Animal Farm and Positive Discrimination

I was not indicating that money and intelligence needed to be codependent, simply that I see them as the two defining characteristics of inequality. Some people have/get money, others have intelligence, some have both.

Your statement would indicate that you have the intelligence which has allowed you to live without the need for money. Given a choice between intelligence and money I will always take intellect. I too have spent best moments in basic accommodations. I am happily sitting right now, in a small home in the country, built by my wife and I, with our own hands.

Rich

 

You don't get the metaphor?

Do you think that being successful in the middle ages in Europe required the same skills as being successful in the US today? or that being successful in the US today requires the same skills as being successful in Laos today?

Success is determined by the metrics being used to define success. The current system in the US results in certain groups being less successful than other groups. Either you think something about those groups is intrinsically inferior, or that the system is set up in a way that favors certain groups.

 

The latter.
That group is stuffed with those whose families have solidified their position so they can "make things happen" including the education of their children and the other powerful social circles they do and will belong to.
It is stuffed full of groups like the DAR which gives you privilege because a distant ancestor happened to live at a certain time.
It is stuffed full of Masons, Lions, Rotary etc who "know people who can help".
Any attempt to deny white privilege is actually a shame. I don't understand why this privilege is denied.
Is it Because they need a reason to criticise those NOT so privileged as lazy, inferior etc and provide another justification for assuming all those not "in the circle" don't deserve to be?
IMO white privilege can be used to be a good example fully attainable and FREELY SHARED.
IOW level up the opportunities.
Unfortunately there are still too many who think and sharing means dilution.
A lowering of standards. So they guard their privilege jealously and we are back to blaming those on the outside for being inferior because of what those on the inside decide.
This is blaming the victim by the powerful of the policies created by the powerful.
A double bind , impossible to escape unless the powerful so desire.

 

Success is achieving what you claim to want. If you claim to want to escape poverty, then success is escaping poverty. I add the proviso 'claim' purely because we all claim we want things we have no intention of striving for, but the majority don't then complain when that thing doesn't happen. At least those over the age of 8 don't.

The choice to blame the system for your lot is a conventional cop out .. with a history as old as the Welfare State. When you recognise your own aversion to the self-sacrifice and self-discipline needed for most forms of 'success', you can soothe yourself with the idea that it's out of your hands. Conveniently, it also absolves you from any obligation to be strong for others. It's hilariously transparent.

 

Irrelevant.

This thread is about the universal 'success' of keeping yourself and your pack alive and thriving. The requirements for that success are the same in every culture and age.

 

Wow ... this post shows just how NEW you are here. Your assumptions are not only very eccentric, but so very very wrong. Firstly, your assumption that we're all white. Secondly, that we're all from nth generation landed gentry. Third, that we're all conservatives.

Worse still, your assumption that all of us are where we are via inheritance. I would guess that NONE of the people you're disparaging inherited their present security .. and in at least one case we're talking about third world migrants who pulled themselves up hard by the bootstraps.

I have to say that at this point, I'm genuinely embarrassed for you. The narrative you've been sold by your white supremacist overlords, has conditioned you to view everything through a racist lens. You automatically assume that white people have all the power and wins, and that non-white people are helpless. It disgusts me .. and I'll give you three guesses as to why that might be.

Finally, your narrative is about twenty years out of date. NON-WHITE Americans have been at the top of the wealth/education/health leader board for at least that long.

 

There is no such thing as “universal” success.

Success is always a subjective term.

 

This THREAD is addressing the basics only. Survival. As in, keeping yourself and your kith/kin securely fed and housed.

 

Success is feeding yourself and your kin?

Who is my “kin”?

Do I live in the forest not connected to society in any way or a modern city?

Even your narrow version of success is subjective.

 

If you can't even keep yourself alive, in what universe are you a 'success'?

"Kith & Kin" means your pack, your tribe, your family, your community. Whatever your personal ''survival grouping' is. The survival groupings which make up all societies other than the dystopian tropes of mid 20thC Sci Fi.

 

The skills required to stay alive vary depending on the environment.

Success is subjective because it is a combination of environment and ability.

 

The rules for survival are universal to ALL social mammals, in every possible context. They do not vary, ever. We're talking about physics and physionomy here, not contructs. If you're actually unsure of the rules (and I hope for your sake that you're not), here they are again:

* Put the group first
* Conform
* Meet your obligations to labour/hunt/provide

 

When that involves keeping yourselves fed and housed WITHOUT recourse to burdening society, yes .. absolutely.

 

Yea, but being able to do those things require different abilities.

Someone who is successful in the Jungle may not be successful in a city.

 

Whether you live in a big city with extended family, or with a tribe in the jungle .. the rules are EXACTLY the same. Ignore the rules in either context, and you'll fail.

 

What rules?

I don’t need to worry about bear attacks in the city.

If you ignore your environment you won’t last long.

 

You seem to think that what other people have earned, assuming you don't have it- is "Privilege".
A real adult and parent builds their life- their home, their family. The model the right values and behaviors to give their children the tool to become strong, and they pass along what they can when they die- and those who inherent build again. Each of us have a duty to life- not to race or nationality, but to life- to do the best we can, to discard what we find wrong, to add what we can that is better- and pass that along to our children. They have exactly the same obligation. Each generation builds this line stronger. That's not privilege of any kind- it's the earned success of a strong cultural model. It neither needs nor is intended to harm others- but to build your own. Each of us has total control of that- we can make that effort, or we can sit on our asses and blame others for what is only our own fault.

IF your culture's model is garbage, if none of your ancestors built anything to pass on to you- be it wealth, knowledge, wisdom, skills, confidence, self-respect- you aren't "underprivileged" because those that did have more... you are underprivileged because your own culture failed to develop those things.

The claim of "white supremacy" is actually a claim of black failure to build itself a quality culture- a belief that somehow that was stolen by white people, and they have been "excluded."

Africa is considered to be the birthplace of human life. The people from Africa have had as long or longer than any other race to develop the characteristics they now say they are deprived of. They have no only had the time- but the opportunity. Long before white people ever came to Africa, Europe was a well developed and progressing world. When white people came to Africa, they discovered black people- living the same way they had for thousands of years. Some of the black tribes did have a kind of industry- they captured and sold other black people to the northern African nations as slaves.... 1,000 years before white people ever came to Africa.

Today, 70% of black children in America live in single-parent homes, because fathers don't stay. They don't build families. They don't model good values. They do model trash lifestyles and attitudes of victim-hood and racial hate. Then they blame the result of this insult to the black community- on white people.

There are many fine black people in America, it's proven they can succeed just and any other culture or race can. It is not the color, but the conduct that makes people, of any race, good or bad. The "privilege" they demonize is not a birthright granted by color- but the inheritance of values built by your own forbears. IF none of them cared enough to foresee and provide for a better future for their descendants, then such people will remain "Underprivileged". IF they formed groups like the Lions, the Masons, whose goals are to promote quality of life- maybe they would have a better future. People create their culture, their world- not the other way around. The build their own house.... or their own prison. That is a CHOICE. It is the responsibility of the person making the choice, not of those they blame for who they are.

Nature gives every living thing what it needs to thrive, man included. IF you are happy being primitive, that is your right- but you have no right to complain if others do more. IF you don't care if your children thrive.... I guess that is also at least something you have a kind of right to; bad as it is- but the consequences that fall on them are of your own doing. It's obvious we can't force people to feel that responsibility. But those things, the choices to settle for less, to not care for the future of your culture- is totally in the control of that culture. White people did not construct that culture. Black people built it- Black people can change it.

The black community can change that anytime a sufficient number of them chose to do it. The won't do it by blaming others, demanding exemptions and compensation for failure. They will only do it by learning from their own quality leaders. Instead, many of them call those leaders "Uncle Toms" and "Oreos"... literally, criticizing them for building the culture they envy among whites. Instead- they revere the likes of George Floyd, Jesse Jackson, the promoters of keeping the beliefs of racism and the burdens those beliefs create soundly on the backs of black people, insuring they will maintain their own value to these victims of themselves.

The days of black slavery began with black people, not whites. The majority of black slaves never saw America- and those who did have descendants to day who have vastly more than they would have it those ancestors had not become slaves. Look at the quality of life of the black people today in the African nations where black slaves came from- and you see the quality of life and the opportunities are only a fraction of what America gives them. In Africa- Blacks DO rule. They have "Black supremacy". IF any black person in America thinks that would improve their lives- they owe it to themselves to go back to Africa and live that life.
If they don't- They owe it to themselves to start building black values, families and sound culture, right here. Until they do- nobody else can change it for them.

You seem incredibly unaware of the massive effort to lift the black culture in America, to open all the possible doors. We can- and have done that... but as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. I think we've done too much. It's helped re-enforce the perception that happiness and success are things owed to them rather than to be earned- and that result in people who have no belief in themselves, and just wait for the next "gift" from those they think control them. IF they never prove themselves to themselves by rejecting that- they will forever be without the power to control their own destiny, because they refuse to take it.

 

Did you not read them when I posted them just now? Here they are again:

* Put the group first
* Conform
* Meet your obligation to labour/hunt/provide

 

Conform to what?

 

They're actually defending that choice. It's incredible, really.

These are the people who are genuinely angered by reminders that we all have this choice to make, as parents. It's the choice made by Third World migrants and refugees, who understand and embrace the opportunity to ensure their kids won't know the poverty their ancestors knew. And by every working class family who climbed up to middle class (or beyond) the hard way .. which is the only way for 99% of us. It angers them because they then have to examine their own choices - and thus confront those made in their own immediate interests, rather than the long term security of their families.

 

The other rules, obviously.

 

It seems like some people want all of the fruits of what their ancestors accomplished without any of the blame for anything bad they did.

The sum of that equation is privilege.

We shouldn’t be punished or rewarded for what our grandpa did. We didn’t do any of it.

 

That is the truth. You have to be honest with yourself on where you are at, on what you want to be and where you want to go- only then can you begin to make the changes and decisions that will get you there.
Some kinds of growth are generational, not unlike science, where once a question was asked about how so much was accomplished- and the answer was "By standing on the shoulders of giants".

That is a generation building on a generation that was built on an earlier generation. Somewhere back in that line came the first generation to set this in motion. It is what the lesser of the black community needs to o today- recognize it's issues, turn to it's giants to learn and lift themselves above. The lift is not so much wealth as wisdom. Wisdom will create wealth, but it must be learned. Wealth can be given, but cannot create wisdom- only dependency.

 

Something that they also manage to overlook in this observation of 'standing on the shoulders of giants', is that each subsequent generation has to keep up the same level of commitment and effort, to retain those 'shoulders'. It can all be destroyed by one generation failing to meet that obligation. It happens all too frequently.

 

all human lives are equal and should be treated as such
but all individual humans aren't equal in all things
that depends on the judgement of others the value others place
a company hires whoever is capable to turn them a profit and judges the individual on the attributes and skills to make that profit be if physical or mental
no different than recruiting by a sports team
a team will recruit however gives them the best chance to win games and if the attributes to give you best chance to win is being tall strong quick the ones with those attributes are recruited
so, let's say a subsection of humans in general possess a greater number of individuals with those attributes and why they are recruited in much larger numbers compared to other subsections
so now here is the question is that being discriminatory