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My contention with that is that today & the agricultural age are two spaces out of an almost-infinitely many. One of those is a world very much like our own with a lesser emphasis on work, leading to (assuming possibility) a leisure-dominated future such as in Banks' Culture novels or Star Trek (the people who weren't in Starfleet). Another world is one like our own the emphasizes intense competition & work more, leading to a future (again assuming possibility) the em economy. So your dichotomy is false, just because our ancestors had it "worse" (subjectively in most people's opinions, including mine) does not mean we are at the apex of "better", what could be.

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I mean there's a difference between doing crossfit 3 days a week and being a 600lb deadlifter.

I wouldn't feel particularly proud of my status if I earned $15/hr and there were a hundred guys at the gym hovering at my fitness level.

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So what I'm saying is that the mainstream is biased to think only in terms of class-inquality. But people who are serious lifters might be middle class, but consider themselves extremely high status because of where they fall on the spectrum of physical-inequality.

I don't see any reason why the average person can't redefine their concept of status. It's already commonly espoused that "money doesn't make you happy", and many rich people are openly despised for their love of wealth.

I actually think the average person *does* do this to a large extent. I was just thinking about the people who derive large parts of their identities from fishing/hunting, video/card games, academic accomplishments, community work, etc. A lot of my colleagues on campus feel fine and don't even want to earn lots of money. I think they're insane but that's how they feel :)

I think it's only the noisy bottom 10% of people who get stuck playing according to someone else's worldview who really cause this conversation.

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Oh, cool. And while we're redefining words, I hereby say that "Jason Young" is synonymous with "douchebag". Hopefully, it will catch on.

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Right, I apologize for my tone.

You are correct that people do have choices besides a liberal arts degree (so they bear some responsibility) and that actually trying really hard already gives you an advantage because not everyone tries really hard.

Just taking pride in the fact that you get by OK is hard for many people because our brains are hardwired to care a great deal about inequality (inequality does correlate to the distribution of power so our obsession with it is not completely unjustified). It would definitely help a lot of people to derive pride from other personal attributes such as physical fitness, a dependable group of friends, etc... But I do believe inequality is definitely skewed and the people on the higher rungs are often not seen as worthy of being there, having worked their way up through luck and coalition politics. Many young people find it difficult to obey such people and/or to prove themselves.

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The number of people out there who can convince themselves they're awesome in spite of their $15/hr job because they do Crossfit and are popular on Tinder is very low. I agree it's possible -- "just reframe, man!" -- but most people can't do it, and that's probably a good thing.

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what a word means depends on context and usage, not the technical definition as determined by specialists. pedantry and pretense are, what's the word? gay.

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Wow Doug, reading comprehension really isn't your strong suit.

workers were expected to work hard and long

If you'd bothered to read the rest of the comments, you'd have learned that the average medieval peasant worked less hours than the average American does today.

little to no promise of moving up from their low status positions

I tend to see that as a feature, not a bug. Holding a carrot in front of a wage slave may be good for the owner's bottom line, but I don't think it's so good for the slave employee's happiness.

Like I said, people care about STATUS. Seeing others move ahead - that's what makes one feel like a loser.

Wait, I'm arguing with someone who takes advice from the likes of Charles Murray. WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME ?

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I was actually agreeing with you on your points, and just wanted to add my own analysis in support of the notion that the resolution is for people to think about themselves differently. The 6-figures comment was more of a "hey, you don't have it so bad" than a recommendation that everyone ought to do this.

"You have to have a moderately high IQ for that (and you can forget about sleeping with lots of women because you really won't have the time to go out much)"

Heh speak for yourself :) Modern society is filled with pointless time sinks and distractions. How many people actually aim DIRECTLY at what they want?

"and even then there won't be enough six-figure jobs for all the candidates,"

This is true. If everyone tried hard, there's still only a roughly fixed number of people who succeed. But as things actually are right now, there's tons of people who don't try very hard, so your chances of beating them are high.

" It's solved by making people feel more appreciated at normal jobs."

I wasn't suggesting that the only way to feel high-status is to have a high paying job, but it's one commonly accepted way. In general I think anyone who is middle class can afford a reasonable lifestyle and should be able to derive status from who they are as a person (in addition to whatever they can accomplish in life).

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If you think prior civilizations didn't follow the maxim of telling their lower class masses to suck it up and work hard at their crappy lot in life, you must have missed most of history.

For almost all of human history status has been highly concentrated among a tiny subset of aristocrats/elites/patrticians/owners/brahmins. The vast majority of workers were expected to work hard and long with little to no promise of moving up from their low status positions.

Modern Western civilization is far closer to your ideal than almost any other time or place. Among other things this is probably the only time where elites increasingly have less leisure than the masses. Contrast most times where the elite classes performed almost no labor. Second unlike prior civilizations the division between the elite and peasant is highly meritocratic, and there's no legal hereditary barriers between the classes.

The increasing modern social breakdown of the middle and lower classes is documented by Charles Murray in Coming Apart. This suggests that the pendulum has swung too far in mollycoddling the peasants. Most of the masses seem to behave less pathologically in the world of Downton Abbey than their 21st century descendants on disability and food stamps.

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Competence seems an important condition for job satisfaction.

Competence requires:a) clear-eyed career choice, given your capabilities, andb) grit

Idealists like Alfie Kohn are nudging people the wrong way on both (a) and (b).

My most miserable acquaintances are those with left half bell-curve intellects that listened to people like Alfie Kohn and earned some useless Masters degree, inevitably packaged w/ debt, inflated expectations, and subliminal recognition that it was all a waste.

No better way to destroy someone's grit than to assign them tasks beyond their capabilities.

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I do not live in America and I certainly didn't get a liberal arts degree...

"but I don't believe it's impossible for any able-bodied young person to make choices that lead to a six-figure income."

You have to have a moderately high IQ for that (and you can forget about sleeping with lots of women because you really won't have the time to go out much) and even then there won't be enough six-figure jobs for all the candidates, even if, no especially if, everyone makes the right choices. Of course it's a stupid plan anyway: the problem isn't solved by giving everyone a six-figure job. It's solved by making people feel more appreciated at normal jobs.

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Telling people that the key to life is liberating oneself from the burdens of impulse-control can have some negative long term societal consequences, who knew?

I think the late 1950's-60s may have been a turning point for this. That is when social movements touting such an ethos swept through most advanced (and then booming) economies in the world. For classic example of anti-grit see "Under the cobblestones, the beach!" -France, May 1968.

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I think the main reason people hate their jobs is because of its perceived status. Society tells you that it's high status to go to college and get an important job. But you don't have to buy that. You can go get a boring job and doesn't pay properly and still feel high status if you take pride in yourself another way. Achieve a high level of physical fitness, get really good at some kind of game or sport, have sex with lots of women, etc.

It's very easy for people to feel sorry for themselves, and even easier for them to ask other people to feel sorry for them. But hey. Shut up. You have free will. You live in America. The odds may be against you but the sky is the limit. You may not reliably be able to become the next Bill Gates, but I don't believe it's impossible for any able-bodied young person to make choices that lead to a six-figure income.

Please, cry more about how it's so unfair that the odds are against you. The odds were against many successful people. But no one made you go to a $50,000/yr college and graduate with a liberal arts degree to work in a coffee shop.

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Nope, I'm not. A beta male is a man who lacks the chutzpah to lead but possesses enough ambition and self-reliance to get a job and a girlfriend. That's the majority of men, and the majority of men play video games and watch a lot of sports and porn. Omegas are the slim minority with no access to women at all.

I see no evidence to suggest that the majority of men are dropping out in numbers that jeopardizes modern civilization, and I do not encounter much frustration in my extensive dealings with betas, or omegas, or whatever you wish to call the average man working neutral or low status jobs.

That said, while it is normal for young people to be at the bottom, in today's service sector young men have to defer to personalities that have not traditionally commanded obedience from young men. Authority in many sectors of the economy is granted to people who do not viscerally seem to deserve it, and what frustration I do detect seems to stem in large part from having to serve unworthy masters.

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