Hacker News Reader

Comment by asdfman123 | Hacker News Reader

"There was always a dark side to the Human Potential Movement. If a positive attitude and a sense of self-worth are what matters for success, then failure is always your own fault."

I always thought my alma mater, Stanford, was backwards about students suffering from depression for exactly that reason. Promoting positivity is great, unless it means ostracizing and shaming people who are already suffering. It was hard to be there because the highest ideals were positivity and productivity, and if you're depressed you're neither.

As I get older I realize more and more what a complex organism a human society is. If you change one factor, you can easily change other ones without meaning to.

View on HN

Also, being positive solely for the sake of being positive short-circuits our ability to process a decently large chunk of life. This isn’t to say that being a whiny grouch is good, but that sugarcoating things is not a healthy way to look at the world. Sometimes life sucks. Sometimes shitty things happen. Sometimes people are assholes. Take away the ability to credibly discuss those things as negative, and you take away the ability to comprehend and solve some very real problems.

> Take away the ability to credibly discuss those things as negative, and you take away the ability to comprehend and solve some very real problems.

I think it follows that you also take away the ability to honestly reflect upon and comprehend one's own behavior. For this reason I've come to the belief that the trend to encourage people to "never regret" limits self-growth and even limits empathy[1].

Maybe it's the latent Catholic in me, but regret and shame are very primitive and _necessary_ emotions. Yes, they're often abused by society and individuals to harm others. But to recognize that doesn't require that they should be denied or suppressed. Empathy and sympathy can be manipulated to harm people, too; that doesn't mean people should instead become hardened sociopaths. The only difference here is that empathy (especially when received) is pleasurable, while regret and shame are painful. But to believe that distinction makes one legitimate and constructive and the other illegitimate and destructive is fundamentally hedonistic and narcissistic. These emotions are largely environmental inputs (directly or indirectly, immediate and latent) that we need to learn to affirmatively assimilate to better understand ourselves and the world around us. Denying, suppressing, or categorically desensitizing oneself to these emotions is not assimilation; quite the opposite.

[1] For example, by obscuring one's own hypocrisy--living by a rule that says never judge oneself is much easier than living by a rule that says never judge someone else. So it exacerbates an asymmetry between understanding one's own secret motivations and understanding someone else's secret motivations.

This goes into the direction of learning through positive/negative feedback. Both ways aim to improve a person, so I view both as positive overall.

> It was hard to be there because the highest ideals were positivity and productivity

It's interesting how language/vocabulary changed as well. "I'm upset because I wasn't productive today". When did people get told that their lot in life was to be productive. And who told them to think or talk like that? How did people start to view themselves as machines whose worth is measured by production? Also, where did the "motivation or get motivated" craze come from. All of a sudden, it's "Are you motivated?" or "Get motivated". For what? Why? All of the sudden it's motivation and productivity.

We've been moralizing work in the US at least my whole life.

Yeah, this is something I often associate with the SV bubble, but when I think back on it it's been ingrained in my upbringing from the beginning.

Productivity was also important before advanced civilization, though.

Let's keep our concepts where they belong. Moralizing work and productivity are not only different things, but come from different fields.

>When did people get told that their lot in life was to be productive.

Hacker News is the worst about this. It's very creepy, the constant talk of "productivity". I recall a comment in one of the threads about Anthony Bourdain's suicide bemoaning the loss of productivity due to his death.

Positivity is the easiest shortcut to dissatisfaction and suffering.

EDIT: When positivity is divorced from addressing reality, bad things occur. The majority of positivity pushing I've experienced falls into this category. Happiness != willful ignorance.

What’s wrong with failure being your own fault? The only thing I ever take away from failure is a lesson on how to fail less next time. Finding other things or people to blame failure on is just a barrier to personal growth.

If failure is your own fault, then logically success must be your own making.

But that of course misses out on a huge chunk of understanding. I have been pretty successful compared with many people I grew up with - sure, I worked hard for that, but I also had the benefit of good parents, enough money, no discrimination, free education, and so on. It’s easy to forget that a kid from a less supportive background has to work harder to get to the same place. It’s not their fault that they had to work through college, or drop out to care for a family member.

Personal effort obviously contributes to success and failure. But it’s totally obvious that it’s not the only factor.

>Personal effort obviously contributes to success and failure. But it’s totally obvious that it’s not the only factor.

It’s the greatest factor of all. I grew up dirt poor with a drug addicted mother. Could you tell me how I could have possibly derived any benefit from blaming life for dealing me a bad hand? My point stands, the only thing I can do to move my life forward is focus on the things I can control. I can’t control how unfair the world is, but I can control what I take away from failure. This concept of privilege is used it such a messed up way. It doesn’t matter where you start out, the only thing you can do to make your life better is take responsibility for yourself. Your argument seems to boil down saying that if you have to try to hard you may as well just not bother because it’s not your fault.

Sorry, you've misinterpreted this.

It's rational and correct to tackle underlying causes of inequality. You're correct that the only thing that can be done is to deal with the situation you find yourself it; you're wrong that you "can’t control how unfair the world is". The world will remain unfair unless we all try to fix that situation – and drawing attention to is one of the steps required.

Everybody has responsibility for themselves. But that's not an excuse to shut people down for complaining about inequality.

You've misinterpreted what equality actually is.

We're born unequal. We're all born with different levels of physical and mental ability. We're also all born in different circumstances. This is simply the natural state of the world. Advocating for people to wallow in despair over this fact is far more harmful than beneficial. As I said, the only thing you can do to make a better life for yourself is to take responsibility for your life.

The only equality we can strive to achieve is equality of opportunity. Allowing people to compete on equal terms. Although we could improve on this point, we actually already do it pretty well. At no time in my life have I ever been denied an opportunity because I grew up poor, or because my mother was (and still is) a drug addict. I have found many opportunities to improve my life, and I have taken advantage of many of them.

Everything else you can't 'fix'. I guess if you wanted to destroy society you could enforce equal circumstances for everybody. You could tax income at 100%, and redistribute all resources perfectly equally between all members of society, but people would still be born with their own set of natural talents and abilities.

The message that "it's not your fault, it's inequality's fault" is so incredibly destructive and dangerous. The only person responsible for getting your life to where you want it to be is you.

I'm sorry again, but I couldn't disagree with you more.

Like I said, it is down to each individual to make the best with what they have. I don't advocate anybody "wallowing in despair", but I do fully support objecting to structural inequality that denies people the opportunity to compete fairly.

The only equality we can strive to achieve is equality of opportunity.

Obviously.

Although we could improve on this point, we actually already do it pretty well.

We do it shockingly badly by almost every metric.

At no time in my life have I ever been denied an opportunity because I grew up poor

I have no reason to think you don't believe that, but it's almost certainly not true. It's completely obvious that this is the case. If you grow up poor, it is harder to access better education, better nutrition, better medical care. These subsequently have an effect on which opportunities one can take advantage of.

I have found many opportunities to improve my life, and I have taken advantage of many of them.

That's awesome! It's the only way to improve one's own outcome. It doesn't invalidate the fact that those opportunities are harder to come by for people of some backgrounds.

redistribute all resources perfectly equally between all members of society, but people would still be born with their own set of natural talents and abilities.

We don't require complete redistribution nor absolute equality of circumstances in order to improve the situation. We can make sure that there are well-funded public schools, so that children from poor backgrounds can receive high-quality education. We can provide welfare systems and education programs so that kids have access to quality nutrition. We can provide universal medical care. We can try to eliminate structural racism or homophobia. There are all good things that are worth arguing for.

The message that "it's not your fault, it's inequality's fault" is so incredibly destructive and dangerous. The only person responsible for getting your life to where you want it to be is you.

Far more dangerous, in my opinion, is the view that unequal circumstances are unavoidable and the best thing to do is to "put up or shut up", as it were. I do not claim that anybody other than yourself is responsible for your own life, but I totally disagree that we should pretend inequality doesn't exist, or that we shouldn't bother fighting it. It's not an excuse for failure, but it's also something that very obviously makes it more likely.

There's a comic I quite like that illustrates this: http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate

You agree that equality of opportunity is the only sort of equality we can hope to provide, and then spend the rest of your post rambling on about equality of outcomes.

I have never in my life been denied an opportunity because of my background. No school ever considered my background before admitting me. No employer ever considered my upbringing before offering me a job.

Again, unless you forcefully redistribute all material resources evenly (which as I’ve already said, doesn’t at all take into account natural endowments), then you’re never going to have everybody existing in an equal set of circumstances.

Inequality of outcomes will always and should always exist. In fact it’s not fair for inequality of outcomes to not exist, as people will never all produce equal value to society.

Furthermore, I went to a well funded public school. It was full of delinquents, but I made the most of my education, which has since served me very well. This was only possible because I took responsibility for myself, which no matter how much you deny it, is exactly what you are advocating against. I don’t know where you’re from, but I live in a society that provides equal protection under the law, and doesn’t allow people to discriminate based upon socioeconomic status. Sure, wealthy people will be able to invest more money into developing themselves, but I have been granted the opportunity to compete with those people on equal terms all my life, and I’ve more often than not come out ahead.

You haven’t substantiated your argument that equality of opportunity doesn’t exist in any way, and you continue to advocate for people to focus on the unfairness of their circumstances, rather than what they can do about it. In life all you can do is play the cards your dealt, shaking your fist at the sky will get you exactly nowhere.

Okay pal, I'll have to stop this conversation here – because I literally advocated the exact opposite of that and it's clear that your views are set, you're not reading what I wrote, and you're unlikely to be convinced. All the best!

You advocate for everything at once. I’m not convinced you even know what your views are. You agreed that equality of opportunity is the only valid aspiration, and then post a wall of rambling text advocating for equality of outcomes. You said that personal responsibility is important, and then go on to advocate for personal victimhood, which aside from being a cancerous philosophy, is also the exact opposite. You haven’t conveyed a consistent line of thought throughout a single comment.

>If you change one factor, you can easily change other ones without meaning to.

AKA "second order effects"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com