mom@sftri.UUCP (Mark Modig) (05/14/85)
> Imagine a highway 10 miles wide and stretching from coast to coast. > Further imagine that there's a silver dollar on every square foot of > the highway. Now in 1776, we all started a race to see who could get > the most money. Except that all black men, all women, and all > foreigners were tied up , effectively preventing everyone except white > men from getting more than a mile down the road. So now, 200+ years > later, it's time for the referees to prevent discrimination. Why is it money in the example? This is not intended as a specific attack on this example (I did that in another article :-)), since it is society in general that says that money is a measure of success, but I still am not happy with it. There are lots of pieces towards being successful that don't involve money-- I'd count my life successful if I was able to help people when they needed it and raise good kids, not if I'm the first one in my family to ever earn $40,000 a year. It seems to me that part of the problem these days is that success is almost totally measured in terms of money and the things you can buy-- more so even than before, when different (and to my mind better on some counts) goals were used by people to measure how they felt about themselves. How everyone else saw you has always depended a lot on how prosperous you were, but how you saw yourself seemed to depend on things besides money. Any thots? Mark Modig ihnp4!sftri!mom
ariels@orca.UUCP (Ariel Shattan) (05/15/85)
> > Imagine a highway 10 miles wide and stretching from coast to coast. > > Further imagine that there's a silver dollar on every square foot of > > the highway. Now in 1776, we all started a race to see who could get > > the most money. Except that all black men, all women, and all > > foreigners were tied up , effectively preventing everyone except white > > men from getting more than a mile down the road. So now, 200+ years > > later, it's time for the referees to prevent discrimination. > > Why is it money in the example? >[...] > I'd count my life > successful if I was able to help people when they needed it and > raise good kids, not if I'm the first one in my family to ever earn > $40,000 a year. >[...] > How everyone else saw you > has always depended a lot on how prosperous you were, but how you > saw yourself seemed to depend on things besides money. Any thots? > > Mark Modig This kind of self assesment is only available to people who can afford it. You don't need to measure yourself by money because you have money. If your kids were going hungry (which a lot of kids in this country are), you'd be a good deal more concerned about money than now, when you really don't feel you'll ever have to worry. Thinking about things other than mere survival is a recent luxury. As more and more people had more than enough money to support themselves, they've had to occupy the resulting time with something. Some chose conspicuous consumption, others went for satisfaction at a personal level. The people who use this net don't realize how lucky they are, or how unusual when compared to the majority of people in the world. Very few of us went hungry as kids. Very few of us had to watch our folks struggle (I mean *really* struggle, not just pay the credit card bills, but pay the food bills) to make ends meet. Much of the world (including plenty of families in the US) is still occupied with keeping body and soul together. It behooves us to stop every so often and look beyond our campuses and high-tech employment areas to get perspective on where we are and where the rest of the world is. I'm not going to preach charity or anything like that, but at least take a moment to think about where you are and how you got there (not just personally, look at your parents and ancestors). Ariel (I worked hard, but I was also lucky) Shattan ..!tektronix!orca!ariels
crs@lanl.ARPA (05/17/85)
> > > > Why is it money in the example? > >[...] > > I'd count my life > > successful if I was able to help people when they needed it and > > raise good kids, not if I'm the first one in my family to ever earn > > $40,000 a year. > >[...] > > How everyone else saw you > > has always depended a lot on how prosperous you were, but how you > > saw yourself seemed to depend on things besides money. Any thots? > > > > Mark Modig > > This kind of self assesment is only available to people who can > afford it. You don't need to measure yourself by money because you > have money. If your kids were going hungry (which a lot of kids in > this country are), you'd be a good deal more concerned about money > than now, when you really don't feel you'll ever have to worry. > > Thinking about things other than mere survival is a recent luxury. > As more and more people had more than enough money to support > themselves, they've had to occupy the resulting time with something. > Some chose conspicuous consumption, others went for satisfaction at > a personal level. > > The people who use this net don't realize how lucky they are, or how > unusual when compared to the majority of people in the world. Very few > of us went hungry as kids. Very few of us had to watch our folks > struggle (I mean *really* struggle, not just pay the credit card bills, > but pay the food bills) to make ends meet. Much of the world > (including plenty of families in the US) is still occupied with keeping > body and soul together. > > It behooves us to stop every so often and look beyond our campuses > and high-tech employment areas to get perspective on where we are > and where the rest of the world is. I'm not going to preach charity > or anything like that, but at least take a moment to think about > where you are and how you got there (not just personally, look at > your parents and ancestors). > > Ariel (I worked hard, but I was also lucky) Shattan > ..!tektronix!orca!ariels Ariel, I couldn't agree more. I've also noticed the skew in the viewpoints/attitudes expressed here on the net. I doubt that there is any practicable way to do it but it would be instructive for those with enough money that money isn't a worry to be transported, for a while, to a situation where it is a very definite and nearly constant worry. I don't mean worry over whether you will have to make do with the *old* Porsche for a few more years but over what you will feed and clothe your children with. Perhaps an open minded visit to Appalachia, or some of the poorer villages in the west or a poor section of a big city would help but it isn't like living it. Thanks for your article. Charlie _______ Charlie Sorsby ...!{cmcl2,ihnp4,...}!lanl!crs crs@lanl.arpa
karen@randvax.UUCP (Karen Isaacson) (05/21/85)
> > Imagine a highway 10 miles wide and stretching from coast to coast. > > Further imagine that there's a silver dollar on every square foot of > > the highway... > > Why is it money in the example?... At the risk of putting words in the original poster's mouth, I suspect the dollars were simply a symbol for something more nebulous like opportunity or education. As a really trite example, when I went to high school in the early seventies (not all that long ago, really), girls (women...) were required to take two years of home economics while boys (men...) were require to take only one year of random shop. Just a little thing, but those boys had the opportunity to take one more year of science/math than I did, and were just that little bit better prepared for college, etc. You could say that they had a bit of a head start. (Not that I didn't subsequently catch up, but should I have had to start out behind them?) On a larger scale, I think folk will agree that some school systems are of higher quality than others, and that access to those better school systems has been mainly confined to middle class/upper middle class people (generally white, due perhaps to the composition of our middle class). That is, there is at least some correlation between a families income (ah, there are those silver dollars!) and the quality of their children's education. Is affirmative action the answer to this problem? Not in the long run. In the long run, we should (and have been trying to, haven't we???) make sure everyone has a shot at a good education. In the short run, well, I think the most qualified candidate should get the position/promotion. And we should do what we can to help folk "catch up" so that they stand a fair chance of being the most qualified candidates. (I don't we do people much of a favor when we put them in positions for which they are not qualified. In fact, we run the risk of perpetuating the stereotypes that they aren't - and never will be - qualified for that type of work.) -- decvax!randvax!karen
cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (05/24/85)
> > > Imagine a highway 10 miles wide and stretching from coast to coast. > > > Further imagine that there's a silver dollar on every square foot of > > > the highway. Now in 1776, we all started a race to see who could get > > > the most money. Except that all black men, all women, and all > > > foreigners were tied up , effectively preventing everyone except white > > > men from getting more than a mile down the road. So now, 200+ years > > > later, it's time for the referees to prevent discrimination. > > > This kind of self assesment is only available to people who can > afford it. You don't need to measure yourself by money because you > have money. If your kids were going hungry (which a lot of kids in > this country are), you'd be a good deal more concerned about money > than now, when you really don't feel you'll ever have to worry. > > The people who use this net don't realize how lucky they are, or how > unusual when compared to the majority of people in the world. Very few > of us went hungry as kids. Very few of us had to watch our folks > struggle (I mean *really* struggle, not just pay the credit card bills, > but pay the food bills) to make ends meet. Much of the world > (including plenty of families in the US) is still occupied with keeping > body and soul together. > > It behooves us to stop every so often and look beyond our campuses > and high-tech employment areas to get perspective on where we are > and where the rest of the world is. I'm not going to preach charity > or anything like that, but at least take a moment to think about > where you are and how you got there (not just personally, look at > your parents and ancestors). > > Ariel (I worked hard, but I was also lucky) Shattan > ..!tektronix!orca!ariels I came from one of those families where there wasn't enough money to buy food some times; clearly my family wasn't one of the beneficiaries of the mythical "silver dollar highway"; yet the discrimination against white males that prompted the "silver dollar highway" takes place against me. When are the people who believe in government promoted racial and sexual discrimination going to WAKE UP to the fact that economics hasn't worked along these neat boundary lines of race, sex, and national origin? We are all individuals --- viewing everyone as a member of a race, ethnic group, or sexual class, and assigning collective guilt, responsibility, or economic oppression based on our membership in a category is identical to the approach of the KKK.