A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you

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So he let his fears over-rule his common sense. I see that happening often, mostly in women who believe they are trapped in an abusive relationship or in immigrants who fear deportation if they report their abusive employers to the authorities. No one wants to stand up for themselves because they're afraid of the consequences.

And so the abuse and exploitation continue.

Once again, it is not the fault of a meritocracy or "bad luck", it is the fault of the oppressors and the people who agree to be oppressed.

I don't think it's fair that people with disabilities to be labeled as an agreement to be abused, I do not agree to be disabled. If it were a choice I would most certainly choose to not be completely freaked out. I see it more as, if I did not have these issues I could have easily been successful.

Being I was in extreme poverty, I did not have money to go to a doctor. I still tried from time to time. I need meds and counciling, it would had been an issue for me to constantly take off work in many ways that would mostly be put on me. During the 10 years I was there, I was pretty much the only one who could go out and do jobs by myself, so if I do not show, no field work gets acommplished and it's on me to catch it back up. During busy season I worked up to 72 hours a week and lived 1 hour away from work, then the typical job was 30 minutes away from there.

Plus I didn't have the money for health insurance and couldn't afford to goto a doctor all the time, costing me $90 a visit. I wasn't aware of low income doctor offices until near the end of that job. I eventually quit and started work for the city where there were only 3 people who were employees and my boss there was a real a**hole and would act as if it's the end of the world for me to take off to goto the doctor. I did it anyway, but I sure got my share of a**hole remarks and threats of getting fired. Also I was illegally on call 24-7 365 days a year, by the city with no pay unless I actually got called in, which was quite often because of the crap air vac sewage system.

I know what you are saying though, without these disabilities or if I could have afforded to resolve these issues I could had been very successful and started my own business making over 100k a year.

Being disabled and being abused are not the same thing.

As long as a person chooses to stay with an abuser when he or she has the option to leave, then that person is choosing to be abused.

Of course, some people don't know that they can leave. Had I known about manumission at the age of 16, I would have left my father's house then instead of 2 years later.

I mean, sure, I could have just left with no car and no way to get a job, I was aiming to not be on welfare, I was aiming to supporting myself, I don't really like handouts and have never had any. I'm applying for SSI soon, that will be the first time in my life I have ever gone for government handouts.

It becomes a fuzzy line to suggest people who live in fear choose to do so, anxieties and phobias are disabilities also.

I'm not sure common sense always comes into it...
I guess we have to ask him...
Intensive self-analysis through rational thinking might be the way to go...
And might allow "the elephant to break its flimsy ties" after conditioning...

However, anxieties are real and do affect decision making...
I used to have social phobia, an irrational fear based on decades of social misunderstandings, general uncertainty and more than a dollop of psychological abuse...
Common sense didn't really come into it...
It was insufficient... while certain elements such as social mechanics and self-confidence were lacking...
And any autistic common sense which I did apply was largely incompatible with a neurotypical world...



In his case, it might be the...errr...case...
But what if some among us have a predisposition towards anxiety that is beyond social/environmental influences?
Some people are simply naturally more sensitive than others through inherited traits...
This would hardly present an even playing field...
And hardly worthy of implicit blame...
Hence my comment above: "Those who can can...Those who can't can't..."

I can't touch type to save my life...irrespective of how much common sense I muster...
And what may be easy for you might be insurmountable for others...<shrug>

BTW, I have jumped into the middle of this thread conversation and I am still finding my feet...

I was scared when I walked out of my father's house and signed up for university back in '75. I was scared when I approached all of those businesses for employment to put myself through school. I was scared when I moved into the dorm and when I moved out into my first apartment. I was scared when I walked away from graduation and into my first real job. I was scared when I enlisted in the military. I was scared when I faced my first combat situation. I was scared when I was discharged and had to find a job. I was scared when I quit that job to get another job -- not just the first time, but every time thereafter. I was scared when I got married. I was scared when I became a father (2x). I was scared when she divorced me. I was scared every moment of living on the streets. I was scared when I got married again. I was scared...

Y'know … I've spent most of my life being scared. But I've also chosen to push through that fear and made something of myself -- something more than a scared little boy whimpering in the corner for fear of being rejected by a hostile world.

I think people don't want to give credit for success to successful people because it would force them to admit that personal success depends on personal effort and merit when they would rather blame their own failures on anything and anyone other than themselves.

I don't deny people for being successful, I do give people credit who make it to success on reasonable terms, meaning not being a POS and taking advantage of others to make it. Personal success does depend mostly on merit, if you do not try you most certainly will not succeed unless opportunity just falls in your lap, which does happen but it's more rare. I don't hate on people for being successful. You tried very hard, worked through fear and became successful, I'm proud of you for doing so, but you should understand that fear, like strength, varies from person to person. Perhaps my level of fear is much higher than you have had to deal with? Fear comes in many different strengths, it's a bit unfair to insist everyone's fear is equal, that is easy to prove false. I have crippling fear, that drives me to do things I know is not a wise choice, I have tried time and time again to fight it. I quit voting because standing in line with all those people made me so nervous that my body would shake, just standing there not even talking to anyone, a feeling of complete panic inside that continues to build as I stand there making me feel like I just need to get out.

And I did push through fear, that's how I have worked from age 14 to age 35, everyday I delt with fear, some days much more than others.

Crimadella, I agree anxiety is not a choice and can be extremely crippling. Once again I will not judge you for choosing to remain in your situation, I'm just trying to show you this is indeed a choice you are making.

I'm sure if you thought you could do better than your current situation you would leave. You know your pool-making skills are being undervalued by your boss, but you're afraid because of your anxiety and social issues you won't be able to get another job. You may be right, you may be wrong, I can't say. The thing is you have the option to quit and try and find another job. You have deemed this a lesser choice than staying where you are.

If you're truly irreplaceable as a great pool builder than you leaving would be a huge blow to your boss's business. He is taking a gamble that you won't leave by not giving you a raise. As long as you don't leave his gamble is paying off, and he has no reason to change his behavior.

Disabilities suck, but a person in a wheelchair can't do a lot of manual labor jobs, and a person with anxiety has difficulty negotiating the value of their technical work. How you proceed is up to you, and it may be all your other options are worse than the one you have chosen, but it is a rare person that truly has no options.

And I find that people who want to attribute their success to 100% their own "awesomeness" are just too egotistical to admit that they've had lucky breaks not available to others, and are too scared to acknowledge that not everything in life is completely within one's control.

The truth is that "success" is both a matter of personal effort AND luck. Anyone who denies either side of that equation has their head firmly implanted in their rear.

Currently, I make $11,000 a year washing dishes. I'm broke, but I also have rather severe ADHD that "trying harder" and "thinking positive thoughts" isn't going to fix. You can't cure mental disabilities by "trying harder" anymore than you can think your way out of a stroke, or regrow a severed limb by "effort." At the moment, I'm going to school to finish my B.A., but it's an English degree so I don't suspect it'll do much to improve my situation (and, no, not everyone is capable of going into STEM fields). Personally, I know I've made some bone-headed decisions, but I also know I didn't choose to have a garbage working memory, the attention span of a gnat, and an inability to handle any kind of conflict.

I understand what you are saying, but realize the other side of it, fear can lead you to make choices that are not good, while it may be a choice, fear, given enough strength, can force choices, 'he chooses out of fear'. To give an example of how sever fear can be which truly does not give one a choice, take notice that people can become so afraid that they faint, one does not choose to faint, fear forced one to faint just as fear can force one to choose certain paths. You have more of a choice with less fear, you have less ability as fear forces you into a particular direction.

I make no claim to "awesomeness", only dogged determination.The truth is that there is no such thing as "luck" -- at least, not in the supernatural sense. To me, what others call "luck" is nothing more than being prepared for when a random opportunity presents itself. For example, I once took a class in crepe-making. About a year later, a friend's caterer delivered the wrong dessert, which was supposed to be (you guessed it) crepes. I spent the next two hours measuring, mixing, and cooking crepes for my friend while her daughter added the fillings. After the reception was over, she paid me the money that the caterer was forced to refund. That's preparation meeting opportunity. If I had not taken the class, I would not have made some extra money. "Luck", as most people understand it, had nothing to do with it.You have a hard case, and I won't deny it. But then, people in situations like yours are not the ones I'm trying to address -- it's the people who are otherwise healthy and able, and who make excuses for not trying (i.e., "Everyone thinks I'm stupid", et cetera).

Wow. Déjà vu! I feel like we've had this conversation before...

That's not me though, I have a giant list of issues including physical issues, learning disabilities, and just as XFiles, I also have severe ADD and memory issues, I forget how old I am and have struggled to remember that my whole life. The fist portion half of the year I tend to over compensate, the other half a manage to under compensate. I have a cluster of very bad issues that work in combination to keep me down, even with them I have given it my all, and it's a shame that the reason I was not allowed to succeed was more due to the kind of people who don't mind taking advantage of others, you have to be pretty f-ed up to take advantage of a person with severe disabilities trying his hardest to make it in this world. If people weren't screwed up and would not take advantage of me, I would have been successful. Had I not been born with all these issues, I would have been successful. I neither asked to be born nor asked to be handicapped, honestly, many times through my life I have felt it would had been much better had I never been born in the first place. I don't like this dog eat dog world, humanity, for a larger portion, is grown children riddled with greed pretending to be mature.

Luck does exist, that is factual. When a coincidence occurs and falls in your favor that is luck. Say you manage to play the lotto and strike it big and become rich, that is luck, as people play all the time and win nothing. Luck is chance that falls in your favor. When you stumble upon a twenty dollar bill laying in the grass with no one in sight, that is luck.

Also, IQ level is another example that can have negative impact on someones life that has nothing to do with their effort, if one has genetic flaws which prevent one from being able to learn at a capacity that is considered 'normal', one can try all they want and still fail horribly. Some people can choose to not learn while some can try their ass of and still fail. Intelligence is not simply a choice, they have even associated particular genes with intelligence capacity.

Last edited by Crimadella on 20 Mar 2019, 2:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree 100% with everything said here, but want to make the distinction between "effort" and "merit." I cannot run as fast as Usain Bolt. No matter how hard I train I will never run as fast as Usain Bolt, I just don't have the physical traits to compete there. If in some weird action movie we need to run across a 100m bridge in 10 seconds to press a button to activate the McGuffin that saves the world and the choices to do this are either me or Usain Bolt, every sane person on this planet will pick Usain Bolt to make that sprint not me. In the field of running fast Usain Bolt is much more meritorious than I.

Effort is what people can control. People who are trying their best, should not let others with better luck say they are not trying hard enough. However, merit is about production not effort. The question becomes does our society reward production, and the answer is: not perfectly, but yes. People who can produce academically in STEM fields get jobs as Doctors and Engineers and paid very well.

People who can produce extremely well in the entertainment industry either as athletes, musicians, or acting get enormous rewards whereas people who produce less well in those fields struggle greatly. Not everyone is properly valued for their skill, but in general the best football players get paid the most money.

They say the game that is most true to life is poker. There's a heavy element of luck involved in each hand, but skilled players still come out on top by playing the hands they're dealt effectively. Now it's possible in poker (although unlikely) to be so unlucky that no amount of skill rescues you.

I think people want to ignore all the bad things that are happening in the world because it's difficult to look at problems that are bigger than just yourself. It's nice to just focus on your own problems and pretend that other things happening in the world are never going to affect you. But the reality of the world isn't like that, and it's not blaming others for your problems to say that.

The reason these issues matter isn't because I'm affected by it personally, but because of how it slows down progress in ways that affect the entire human race. Climate change is an example of this. The push back against the idea by people who want us to keep digging up coal and burning it until the world becomes unsuitable for human life is going to affect you regardless of how well you can take care of yourself. If you're paying attention to the news at all, it should be very clear that the reason we're not turning to clean energy isn't solely because coal is the perfect energy source. The people who are mining coal already have a lot of money, and they don't want their revenue source to die out. So they spend that money on lobby groups and paying politicians to do what they want.

How does that tie into the concept of merit? Well if the government isn't about merit, but about who is willing to accept the most amount of money from big business, well, this is how we get to where we are in regards to climate change. Some people are so focused on their personal success story that the entire human race could be wiped out and they'd just be happy that they were the richest person on the planet when it happened.

If "Luck is chance that falls in your favor" blended thoroughly with "Preparation meeting opportunity", then I can go along with that.

But remember, winning the lottery involves preparation -- you have to buy a ticket. The lottery itself is the opportunity. Otherwise, the mechanics are irrelevant to the results.

I understand preparation definitely helps, but it is not required for luck. One can be sitting in there yard and the wind blows a twenty dollar bill up in your lap, there was no preparation involved.

Hell, one could be a lazy good for nothing living with his parents, completely able yet cares to do nothing and the wind blows a winning mega-millions ticket into their lap. I don't expect that to happen, but it could, which would involve no level of trying in any kind of way.