Happier Abroad Forum Community

First of all, a bit of good news - I am now a Licensed Massage Therapist so I can now make money doing what I love doing. I can consider myself a successful person in that I went to school, put in all the hard work and achieved my goal that I set out to do in November of 2012 when I was feeling lost and frustrated. However, now that I am successful at something I make it a point not to be a jerk that looks down on people that are struggling.
There are a lot of Happier Abroad themes that I see on this forum, one of them is the "kick people when they are down" mentality. If you cannot get a date, blame yourself. If you cannot get a job, it is your fault. Basically anything bad that happens to you is your fault.

When I returned from Costa Rica, I was introduced to one guy who was head chef at a hotel. At first I thought he was a cool, fun-loving guy until he started judging me. The fact is when I came back to Dallas people became worse overnight because I came to a non-culture of separated miserable people. I was tired of the heat, tired of driving all the time, tired of pretentious people. Everything had snowballed up to the point I was pissed off all the time. Of course that guy repeated the same mantra that the best place to live is in the US, which I strongly disagreed with as Costa Rica had shown me different. He says, "I know you disagree. You disagree because you don't have a life here. You think you are owed something". He couldn't see outside of his personal bubble so he couldn't see that so many young people are struggling to get jobs in modern society. That is why he repeated that same talking point that anyone who doesn't have a job is lazy or entitled. There are a lot of people struggling in the United States right now to get a job and even the people who have jobs are struggling too. That goes double for the dating scene as we all testify.

On a positive note though, being successful in massage therapy means sharing my success with other people. I have shared my success with every person who has ever been on my table and felt better for it. Being successful means sharing your success with others; not kicking that person when he is on the mat. Uplifting others instead of tearing them down.

I think it's because in USA there is a big social Darwinist type of philosophy, a warped kind of Ayn Randian view of everything. In America, everything that happens to you is your fault, both good and bad. Mark Zuckerburg isn't a millionare because he was lucky, instead it's because he was a super sharp tactical thinker with keen business sense or whatever. Nevermind (more than likely) a bunch of people before him tried making social networks, Mark Zuckerburg is the best businessman ever and it was all entirely Mark Zuckerburg who made it all happen.

Success and failure in USA is judged on that type of premise. I use this analogy. In motorcycle safety class, you're taught "Everything is your fault." As in, any accident you get into is your fault. So if a car pulls out in front of you and you crash into it, it's your fault for not anticipating the car pulling out or avoiding it. This is a good philosophy for keeping you alive, as on a bike you pretty much have to think everyone out on the road is there to potentially kill you and you must be pre-emptive in avoiding them. Unfortunately, this is how you must live life in America, this is the philosophy that's needed to succeed here. Like you're riding a motorcycle and thinking everyone on the road is there to kill you and nobody will help you, and it's your job to anticipate their attempts at murdering you. Not a fun way to live, no? Obviously, such an idea is a good idea to keep you vigilant and not dying, but it's not exactly true. In that sometimes completely unanticipated things happen and they just do, nobody could reasonably say "oops, it's my fault for getting hit by a meteor" or whatever.

Anyway, with people turning into assholes, because of this mentality, since everything is your fault, it's your fault for your success, too. I'd say the mentality is even to the point where, say, if you won the lotto, it's your fault because you took the risk to buy the ticket or whatever. So successful people attribute all their success to their greatness, and attribute other people's lack of success as just them being losers, without taking into account any external circumstances that made the success possible, people who helped them, etc. And with the motorcycle ideology, it goes even further in that successful people do not want unsuccessful people around them because they will pull out in front of them and cause them to crash off their motorcycle, or in Social Darwinist terms, they're a weaker race of people who could not adapt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

Temprano26 wrote:
"You think you are owed something".

Very funny, a way to guilt-induce you into staying in the USSA. You are just getting what you want in life. Why does that bother him?

Temprano26 wrote:
Being successful means sharing your success with others; not kicking that person when he is on the mat. Uplifting others instead of tearing them down.

+1 to to you for achieving without a chip on your shoulder. Enjoy your success.

The attitude is particularly strange given that the system is essentially a Soviet style communist one where you get what the elite want to give you and, within that context the more vile and worthless you are the more you get. On that note: maybe it is not just a case of "success" making people jerks. Maybe the system is designed so that only jerks are "successful".

Don't agree entirely with the title and reaches a conclusion for the wrong reason.

Being successful doesn't make people jerks. I know many people in the U.S. who are successful through being honest and working hard, but they aren't jerks.

In many parts of the world I've observed, not only in the U.S., but also in Asia, Europe and Latin America, the motivator for success is often linked to COMPETITION and doing whatever it takes to win. Success attained through competition often brings out the ruthlessness in people and that is what you are observing.

I recall once having a deep conversation with an Englishman who traveled widely and knew the international scene. He commented that what bothered him is the intense zeal for competition in the world nowadays; it put into shadow the decency of man, made one less thoughtful of others and brought out the ruthless.

Contact sports such as hockey, football, soccer and rugb have grown more vicious, and yet the crowd yells for more like the Romans in the Colosseum. We've come a long and nasty way from friendly games of one sort or another to riots after big contests.

The merciless business, service industry, entertainment, and politics is guilty, too. Competition, it is said, builds character, but it also builds insolence.

On the other hand, unsuccessful people aren't always kind, gentle and humble. I've found many "unsuccessful" people to be envious and resentful, which is just as destructive. The Filipinos are famous for their crab mentality and won't hesitate to drag down anyone they perceive as being more successful than themselves.