The reason you are in the position to earn money and the poor person isn't, is luck.
No matter how you look at it. You had no influence on your genes, the culture you were born in, your upbringing and the socio economic status of your parents, how your genes were influenced by the environment and so on. All the little pieces that made you who you are, were outside of your control.
Now you can say "well I decided at some point to do this, and that is why I am successful." But there are lots of factors that let you into the position to make that decision.
If you had the same genes, the same upbringing and so on as a poor person, you would be poor as well. In fact you would be exactly that person.
We should be thankful for the systems that enabled us to achieve. From roads and a government that has made things relatively stable, and we should acknowledge the dark parts of our life that have helped tailor who we are. A lot of life is chance (your genes, where you were born, and to whome). However, I firmly believe that you are wrong in your last paragraph. You can argue determinism, but that is lazy. I escaped poverty and it was a lot of work. I chose to do that and I got lucky. It required both luck and hard work.
> However, I firmly believe that you are wrong in your last paragraph. You can argue determinism, but that is lazy. I escaped poverty and it was a lot of work. I chose to do that and I got lucky.
It doesn't need to be determinism. You have no control over random events as well. How exactly did you decide to chose the way you did? Why were you able to stick to the hard work part?
Of course you can assume some supernatural you that is able to make decisions for your brain. But there is no evidence for that. As far as we know, how the neurons are connected and how they interact with the rest of the environment determines all our longings and our decisions.
I find that Robert Sapolsky's "Behave: the biology of humans at our best and worst" is a must read for anyone who wants a small glimpse on the topic of why humans are the way they are.
If i understood it correctly, your whole argument can be boiled down to “we have no free will, because all our decisions are influenced by a ton of factors outside of our control, thus making us not in control of anything.”
While this is debatable, it is not a useful lens to look at the world through. Why work out or study or attempt to do anything difficult and work on improving yourself to try and achieve something? If you dont feel motivated, it is all your brain chemistry and other factors outside of your control. Poor you, and lucky all those other people who worked hard and tried achieving something, too bad your brain chemistry and outside factors didn’t convince you to work on yourself and improve things. Nothing you can do about it, so why worry about it, right? /s
I am not trying to evoke the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” point, that’s not what i am trying to say at all. A lot of things in life are definitely due to luck and factors outside of our control. But a lot of things require both hard work and luck, with luck alone not being enough.
Think about it. Imagine you randomly meeting Elon Musk at a grocery store, and you got lucky, he decides to have a conversation with you while waiting in line (it is a far-fetched scenario, i know, but bear with me here). He asks what do you do and what you are into. If you worked hard in the field of aerospace engineering and made significant contributions, that conversation can easily turn into a job or learning something new and cool. If you didnt work hard (regardless of the field), then the conversation will prolly be about some surface level topic like the weather or tesla stuff, and you are left with nothing at the end.
Just working hard isn’t enough by itself, but it ensures that you are prepared to take the most advantage out of a lucky situation that could present itself.
A Thomas Jefferson’s quote comes to mind as relevant as well: “I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
If you are motivated by the belief that your efforts will make a significant long term beneficial difference to your life, go for it.
But what if it really isn't true? What if for each thing that appears to be obtained through your own effort, there are plenty of other random factors in your life that interact with your apparently-obtained gains and tend to cancel out the benefits by making something else worse?
Then you'd be labouring under a convincing illusion. One that probably can be examined by people interested in studying it.
If it could be studied, would you rather know the truth, or would you rather not even look, so you can stay motivated?
(Btw, I'm a fan of the quote as well. Above is written from a devil's advocate sort of approach.)
I find that reading behave gave me a new perspective on how to look at people that are less fortunate than me and how I think of "evil" people.
> While this is debatable, it is not a useful lens to look at the world through. Why work out or study or attempt to do anything difficult and work on improving yourself to try and achieve something?
Incentives and desires don't go away just because you came to the conclusion that free will as it is often used, does not exist.
I still have a desire to better myself and improve my life. I'm just clear that my ability to do that is the result of a cascade of events that I had no control over.
Everything that you own had been created within the support and context of society. Your food and water, the service that takes your waste away, the vehicle you drive, the vehicles that deliver your food and clothing, the roads, the maintenance of those roads, the products that you're using to post on this site . . . If it's against your will to contribute to these services, you can choose to live free of all of these societal abominations and live in the forest somewhere. But yes, society has a way of preventing freeloading.
The perspective that "illness makes the life not worth living" is not universal. Indeed, it is utilitarian or epicurean perspectives that lead to this way of thinking. Many Christian perspectives (and, I expect those of many faiths) will hold that there is tremendous value in living and enduring discomfort and suffering.
It's worth noting that these faiths spur believers on toward helping the poor and disadvantaged.
I didn't say that illness makes the life not worth living. I said an illness that makes the life not worth living. What that is is a very personal decision and should be an option that a person can have. Note that it is pretty easy to safeguard such a system from impulse decision that are often caused by mental illness.
> Many Christian perspectives (and, I expect those of many faiths) will hold that there is tremendous value in living and enduring discomfort and suffering.
This is such a toxic part of christianity that causes so much suffering worldwide.
Voluntary giving is no substitute for state programs that give a guaranteed safety net.
Do you think it's better if people just die to avoid suffering rather than learn to live the best they can despite that pain?
Why do you say "causes"?
Agreed on the last point, but also having to beg others to get enough food/shelter to survive ... if you want that then you need to take a look at your ego.
A lot of people think this way, until they are forced to deal with the real and visceral physical suffering themselves.
Just look at Mother Theresa. She was refusing administration of painkillers to people dying in agonizing pain at her hospitals (hospices?), because she believed that experiencing suffering in this way was a part of being a true christian and virtuous person (yes, that was her actual stated reasoning). All of this was immediately cast aside as soon as she herself got debilitated with painful suffering due to illnesses, however.
I do believe there is value in suffering, but there are different kinds of suffering, and what’s being talked about here (physical) isn’t the kind that has much value.
One of the greatest values in suffering (imho) is illustrated by that Mother Theresa story.
Basically, in suffering yourself, you finally relate to what other people are going through, instead of dismissing their complaints as mutterings of inferior people.
And then maybe you will care to make a difference, if it's not too late.
Just for the record: I have a disability (blind), and from my point of view, there is one category of people that tends to behave completely inappropriately towards me, and those are "believers". I tend to avoid them whenever possible, because they tend to treat me in a very disrespectful way. They dont notice, because their faith has trained them to treat me with a certain patronising spin.
TL;DR: Not all "disadvantages people" actually want the protection of religious fanatics.
Thats part of it. Unwanted help is definitely an issue.
However, it doesnt end there. The more religious a person is, the more they take their time to explain to me how bad they think my situation is. Patronisation, pittying, and a general attitude of looking down at me.
There might be value in living on and enduring, and you should be free to do that. What you should not be free to do is forcing others to suffer on if they don't find it valuable.
Current legal situation in most places is such a force, based on misguided claims of religions to universality.
Giving people money is a pretty good way to do that. Money that they can choose to spend as they wish.
Euthanasia should be available for people who suffer an illness that makes the life not worth living anymore.