Ah, yes I can see that. Reasonable or unreasonable doesn't matter because it's reality. Similar to some people being born better looking than others and thus often have an easier life. It's just the fact of the matter that must be dealt with, and pointless to argue the merits of it being reasonable or fair.
> Ah, yes I can see that. Reasonable or unreasonable doesn't matter because it's reality. Similar to some people being born better looking than others and thus often have an easier life. It's just the fact of the matter that must be dealt with, and pointless to argue the merits of it being reasonable or fair.
i disagree wholeheartedly with your conclusion that you should just accept the situation as it is and not complain about the way the world works. it's perfectly reasonable to complain about the system in general being unjust, and it's perfectly reasonable to think that vastly differing educational opportunities make for an unjust society.
to me, the attitude i see you displaying is one that would never lead to an improved society (or the existence of society in the first place, if you take that attitude back to pre-civilization times). people used this line of reasoning to argue against the need to fight for things like civil rights. i think it's a point of view that is generally bad for the world and toxic to society. we should always be striving to improve the way that the world works and the way that we behave towards one another both personally and in society at large.
and specifically...
> some people being born better looking than others and thus often have an easier life. It's just the fact of the matter
this does not seem like a good thing to me, and i find it hard to buy as a justification for your argument. it may be the way that humans naturally function, but we do a lot of things naturally that aren't good for ourselves or society in the long run. e.g. people naturally experience bloodlust when they are greatly wronged. that doesn't make murdering your cheating spouse justifiable homicide, though at one point it would've, and in some places it still does.
I dont disagree with your points, but its also important to view things in the macro and micro scale here. Do you want to play long ball or short ball? If I lost my job in 2008 due to the economy collapsing and had a family to take care of am I going to A) Try and fix the world because it is generally unfair or B) Get to work to support myself and my family and accept the reality I live in?
Yes the world can be better, but do you not agree that sometimes making it better just means getting to work (not in the literal sense of the word but in the sense of an individual executing a plan and making his/her life better as a result).
Would you rather associate with people who do nothing but complain that life is unfair and watch them wait for the world to change, or would you rather associate with people who see a problem/challenge and start solving?
It's not as black and white as my previous sentence obviously, and both problems can be worked on at the same time. But I have zero issue with people who are less fortunate than others putting in hard work to make their lives better. That kind of effort and subsequent results should have a cascading positive effect on those that surround him/her, which in turn plants the seed of change you are looking for. That kind of change however will take probably decades to see and significant improvement, if you look at the widening wealth gap between the lower, middle and upper class I do not see society moving in a good direction at the moment.
> Would you rather associate with people who do nothing but complain that life is unfair and watch them wait for the world to change, or would you rather associate with people who see a problem/challenge and start solving?
the latter, but i'd prefer that they not only solve for themselves in the short term. i find that i don't get along very well with people who never complain about the state of the world and just do the best they can for themselves and their loved ones given its present state. i'm also not particularly interested in being around people who do nothing but complain about the state of the world, with no practical drive to fix things. so yeah, fixing the world vs helping yourself are often competing interests. but generally, i find people who don't carefully balance those competing interests to be pretty insufferable. or at least, i much prefer the people who are thinking about all of those things at once.
> But I have zero issue with people who are less fortunate than others putting in hard work to make their lives better.
completely agreed.
> That kind of effort and subsequent results should have a cascading positive effect on those that surround him/her, which in turn plants the seed of change you are looking for.
yes, a person bettering their own life can definitely have cascading beneficial effects for others. even if it's only in the "secure your own oxygen mask first" sense (i.e. you can't help others if you're helpless). but often it's even deeper than that. but i'm generally wary of the idea that a person bettering their own situation will automatically better things for the world. too easy a rationalization for getting yours and calling it a day. it can take serious conscious effort to not horde the fruits of one's success.
i don't know, i'm just not that enthusiastic about succeeding in a world that often feels so broken, without generally trying to fix the things that are broken. i'd rather fail at that grander project than succeed at the narrower one, even if i don't really think of my life as being focused on charitable work per se. again though, i'm not advocating idle complaining or saying that it's ok to willfully be a drain on others just because a person thinks the world is a rough place.
maybe we are (or were) talking across each other. i feel like we mostly agree on the parts that i was reacting strongly to. i read your earlier comments as essentially defending the status quo and its ever-widening inequality, but that does not seem to be your position (esp from your last sentence about the widening wealth gap).
I think the point is that we can (or should) do something to change this, to make it more reasonable. A few decades ago tuition rates were a fraction of what they are now and provided the same quality of education, so certainly we can do something to return to that state.
