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.
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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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I feel like you have a lot of conservative ideas still bouncing around in your brain. Being fed and having a house is not something we should be gracious for - those things are fundamental human rights. It is not entitlement to demand that old people do not live in destitution.
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They’re not fundamental human rights! Historically we had to go build our own house and hunt our own food - we had to work, put in effort, to ‘earn’ those things. Humanity didn’t pop into existence being automatically clothed and fed by god for no effort.
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That's your conservative faith speaking - and I am going to assume you believe in might makes right. That kind of thinking is from two centuries ago. Now we have human rights and we've done away with notions like only the powerful matter in this world.
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You sure? If you are not religious anymore, by what standard other than fundamental human rights can you say that might doesn't make right?
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