Two interesting comments to

my "A Servant's Tale":




Y's story reminded me of my dad.

It's a story of human growth and will and determination to survive, but not just survive, but to flourish. It is doing the mentally healthy, practical things of taking what you have, or have access to at a given moment and working it to your advantage in whatever way you can.

I saw the story Mr. Linh is telling here many times over in Vietnam. We Americans were doggedly tearing that little nation apart. Most of the Vietnamese men, old and young were off fighting, either with the Vietcong or in the South Vietnamese Army. We saw pragmatic, determined little women like Y with a kid or two in tow, going about her daily chores. And those women adapted too. Servants, housekeepers, even prostitutes, doing what had to be done at the moment to feed their kids and keep going, and they did not spend much time morally judging each other over how much or how little their neighbours had. If they were not sleeping, they were working, doing something, looking for a practical opportunity.

The system we have evolved into isolates us into exclusive clubs that we can join if we have reached a particular level of material achievement, and we often have little family support either. Our religions are exclusionary, while Vietnamese religions promote harmony and inclusion more than Western ones.

In the West, we exclude those in lesser material levels of achievement, and we idealize those who have achieved higher levels than we have reached. Our main one goal in life is often material success. We believe that if we have enough money and power, we will find happiness.

As the story of Y illustrates, doing the practical, common sense daily chores of life, and just working with what one has on hand at a particular moment in time, is a formula for success. It requires refusing to accept any defeat as a permanent condition.

Bhuddism, and Eastern Religions teach a more tolerant notion that all life is struggle, and that human successes are little blessings that are very temporary, and we should not expect them to last very long because they will not endure. Those religions and philosophies also teach that life is a long term struggle too, for everyone. So, if you want to live life, you just have to pick up your own ass and get moving and get on with living and doing something according to whatever opportunities are in front of you at the moment.

In Mr. Linh's story of Y, one theme prevails. People working together to succeed together translates into personal success for individuals like Y. Rich associating with the poor and poor not being excluded to poor ghettos and rich into gated communities. Hard work is expected.

Still, as we see Vietnam and China begin enjoying Western material successes resulting from their hard work and practical ways of dealing with daily life, will we see them eventually stagnate and turn into what we are seeing happening to ourselves in USA?

We will have to wait and see.

[John Damos at Smirking Chimp]



In America if someone does something stupid or has a spell of bad luck and ends up broke and destitute it’s very hard to recover from that even if they wise up and have the will to better their lives. A person with bad credit working at a survival job at or close to minimum wage is going to have a hell of a time getting out of the poverty rut. Not having access to credit means they will be relentlessly nickel and dimed trying to secure utilities and basic services, and SOL if they can’t scrape up enough cash for security deposits.

A person living at poverty level spends all their energy in a constant battle to stay afloat and inertia is working against them. If they are single and have family who can help them out they might, with enough determination, have a fighting chance of achieving a dignified life. Saddled with kids or in a dysfunctional relationship…good luck with that. Simply put, America doesn’t believe in second chances. Do something stupid when you’re young and it could cost you the rest of your life.

Although it goes against the prevailing ideology, everybody knows accident of birth and luck play a significant role in how a person’s life turns out. Nobody can choose their parents, their core personality, innate abilities or the socioeconomic level they are born into. This means a significant minority of the population has the deck stacked against them from birth but American ideology pretends they have the same life chances as someone born into a stable middle-class family.

A wealthy country that considers even a basic provision like universal single payer healthcare as a slippery slope leading to totalitarian socialism creates a lot of problems for itself.

[Squarebeard at Unz Review]




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