Posted on 03/29/2023 7:18:15 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET
Hard work does not, in itself, improve character. For a talented and spirited young man, especially, doing menial labor for pitiful wages under idiot supervisors not only fails to build character—it can destroy it.
Some men yearn for nothing but life in a hut tilling the fields and aging with the seasons. But others look out on the vast ocean and wonder what lies beyond. They yearn for more.
An older adviser once told me when I was a boy that I simply needed to learn to “play the game.” But I ask now: what if the game is stupid? What if I don’t want to play?
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
Too many truths to discount. It pulls together all the shitty attitudes we picked up working for stupid bosses for low pay, playing the game and realizing the folks at the top are feeling their way around in the dark just like the rest of us. You've all been around the slackers the rest of us have to carry and put up with. They made us feel like chumps. I can look back and laugh.
Then there's today's young who don't wanna work. Glad I won't be around where they're in charge-lol.
Half the article is the author ‘paying his dues’. WE all did. Give yourselves 10-15 minutes to soak it in. If I was teaching High School I’d make it required reading to give the young skulls full of mush something to think about as they get on with their lives.
Funny thing-the left would make them read it too. Heh heh.
The author isn’t wrong, but it just seems he is whining about having done menial labor (but he is nonetheless proud of the fact he “pulled himself up from his bootstraps”) Too far below is lofty station in life?
After all, when you are a teenager all you have is “work.”
NO ONE outside your family cares about your SAT scores, your hopes, dreams or potential. Work takes many forms, it is a kind of discipline and its how you move from nothing to a “fully developed character.”
Suck it up, buttercup. We've all done things we didn't necessarily 'want' to do. It's called 'life.'
And life doesn't exist to serve your oversized ego.
Hard work does not, in itself, improve character.
Somebody has to do the work. This author is guilty of thinking it should be someone else. That’s why people get into management.
I think the American Dream is gone. The government is far into debt, regulations are too numerous. The deck is stacked against the little guy in a way that this country has not seen before.
And the “leadership class” in politics and in business has no interest in leading anything. They don’t seem to know how. Look at the Biden Admin. Any great leaders up there? Look at Silicon Valley Bank. Any bankers there? Yeah, they had one. The rest were BS artists who got into leadership positions and screwed everything up.
These are not good times. This is like a Mafia economy, and in the eyes of the Mafia, people who have jobs are suckers. The fools are the ones who show up for work and try to get ahead. The Wise Guys just sit back and skim all the cream off the top for themselves. That’s corruption, and this country is rife with it.
We’ve all been taught to honor hard work. But this country has gone rotten, and hard work does not bring the rewards it used to. I’m in my mid-60s and I see the change clearly — and the most prominent change isn’t “young people are lazy”. No. The most prominent change I see is that everything is rigged against normal people who just want to build a life. Criminals are encouraged to walk the streets and law-abiding citizens are locked up. This is not how to build a prosperous and civil society.
This person sounds more like a socialist to me. Reminds me of Pelosi talking about how artists should get more money from the government so they don’t have to take menial jobs.
Plus, he hates old people
*Digging ditches won’t automatically make you a good person. For the man who has the soul of a warrior, being a day laborer can be soul killing.*
*The same is true for the man with the nature of a craftsman forced to do repetitive rote tasks. For the highest and best human types, work might not even be tangible at all.*
There’s something for everybody isn’t there?
Good post
Everyone does work they don’t like. Even work people like, is still work. Its often not necessarily in the category of “fun”. It also isn’t a movie montage with a cool song playing thats done in two minutes, and the big problem is solved at the end.
King Crimson fan?
Confusion will be my epitaph
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back and laugh
But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying…
Hard Times make Good Men
Good Men make Good Times
Good Times make Weak Men
Weak Men make Hard Times
This.
What does “Soul of a warrior” mean?
Character is not built by hard work, it is exposed by hard work.
*As a boy mountains taught me real character. When I was 12, my father took me to our “namesake mountain.” Climbing that mountain was far more memorable and meaningful to me than any summer I spent grinding out a minimum wage paycheck. One might ask what exactly is the utility of climbing mountains? It doesn’t “produce” anything. It doesn’t cause the GDP green line to go up. What’s the point?
I answer: the heart of some men calls them to the ascent. They long to conquer—to master space. They long to master themselves.
Reminds me of the one that got away.
Western civilization, as a whole, finds itself caught in this trap. One wonders if there is anywhere left in our declining order where youth, strength, and ambition might still find an outlet for achievement and greatness.
The current places where youth, strength and ambition find an outlet are gangs, global warming, lgbt, antifa, etc.
This author knows something is not right but hasn’t put his finger on it yet. Writing this is part of the process maybe.
The real issue he is wrestling with is, “What is the purpose of life.”
Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die
or
Eat drink and be merry and enjoy what God has given you.
I never needed a "higher purpose". I just needed to get the bills paid and have some money in my pocket.
*I am struck by just how much of my life thus far has been spent in pointless and degrading work. I will never get those hours back. They have been spent and not well. An older adviser once told me when I was a boy that I simply needed to learn to “play the game.”
But I ask now: what if the game is stupid? What if I don’t want to play?
I love it! 172 ‘comments’ at the end of the article. They sound like freepers.
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