Red Pill or Blue Pill?

Are you a Red Pill Person or a Blue Pill Person? As in The Matrix, not politics

  • Total voters
    14
Seamus OReally said:
Spoken from a position of privilege. One cannot actually pull one’s self up by one’s bootstraps.
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Yeah. Actually you can. Been there done that. And I guarantee I’ve had no life of “privilege.” My parents didn’t have a lot. I’ve spent most of my 70+ years living pay check to pay check. And yet I can truthfully say. It’s been a good life. I guess I just measure things different than others.
 
iblive said:
Yeah. Actually you can. Been there done that. And I guarantee I’ve had no life of “privilege.” My parents didn’t have a lot. I’ve spent most of my 70+ years living pay check to pay check. And yet I can truthfully say. It’s been a good life. I guess I just measure things different than others.
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I was born a poor white child. Constantly picked on by most of the kids in my neighborhood and in school. My nickname was Grunt followed by a sound as if someone was constipated trying to force a poop out.

I spent the first 20 years of my life as a foreign car mechanic working on Mercedes Benz, BMW and Maserati. All acmplished by doing the work the hard way, learning by hands-on experience way before the internet.

In the early 90s I learned computers. How to use them, how to build them and how to program them. Nothing handed to me. I have been unemployed and homeless living in my car and still picked myself up from the gutter and now I'm a top tech working in digital security. All on my on. I didn't have boot straps, only determination and the want to live and succeed. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
 
Privilege? That is a slippery spectrum word generally used to shutdown contrary thought.

A society that suppresses contrary or divergent thought dies - history is littered with them. I've said many times I don't want you to think like me - I want you to think like you. When we talk great things / ideas come from the synergy of differing thought. Our society gets better.

I remember when my son was in a magnet school in Dallas located in a low income neighborhood. In 3rd grade he came home talking about suing people and how one of his friends mom had to clean 'mansions' for rich people. Class warfare indoctrination at it's finest. I asked him if he knew how 2/3 of the planet would view our small [by Dallas standards] 3 bedroom home? A mansion. All Americans? Rich people by their standards. Critical thinking began.

I made numerous foolish choices in my younger years and got to live in my car for a bit and later would eat potatoes for a month as they were all I could afford. My best thinking got me there. While I have still made foolish choices since then they have impacted me less.

Red pill me!

Russ
 
I stumbled across @iblive 's account of his hardships and the Fender bass the other day. I have great respect for a man who picks himself up when he's down. That deserves saying. :yesway:

Geeze said:
Privilege? That is a slippery spectrum word generally used to shutdown contrary thought.
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I agree that there's a bit of a trend to point to things as 'privilege'. I'm curious to what is implied or meant by the term in this context.
 
PelliX said:
I stumbled across @iblive 's account of his hardships and the Fender bass the other day. I have great respect for a man who picks himself up when he's down. That deserves saying. :yesway:
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Appreciate that. Unsure what you mean about the fender bass? I have an Ibanez bass.
 
Geeze said:
I made numerous foolish choices in my younger years and got to live in my car for a bit and later would eat potatoes for a month as they were all I could afford. My best thinking got me there. While I have still made foolish choices since then they have impacted me less.

Red pill me!

Russ
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I somehow managed to survive a stream of bad choices myself, but all of the bad stuff (including alcoholism and recovery) have given me a perspective that I never would have had if I hadn’t have followed the path of poor choices. And part of that perspective is that I will not be shamed into feeling guilty about having some kind of ‘privilege’ because of where I was born or how I was raised.
 
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