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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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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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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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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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It seems very clear to me that the issue is not absolute working conditions and living standards, it is narrative and contrast. People have been much happier with much less, but these people are less happy with more. And I can’t help but think - have you tried being grateful?

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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.

7:52 PM · Dec 17, 2020

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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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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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The entitlement! I can’t reconcile my thoughts about what people deserve (freedom from suffering, good health, etc) and the fact that no living being is entitled to many of the things we often think of as rights. They both feel true but also mutually exclusive.

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If nobody owes us anything, then we don't owe anybody anything either, including respecting their so-called property. But if they expect us to respect it, then those who pretend they own the world totally owe compensation for it.

Matriarch of Matriarchs

@OfMatriarch

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