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Originally Posted by BlackCrayon
sure the majority of the blame is on the individual but its not that simple. people are comprised of many things. the society in which they are raised has a big role in forming who they are. parents, school, media, everything. so while you can blame the individual, the individual is product of their surroundings.
fact is no matter how hard most people try, they will never hit it big. so you can try and try all your life spending your whole life trying to achieve whatever you define as success and if you never make it there and you're now old and gray..this makes you a loser? you're not smart enough to make it? no, not really. there are so many factors at play to say its because of X is just a way to categorize it in your mind and forget about it instead of looking for real answers.
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To me there are a few different levels of success. For example, I consider my brother to be successful. He makes a good living, has a pension in place that will take care of him and allow him to live a comfortable life when he retires and he enjoys his job. He makes between $85K-$100K depending on overtime a year. He isn't Bill Gates successful, but he is a success.
To be a Bill Gates kind of success you need many things to fall into place. Many of those guys created or innovated something or they were able to take an innovation to a mass market. For example, Facebook was not a new idea, but it was a better mousetrap and they figured out a good way to make it popular. Also, many of these people are very "A" type personalities who are driven to succeed not just by money, but by wanting to achieve other goals. Look at Steve Jobs. When he was sick and dying of cancer he was still working. He worked right up until the end. Working was his life. Many people simply aren't wired that way and that reality alone precludes them from ever having that kind of success. When it comes to entertainers, there is more luck involved because there are a lot of things that are out of your control. You can get a part in a movie, do a great job and the movie flops and with it so does your career. You can also get a role in a really small movie, do a good job and it becomes a surprise hit and with it you become a star. To have a long lasting career in entertainment you have to be willing to hang with it, grind it out and make smart decisions so when you get on top you can stay there.
While I agree that people are a product of their environment and their surroundings you hold out hope that people will see others and they will take the examples of others and apply it to themselves to break the cycle. A few months ago I was contacted via Facebook by someone I went to high school with. She got married right out of high school and quickly had three kids. She is still married today (at 41-years-old) and her kids are all teenagers or young adults. She was very poor growing up. Now she, her husband and three kids are so poor that they all live with her mom and share one bedroom together. She was going on and on and on about how proud she was that she teaches her kids to be thankful for what they've got and to give back and help others. I suggested that maybe she teach them to be a little bit more selfish and to desire something a little more for themselves. Maybe they focus on getting some level of success for themselves and establish themselves before they worry about others and she thought I was crazy. So, basically, she is not only stuck in the cycle of poverty herself, but she is teaching it to her kids. When I told her that I hope her kids will break the cycle and learn that if they truly want to help others they have to learn to help themselves first she got so mad she unfriended me. Hopefully her kids will grow up, get out on their own and see that they don't have to live that kind of life if they don't want to.