, that is their fault. What it ultimately comes down to is whether they are satisfied with themselves, not what I think or anyone else thinks.

I will never apologize for believing that people are largely responsible for their own fate. They might not do as well as the wanted, but that is the way of the world. At some point, we all fall short of our own expectations."

Which was my point. Dont base it on laziness for why people arnt successful, or end up unhappy. Assume they have tried and failed, or are trying first.

 

At it's heart human nature is quite simple. People will do what ever they believe to be in their own best interests. Exactly what that is, however, is determined by a whole lot of cultural, educational, and other in put and exactly how it all works together is not well, if at all, understood.

 

I think it's a combination of many factors and it becomes more so when you put people from many different places in one place like America. I don't think it's any one thing but a stew of many. I think in places where there isn't much immigration and populations haven't mixed in a very long time analysis would be a little easier.The world has become a small place and if culture is a factor practically no one has ever not been exposed to other cultures, take for instance western influences on most of the world and how it turns up just about everywhere. I've often wondered why the Renaissance produced so many extraordinarily brilliant individuals who excelled equally in both the arts and science. These were men that were astute observers of everything and a single individual might be an accomplished artist, architect, engineer, mathematician, physicist, astronomer and chemist. I also wonder do such individuals still exist, in such large numbers and if not then were those men some sort of uber men? If such individuals were born in our time what wonders would they have produced? Relatively speaking they were only around for a short time, a few hundred years and nothing for the next three hundred compared to it. Even after that progress was slow until the 20th century.

 

In my view, this is what determines success:

1/3 nature (genes), 1/3 nurture (the environment), 1/3 luck (being in the right place at the right time).

That means someone can be successful if they don't have nurture, just not as successful as they could have been if they did have nurture.

 

The key word is "believe". People will do what they "believe" to be in their best interest, not what actually IS in their best interest. Humans are by nature irrational.

For example: Tell someone they have a 3% chance to get $1 million dollars. They'll take that chance and will think the odds are not bad.
Tell someone they have a 3% chance of dying from a virus. They think they are safe, and the odds are much in their favor.

Humans are inherently bad at assessing risk and reward.

 

But, of course, what we believe, can be at wild variance with objective reality even for the smartest of us. 3% risk of death is irrelevant in a population under thirty most of which believes itself to be immortal. 3% chance if winning a million dollars? That's a bit trickier proposition. Would I spend a buck? Yes. Would I spend 20 no. But even there it would depend on how much it would improve my odds of winning.

 

I think it's basic human nature to tell ourselves someone else was at fault for our failures. It might be a coping mechanism, I don't know. But what I do know is that - as we age - we have the ability to see ourselves and those situations more clearly. If we're being honest with ourselves. And if we aren't, then our capacity to grow is seriously limited.

 

Yet, roughly 3% of the population are millionaires, however, most people probably believe that they can achieve millionaire status. Hope dies last....

 

In psychology, this is called the self serving bias: Attributing credit for the good things in one's life to one's own skill and hard work, whereas attributing the bad things to luck or someone else's fault. We see this psychological phenomenon in this very thread.

 

What nonsense, There’s a hundred different factors explaining why person A put in hard work, and got ahead, while person B put in the same amount of work, and didn’t succeed like person A.
Marxist claptrap has no place in reality.

 

Yet those who succeed are usually those who are most apt to both admit and learn from their mistakes.

 

I was fired from my first job. At the time, I felt shame and my fall back was to fabricate reasons. Over time, it was an elaborate plot by someone else. And I actually believed it. Just recently, I was talking with someone and told them - without even thinking or caring - that I'd been fired from my first job. I went back in my mind and was able to see why I was fired and realized I would have fired me too! I have enjoyed the ageing process immensely!

 

Those would also be the ones who do not discount luck and their upbringing as a substantial contributor to their success, both of which they had nothing to do with.

 

"There are no poor in America, just temporarily embarrassed millionaires" Mark Twain

Every politician says he is for nothing so much as the common man. Yet not one man in 10 million sees himself as common

We are all totally unique, just like everybody else.

 

I have long believed that one makes his own luck. Being in the right place at the right time often depends on ones careful scrutiny of place and time.

And of course grooming ones self to be the right person when the right time and place come along.

I often find less successful people claim the more successful ones were "just lucky."

 

Carnegie is an interesting case on so many levels. What would have happened to him if his parents hadn't decided to take the big risk to emigrate to the US? What is they hadn't chosen a boom town in PA to move to, but rather some downtrodden place in the West? What if there had been anti-immigrant sentiment in the US like the one we have now?

And then there is the philantropy, for which he is remembered. That is in stark contrast with the violent handling of the strikes in his factories. Lots of material for future social scientists to study.

 

True, if one doesn't work, one cannot be lucky (unless you are a trust fund baby or win the lottery). However, since nobody can predict the stock market, I extrapolate that nobody can predict beforehand whether a business endeavour will be successful or not. Most businesses fail, that's a fact. The few that survive and are thriving are the ones that have been in the right place at the right time, not because their owner was so smart, but because they were lucky. It's like mutagenesis in nature. Throw many permutations at the wall. Most fail, but some increase fitness. The few successful businesses that survive the selection process got the "mutations" right. They attribute it in retrospect to skill. But, let me ask you this: If I have a mutation that allows me to run faster than anyone else, is that skill or luck?

 

Someone can fact check this if they’d like.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cn...-to-save-to-be-a-millionaire-in-30-years.html

Claims the average millennial can become a millionaire.

 

Yeah, if you tell me where I can get a guaranteed 8% return for 31 years, year in year out, after the managers and the stock funds take out their share, I may start paying attention to those articles claiming that everyone can be rich.