No it is not, and I say that as somebody who lived below the poverty line for several years. Yes, it is devastating, but unless you live in some shithole country without any government help, it can be overcome. Disability and sickness (assuming chronic) can't.
I agree and I grew up very broke for much longer than that.
Did I have to recover from and undo a lot of bullshit? Of course!
The unfortunate part is how many people have the attitude of leaning on an external source of inspiration and always making excuses. I'm not saying it's easy, but there are too many for whom it never clicks that whatever circumstances they were born, this is their only shot at life, fair or not.
Personal responsibility and constitution is far more powerful than the supposed forces at work making "free will an illusion". Give me a fucking break. Goddamn so many people on here need to grow the fuck up! How much worse it must have been for so many not so long ago.
I'm in the same boat as you, and I got out, and I have / had the same opinions as you.
My sister still is in the poverty cycle. Got pregnant at 16 and have been having to deal with child rearing (along with a partner, and later, 2 more kids) which I'm starting to appreciate the difficulty in her getting out of the mess
(I have a my own kid now, no time for life improvement! I've got to work and then clean and make dinner!)
Not only that, but her partner is abusive, they have smoking and alcohol habits, and the only refuge they have is spending some paycheck on getting a new Xbox for the kids, seeming they broke the last one.
Not only that, but their real estate agent is literally saying "send us a extra $1000 for water bill this month or we'll kick you out" - so they just pay, even when I tell them not to because there's no legal requirement if there's no invoice to say what you're paying, and it's not on the lease agreement.. they don't have the time to understand the law and get help..
This is all to say, it can be tough for people. Yes some/most of it might be their own doing, but they have more to undo, because they made silly mistakes earlier, and it's very difficult for people to think of anything past second-order effects, let alone first-order..
That being said we're on an upward trend for her :), I'm helping her out even if she gets annoyed at my lecturing (some of it is sticking, and the kids are definitely staying in school at all costs! :)
Your final paragraph is in conflict with the last sentence of your third paragraph.
I think for all of these things to be congruent you need to be implying some kind of moral or personal weakness which doesn't come from the environment which occurs more frequently in poorer circumstances, which doesn't seem as likely as the causality being the other way around.
Feel like I also need to qualify this with the obligatory I grew up poor and am not anymore and I think...
I suspect that for whatever reason (genetics, or the particulars of the trauma they grew up with), it’s much easier for some to overcome their environmental disadvantages than others. They then assume that if they did it, everybody who doesn’t just has some moral failing.
Probably some version of the typical-mind fallacy.
I'm a little more on the OP's side in this, I grew up in a poor community of people, all my friends were in the same boat as me, (save for, I was fostered into a single mum who had obesity and bipolar).
There is a LOT of "poverty programming" - people get a moral kick out of having poor people around, poor people buy consumerist things, etc. Society needs poor people to remain poor, more than anyone is comfortable with.
It's like the age ol' "why don't they teach you how to do taxes in school?" - not just taxes, but things like budgeting, meal planning, mending clothes, (home economics I think it was called?)
All of my friends said the same thing "why bother budgeting, voting X will be better, the system is against us, there's no point, didn't you watch Y, burn down the place!" - and they are still grovelling in poverty.
I'm not, I'm out, I'm with OP and I know where they're coming from.
"Typical mind fallacy" my ass. If you contribute to poverty programming, you're profiteering off poor people, even just to feel morally righteous.
(Not attacking you, just trying to point out what almost everyone does, this isn't aimed to you)
Even for this example, it's not "OP was poor and got out, good on him, he has some experience to share" - but instead, the response is - "OP got out, but he's the lucky one, and now he's grandstanding" - ie: pulling someone down.
If he had a drinking problem, then these sort of attacks could've spiralled them back down into the pit. No one wants that (On the surface at least)
Absolutely. Also the law of large numbers. And despite the downvotes I don't want to take that away from OP, definitely what they did was difficult, commendable etc.
Edit: removing a further unnecessary elaboration here because it feels like I'm just piling on. Initially the reception to my earlier comment skewed quite negative but it seems to have leveled out.
I'll bite. You're completely ignoring the effects of claims such as yours being a convenient excuse for those with low self esteem as well as poverty culture in general.
You can make all the observations you want but correlation is still not causation.
Your original comment before your edit made claims of someone in a given environment having certain behaviors while someone in a different environment not having those behaviors. I'm saying those behaviors are not caused by a mere "environment", but systemic and wholly caused by the broader culture we all live in and the opinions espoused by those who control it. Poor people are definitely attuned to that and mostly because they're vulnerable and living in a social desert. They don't know better beyond what's fed to them by the media and bad interpretations of "science" on social media and anywhere there are comments such as these. They spend so much of their time searching for and grasping at whatever seems relevant to their situation and overthink what they believe is beyond their horizons.
The poor are still often ignored and excluded especially by those who think they're being inclusive.
I read the scare quotes around free will is an illusion to be saying that these individuals obviously have the capacity to change their circumstances if they only had the personal mettle, or whatever. This response is more nuanced though and I can see what you're saying.
I can agree with a lot of that, and sorry about cutting out the comment from underneath you - didn't realise.
I think you're right that claims and sentiments like, for example, the poor stay poor but it's not their fault don't exist in a vacuum and will have some negative effects.
The question is whether they're more helpful on balance, or less damaging than an alternative tough love just pull yourself up already, everyone else did attitude.
I think speaking about the current reality as we understand it is probably the best option.
I don't personally agree with the correlation/causation comment in this context. Putting the research (eg. the heredity of university admission) aside, not-born-poor folk can be just as shitty and lazy and morally bankrupt as anyone else but hope, greed, health, education and opportunity are good counterweights to that.
I agree with this totally, it's like "poverty programming" because we need poor people to remain poor.
"How can I feel good about helping poor people if the answer is in themselves, and there's no more poor people? It's best if they are oppressed by some system, in which I can counterbalance by the few dollars I give them on my way home from work"
No it is not, and I say that as somebody who lived below the poverty line for several years. Yes, it is devastating, but unless you live in some shithole country without any government help, it can be overcome. Disability and sickness (assuming chronic) can't.