[ExI] worth reading

[darren shawn greer]

Does anyone really believe that some people aren't more successful because they're simply more clever? Sure, there are people who are poor/rich because they had the bad/good luck to be born into it, but just as surely there are people who are poor because they suck at being successful and people who have risen from poverty through hard work and good decision making.


There are many ways to define "clever." Rapacious, sly, machivellian, manipulative. People become rich for a variety of reasons, just as some become poor for a variety of others. Robertson Davies postulated in his Deptford Trilogy that the ability to acquire money was a talent and not a skill, the same as writing books or painting pictures was a talent-based activity. I have a friend who lives on two dollars a day after rent and food, and has developed a harmonic matrix theory in computerized music that is being academically investigated, and his work performed, all over the world. I'd hardly call him poor because he's lazy or unsuccessful. In his opinion, he's rich. He has an art, and a good mind.
You've put me in mind of a poem I hadn't thought about in a long time. You probably know it, but here it is anyway.
Richard Cory
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 Print friendly version E-mail this poem to e friend Send this poem as eCard Add this poem to MyPoemList  Whenever Richard Cory went down town, 
We people on the pavement looked at him: 
He was a gentleman from sole to crown, 
Clean-favoured and imperially slim. 

And he was always quietly arrayed, 
And he was always human when he talked; 
But still he fluttered pulses when he said, 
"Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked. 

And he was rich, yes, richer than a king, 
And admirably schooled in every grace: 
In fine -- we thought that he was everything 
To make us wish that we were in his place. 

So on we worked and waited for the light, 
And went without the meat and cursed the bread, 
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, 
Went home and put a bullet in his head. 

Edwin Arlington Robinson 




From: sparge at gmail.com
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:07:45 -0400
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: Re: [ExI] worth reading

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 10:22 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727692.100-die-young-live-fast-the-evolution-of-an-underclass.html?full=true


A quote:
"There is no reason to view the poor as stupid or in any way different from anyone else, says Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in the UK. All of us are simply human beings, making the best of the hand life has dealt us."


Does anyone really believe that some people aren't more successful because they're simply more clever? Sure, there are people who are poor/rich because they had the bad/good luck to be born into it, but just as surely there are people who are poor because they suck at being successful and people who have risen from poverty through hard work and good decision making.


I'm not sure what that quote has to do with the point of the article, though.
-Dave
 		 	   		  
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