Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
I grew up low class, and expected my life to be hard - only I didn’t process it as “hard”; it was just how life *was.* I was going to have to spend the rest of my life doing minimum-wage physically-hard labor, and then getting pregnant. That was the plan, but more importantly-
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I didn’t register this plan as a bad one, a sad one. It made the “I need to set aside my feelings and use my willpower” part of my brain very active, a dominant way of being. The pain in my legs from being on my feet all day was just the *way life was*. And I was grateful! -
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I’d grown up reading stories throughout history and was intimately familiar with how new and different my current lifestyle was. I was happy I wasn’t working in coal mines, or under threat of war, and that there was no famine. I viewed it as a normal feature of human existence-
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
That you had to set aside your feelings and use willpower. This is the way everyone had to live in history, this was a default of existence - and anything more than this was luxury. I felt hyper aware of how unusual our state of civilization was, how luxurious my life was already
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
And this is why I feel a little confused when people get really angry at stuff like the minimum wage, or having to work two jobs and live in a shitty apartment. People are complaining at working conditions that I went through with actual gratitude.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Nobody had to give you your job. Nobody owes you anything. You are incredibly fortunate to be living this far into an advanced civilization at all. This is a matter of perspective - and sure this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to improve your life, but the entitlement is bizarre.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Maybe not bizarre. Just as I was grateful by paying a lot of attention to the state of past humans, I think a lot of the dissatisfaction with living conditions comes from paying attention to the more fortunate. We have some idea that inequality is *inherently* wrong.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
There’s a good chunk of people who would like to lower the wealth of the very rich even if this benefited nobody else, even if the wealth didn’t get redistributed at all!
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Alex Poersch
@AlexPoersch
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Not disagreeing with you necessarily. But, when I have tried being grateful in a vacuum it feels fake and empty. I will feel the gratitude for my existence I have if say I know someone diagnosed with cancer. Could be a Salience problem for me.
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Aegithalos caudatus
@housecarpenter
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
This seems similar to the question of whether wireheading is good. If happiness is what is good, sure, try being grateful. If you see happiness more as a auxiliary that guides you towards what is good, making yourself more grateful is just deceiving yourself about what's good.
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pavedwalden
@pavedwalden
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
In addition to the dissatisfaction that comes from comparison to others, I think that many aspects of being working class in America now chip away at emotional wellbeing in ways that aren't captured by just looking at the material standard of living.
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A
@MEATPANtheHOBO
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
"be grateful you poors" is a whack take. It has been the ungrateful people throughout history fighting for more fairness every step of the way and the reason you have privilege of decent society. Should slaves be grateful for kind masters and not fight back against shitty systems
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