Sociology

[Zolar V]

Why is it, that everyone has the potential to do or be an icon. I have encountered in my short time, many people who had nothing and became the stuff of history books and records. people who have become generals, entrepreneurs, millionaires, rappers, musicians, presidents, and congressman. But what is it that makes a common man?

 

why would some one with potential to do anything, aspire to be a grocerie man, a truck driver, a box boy, a McDonald manager? What causes man to loose his ambition and settle down with debt, a small house, maybe a car?

 

we all know that we need everyone to make the world go round. we need the baggers, truckers and average workers, just as we need the managers, presidents, and generals.

[lemur]

Why is it, that everyone has the potential to do or be an icon. I have encountered in my short time, many people who had nothing and became the stuff of history books and records. people who have become generals, entrepreneurs, millionaires, rappers, musicians, presidents, and congressman. But what is it that makes a common man?

A related question is how does historical discourse render people noteworthy historical figures and others not. Feminist historiography has asked this question about the male/female distinction as well as about 'masculine' historical focus like war, politics, industry, science, etc. instead of 'feminine' cultural forms such as education, childcare, children's book writers, housekeeping and household appliances, sexualitly/childbearing, etc.

 

why would some one with potential to do anything, aspire to be a grocerie man, a truck driver, a box boy, a McDonald manager? What causes man to loose his ambition and settle down with debt, a small house, maybe a car?

Because they come to see the world simply as a collection of economic processes?

 

we all know that we need everyone to make the world go round. we need the baggers, truckers and average workers, just as we need the managers, presidents, and generals.

Idk, I got interested in the idea of self-managing workers some time ago. So much economic waste occurs as a result of every task requiring one person to perform the task and someone else to plan, manage, and take responsibility for it. It's like the old jokes about how many people it takes to change a lightbulb. It would be interesting if everyone could be educated and trained to take responsibility for their work (i.e. trained as a manager) and then if all managers would also perform labor. Some would say this is a waste of managerial time, but it make workers and managers a lot more independent of each other and capable of making real-time decisions based on both theoretical and practical knowledge/experience.

 

 

[Edtharan]

why would some one with potential to do anything, aspire to be a grocerie man, a truck driver, a box boy, a McDonald manager? What causes man to loose his ambition and settle down with debt, a small house, maybe a car?

Not everyone seeks fame. Also, people can change what they think is important.

 

Someone might start out believing that becoming a billionare is important, but then later change their belief. As one grows older, the knowledge of death can change how one views their life.

 

When one is young, they might not think about death. They think that they can go on forever. With this mid set, the aquisition of weath could be very important as with wealth you could have a very comfortable life. But as they grow older, or perhaps because of an near miss or accident, they might come to the realisation that wealth can not be taken with you.

 

Then, because of the shift in their world view, they reassess what they are giving up in their persuit of wealth. They might decide that they would rather have time to enjoy the life they have, instead of sacrificing it to gain wealth which they can't use if they are dead.

 

So, why would someone change their goals in life, simply because their world view has changed.

[Mr Skeptic]

I think the way it works is motivation + opportunity = success. And I think that what most people are lacking from that equation is motivation. Opportunities, for the most part, can be created at will.

[mississippichem]

I think the way it works is motivation + opportunity = success. And I think that what most people are lacking from that equation is motivation. Opportunities, for the most part, can be created at will.

 

I agree. I'll add that I think there is a bit of a positive feedback loop between motivation and opportunity. People who are highly motivated tend to put themselves in situations where opportunity arises more often. For example, a highly motivated physics student is more likely to attend seminars and talks hosted by authorities in the field where he has a greater chance of meeting the right people or making connections that might enhance his/her chances of career success in physics. A post-doc who works in a lab under a highly cited scientist has a good chance of getting published early on in life.

[TonyMcC]

I was very upset when I had to retire at age 55 due to ill health. A good friend who was about 15 years my senior and had had to do the same when he was 55 gave me some very good advice:- "Aim for contentment and stop striving. All you really need to be happy is someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to". That was good advice and now, some 18 years later, I have to say that the last 18 years have been the happiest of my life. Life is not all about how important you are or how many possessions you have: there is more to life than that.

[Zolar V]

I think the way it works is motivation + opportunity = success. And I think that what most people are lacking from that equation is motivation. Opportunities, for the most part, can be created at will.

 

Exactly, opportunity can be created by anyone willing to lift the slightest of finger.

It's just why is there no motivation to do so, when there is alot of motivation to strive toward getting money through the persons job, via better jobs, or advancement in the ranks.

[lemur]

I think the way it works is motivation + opportunity = success. And I think that what most people are lacking from that equation is motivation. Opportunities, for the most part, can be created at will.

 

 

Exactly, opportunity can be created by anyone willing to lift the slightest of finger.

It's just why is there no motivation to do so, when there is alot of motivation to strive toward getting money through the persons job, via better jobs, or advancement in the ranks.

 

Can you both please give some specific examples of "creating opportunity at will?"

[Doc. Josh]

I feel in most case's the person has every oppertunity to make a million , Does not mean everybody has the want to. Some peole are happy with mediocrity and staying under the radar. It don't mean they are any less of a person but (simple to please) if you will. And if everybody was a genius and had a 100,000 year profession then we wouldn't have truck drivers ( which my father is) and he picked the profession because he loved to drive. and bread makers etc... everybody has the potential so use it and go places. some choose another path. i think it's just about personal prefrence. And when it's not by choice then somthing in you'r life has gone wrong...

[Marat]

I think that the assertion that people can make their own opportunity at will is absolutely absurd. If you assume that IQ is a strongly inherited trait, just ask why Johann Friedrich Gauss became the world's greatest mathematician while his father was a nobody. The reason was that the agricultural prosperity of that area of Germany increased so that there were university scholarships available for outstanding school students when the son was at school but not when the father was at school. The macroeconomic forces which determined the unavailabilty of scholarships for the father and their availability for the son were in no way under the control of either of these people.

 

How many of the people contributing to this forum would even know how to read if we had been born in poverty in the jungles of central Africa? In addition to surrounding cultural, economic, and natural forces, there is also physiology and disease as a major factor in determining which opportunities are available. What if you spent half your youth struggling with childhood leukemia, dragged yourself through life knowing you carried the Huntington's gene, or developed a severe case of lupus when you were in junior high school? What if your mother was alcoholic or your father insane so there was no money to pay for your university fees? Luck has so much to do with what you are able to do with your life, that I would guess that your own ability, determination, and energy is very much less important than the influence of chance on your fate.

 

Marx suggested that in a just society, everyone would have to do a little bit of every kind of work so that there would be a sense of shared experience in sustaining the community. Everyone would clean toilets for part of the day, do academic work later, build cars in the afternoon, or perhaps compose poetry after that. I think almost everyone could do that work and many more people could also be trained to do much more interesting work, which could then be more widely shared by having everyone work at each one of several jobs part-time.

 

People are essentially the same, though every elitist ideology tries to pretend that some people deserve prominence, success, or wealth, while others do not. The old lie used to hold that some people were selected by the gods for special social privileges (e.g., the Levi), and later there was the pretense that some people were of noble birth and hence deserved special rights, but the newest version is that the 'good, hardworking, and deserving' people are and ought to be rich while all the failures ought to be poor. Left out of this equation is the fact that hard-working archeologists need much more education than M.D.s but get much less income, or that an entrepreneur can make more money in a single telephone call by buying and selling the right things than a hard-working, talented individual can make in a lifetime, which is an absurdity.

[Mr Skeptic]

Can you both please give some specific examples of "creating opportunity at will?"

 

Applying to jobs, crafting a well-written resume, thinking of an idea and actually implementing it, all of these create opportunities for gainful employment. All these have aspects of chance to them, true, but also effort.

[Marat]

The more fundamental problem in the background of all of these considerations is that there is no clear goal or pre-determined meaning of life, so the measure of success or failure can always change. If, for example, being able to sleep without limit, have extremely interesting dreams, composing exciting poetry, experimenting with the full range of psychotrophic drugs, winning the Nobel Prize, or sacrificing everything else to pile up heaps of money can all be possible ultimate goals people could pursue as the point of life, how can we ever judge who is doing well and why? Or how can we even know for certain at any point what we should really be doing or whether our efforts are properly directed?

 

What if race of aliens brilliant beyond all measure came to Earth from a distant planet, studied us carefully for a few years, and dismissed us as primitive and foolish for our willingness to limit our sleeping time in order to pursue such comparatively trivial interests as becoming wealthy, getting tenure, or winning the Nobel Prize? Would there be a non-culture-dependent way to prove them wrong?