I got the impression that you considered Askthepizzaguy a unredeemable victim in the same way that someone from a postion of privilege unconciously looks down upon someone who doesn't have their same advantages (like Americans who felt bad about the tragedy in Haiti so they texted $10 to a celebrity relief fund and then posted about how much an enlighted humanitarian they were on facebook/twitter).
You then indicated that you never had a mentor or role model provide you with any motivation or encouragement growing up. I took this to mean that you didn't need any because presumeably your future was already assured.
Honestly, I could very, very easily take what you said as a personal attack and defend myself. A few members here such as Choxorn and Valka have known me since I joined this forum at the age of 12 and have been there through the whole process of discovering that I am indeed an individual, dealing with my childish attitudes and my naive statements. I vaguely recall posting a thread here when I was 13 saying that I hated rap and didn't understand why anyone would. To one on the outside, that would just be a kid being stupid. To me at the time, it was me celebrating the first year of me not listening to my parents and listening to music behind their backs at school with an MP3 player a friend gave me. I had decided, rather adamantly, that rap, county, screamo, metal, and opera would "never be a thing" in my tastes because it did really sound awful to me as I'd never heard any of it before.
It's a pointless story to share, but it saves me from going in-depth about how wrong you are about me. It also doesn't matter. Assuming I
did get a silver spoon throughout my childhood and had everything arranged for me in a life of luxury, that does not invalidate my opinion. The word of the poor is not worth more than the word of the rich, and vice versa. Perhaps this doesn't work in practice in the 'free-for-all' we call life but it is indeed a viewpoint I hold and try to apply when I talk to people.
Regardless, my first initial assumption when listening to a plight of another human being is not that they are doing something wrong but that something wrong is being done to them. I would hazard a guess that this is mainly because of how my parents addressed everything when it came to me -- Bad things were all my fault, good things were because of them and their esteemed advice. I don't contest the fact that a lot of the time a situation can be improved by the victim or that the victim is missing some pretty obvious signals that could change the entire basis of the problem if they become aware of it.
There's no good reason that I should default to, "Welp, you suck. Better change." when someone tells me a story about their life. There's plenty of good reasons that I should default to, "This is important. Tell me a little more about it, can you explain how what you said is true?"
Forcing some advice down his throat before acknowledging what he's said sounds very... hm. I don't quite know the word to use here. There's a distinct disconnect in communication, I find. You hear what he's saying, but you're not listening. You instead assume that what he needs is the good-willed advice of someone who "gets it" rather than someone to listen to the plight he's gone through and share stories about how this situation is verifiable in different circles, what various options are in the business, and how the issue might be addressed directly rather than simply, "If you don't like it, leave trololololololo."
It may indeed be true that Pizzaguy is in this situation because of a failure on his part. That's not my place to decide unless he makes it clear that it is. You said yourself that he has ambition and that he's gone to college yet you are still insistent that throughout it all he's doing something wrong because clearly someone "doing it right" wouldn't be in his position. It's a little insulting to his character because it implies that what he's currently doing with his life is beneath him in your opinion. Pizza delivery can be a super fun job for the right people and he brought up an issue that showcased how the employee situation of the industry was worsening. The employees
are the victims because there is nothing they can do about it except try and find a pizza company that doesn't bend their employees over the table or simply change professions completely (hint: this isn't good advice). Each type of delivery in different parts of the world come with their own advantages and disadvantages and this thread was a great way for Pizzaguy to find out if employees of the industry in other corners of the country and, by extension, the world are being as bent over as he has been over the previous decade.
To me, it's more important that the issue is directly addressed rather than call into question the character of the victim. You might be taking 'victim' to mean someone who is just a helpless soul but in this situation it means the receiving end of a negative act.
The dictionary definition of it:
a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action.
Pizzaguy, I'd say, has definitely been harmed by the actions of the pizza industry. Let's not try and paint him as a failure because of it.
Some people are not fortunate enough to have a mentor or role model. I don't know if that's how it was with Synsensa, but that's how it is with all too many people.
Correct-o. I had/have an awesome combination of a narcissistic father
and mother. The only type of mentoring I ever got was that I should be a slave to the will of my parents and anything else is a direct affront to how life should really be. As far as I can tell, that isn't a silver spoon being placed in my mouth, but I could obviously be a bit of a narcissist myself and think I hold no evil inside this noggin of mine.
It's still just stuff. You don't get to keep it when you die, and none of it is particularly important compared to relationships and knowledge.
Stuff can hold a lot of sentimental value. Relics of memories, echoes of past relationships, pieces of your ambitions and passions. Human life is indeed more important than any item, but items are still important. Maybe this would not be the case for a chronic hoarder but for a respectable older woman like Valka I would assume she doesn't keep random useless trinkets around and instead keeps
stuff that fills her with happiness or at least makes her feel comfortable in her own
home.
Note the usage of the word home. What you're proposing involves stripping the concept of an individualized home for most individuals, and since someone like Valka has inevitably spent the past couple decades getting to this point, throwing it all away and starting over sounds like it would rob her of relationships and knowledge rather than enrich her life. I imagine this is the case for most other people as well. If you don't have much reason to stay somewhere and your life is devoid of passions or ambitions that are personalized to your being or you happen to be an individual that always wants to move then sure, what you're saying would be great. In those cases, though, I don't really think the people in question would even
have more stuff than what fits into a suitcase.
That's getting overly personal, don't you think? Yes, I'm not in a position to just throw a few things in a suitcase and fly across the country. But then I'm also not in the position where I either have to, or want to. Did you miss the part where I mentioned my dad in the nursing home? I can't very well pack HIM up and take him with me, can I?
(hint: my father is one of my personal relationships, and is not part of the "crap" I own)
Taking care of loved ones who are dependent on the kindness of other human beings is
soooooo naive. Get with the picture, Valka. You can surely fit your kitty cats inside your suitcase with a change of clothes and move to the backwater states of America. It doesn't matter about your limitations or your personality, you totally can live in a communal area that has no proper kitchen and costs only slightly less than a really bad private apartment. To hell with your father! Let him eat cake!
Okay, so I know Zelig doesn't hold that exact opinion, but exaggeration and the fact that some people
do hold that opinion makes me feel like that was a worthwhile paragraph. I'm pretty much the opposite of it, though. Just making that clear.
