How ‘The Karate Kid’ Ruined The Modern World
29th December 2013
America is full of frustrated, broken, baffled people because so many of us think, “If I work this hard, this many hours a week, I should have (a great job, a nice house, a nice car, etc). I don’t have that thing, therefore something has corrupted the system and kept me from getting what I deserve, and that something must be (the government, illegal immigrants, my wife, my boss, my bad luck, etc).”
I really think Effort Shock has been one of the major drivers of world events. Think about the whole economic collapse and the bad credit bubble. You can imagine millions of working types saying, “All right, I have NO free time. I work every day, all day. I come home and take care of the kids. We live in a tiny house, with two shitty cars. And we are still deeper in debt every single month.” So they borrow and buy on credit because they have this unspoken assumption that, dammit, the universe will surely right itself at some point and the amount of money we should have been making all along (according to our level of effort) will come raining down.
December 30th, 2013 at 12:04
This article reminded me of “Good Will Hunting”. That movie shows how Hollywood superimposes their own view of the world on reality. (Janitor is a “born” math-whiz that solves a complex, “unsolvable” math problem left on a professor’s chalkboard.)
While there certainly are actors who study long and hard to perfect their craft, ALL of the stars in Hollywood are stars because of the gifts they were born with – physique, voice, memorable face, etc. Plastic surgery is – in Hollywood – just another “gift” that can put you into a starring role within a few months. They don’t see Warren Buffet as someone who spent decades studying financials, but as someone who was gifted with that talent. Once Luke Skywalker learns to act like a Jedi, he becomes the master Jedi.
By extension, Hollywood lefties see the poor as ungifted instead of lazy, the rich as gifted instead of hard working. They measure life in terms of acclaim and fortune (esp. acclaim) and are thus more likely to believe Al Gore about global warming than any scientist.