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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2452 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: We’re losing a whole generation of young men to video games

Is your coffee shop running successfully? 'cause if so, you don't get to have to worry about having no financial future in front of you - unlike most of the people talked about in the... khm, "article".

You must be working hard to keep the shop going. It must take not just effort and time but conviction that what you're going to do is going to bring profit - monetary, emotional or both. Most of the men in question have no luxury of conviction of their efforts reaping benefits.

Speaking as a man who has as recently as a year ago felt completely powerless over his financial fate, I can understand exactly what many, if not all, of those men going through. You don't sit in front of the screen with a controller in your hand because games are such overwhelming and fulfilling fun. In abscence of the real thing, a simulation would have to do - and this is exactly what's happening to the mentioned players: lacking the real incentive to work on yourself.

Why are they lacking it? Because they were never taught to have it. Their parents have probably supported them all the way, giving them everything they'd want or need. They never had to work for their own benefit - never forced, never needed to and, therefore, never wanted to. You might cite the education system as at least a partial effect on their consciousness' development - not the case when all you have to do to "do good" there is produce correct answers according to the guidelines (still more handling). How on Earth do you expect these kids (and the adults they wound up being) to know that there's more to life than being supported and guided by others?

I want to say "screw you" for comparing the situation to the Red Pill, but you're at least partially right. Both stem from lacking essential education in some of the most basic social and personal notions: respect (for oneself and others, respectively), challenging oneself, communication about one's pains and troubles to the right people.

You're asking a lot from people who don't know that they're even supposed to know it. Hell, I'm still a lazy bum despite profound self-development, and the only reason I went there in the first place because I'm a rebel by nature. I see things around me I don't like, and I fight to make them proper - and most of the time, I still don't have the drive that many advertise to be the key to success. It's growing, but it takes time and effort - but more importantly, a shit-ton of education that I had to gather all on my own, 'cause no one would just give it to me. How could you expect others to have it better?

Enjoy your work ethics. Enjoy the drive and the inner strength it takes to run your life the way you want to. But don't act so damn smug about those who have it less than you. It's not laziness: most of the time, it's learned helplessness - and the best thing you could do is teach someone that things could be better.