Help me understand how half of USA is on board with the idea of creating "short term pain"
I recently had a (mostly) civilized discussion with an older gentleman who mentioned reading a book about how newer generations have not learned how to suffer, and that is the root cause of many evils in the world today. He then expressed a sort of excitement at the thought of self-induced suffering through our supreme leader's terrible economic and geopolitical decisions. It would "make us stronger on the other side."
To which my question was, and is still: "You're a top 2% earner in the most powerful country in the world. You have everything you could ever want or dream of. Why do YOU want to suffer?"
My second question/point was: "What you're describing as people being too comfortable, I'd counter that it's just the advancement of technology and industry -- most of us don't HAVE to suffer by breaking our backs working the fields from sun up to sun down because we have equipment to do that for us. Instead, we can work our desk jobs and play games on our phones."
And my final question/point was: "Why would anyone ever wish suffering upon anyone else? That doesn't seem very biblical."
I'm really struggling to understand the line of thinking that I am hearing from the very top levels of the government all the way down to the working class. The thinking that "we deserve to suffer." In a sense, I feel that it's a sort of disguised retribution or malice, i.e. "I don't want to suffer, but there are a bunch of people I disagree with that do need to suffer."
Please help me understand so I can be better prepared to debate the next person who tries to make this point to me. I'm looking at you, Dad.
Half of the country isn't on board with that. Half of the country did not vote for Trump - not only is voter participation far from 100%, but a significant portion of the population is not eligible to vote (e.g, children).
Furthermore, that is not the stance most Trump voters even have. The default belief would be that these are for the betterment of the economy, regardless of the accuracy of that statement, not as some kind of self-flagellation exercise. That is not a mainstream thought pattern in Trump voters.
Third, that general framework of belief is pretty common. You see it in, say, hazing at frats or elite clubs, or in seniority systems (e.g, in Korea it's common that young workers have to do more grueling and humiliating work). You can generally see it as a type of rite of passage.
Fourth, debating or arguing with someone will never change their mind. The only reason you should productively debate or argue is either recreationally or as a spectacle.
It's crazy to apply a rite of passage to an entire country though. The whole point of enforced suffering is to confer an elite status that causes close bonds to form.
When you go through boot camp, you do something horrible that civilians haven't experienced and you have a bond with other people in the military because you know you've all gone through that.
When you work at a company that requires grueling internships you spend long, hard hours with other people going through the same thing and bond over it.
That doesn't extend to an entire country though. 300 million people will never have some sort of perceived elite status forged by shared suffering. When countries suffer, people usually just turn on each other, because this isn't something we're all signing up for together to be part of an elite unit. We're just trying to live our lives.
I'm currently reading Rebecca Solnit's book A paradise built in hell that is a historical examination of disasters in an attempt to support the thesis that by and large people don't turn on each other in crisis. They frequently rise to the occasion and help each other out in large and small ways until normal times return.
While I agree it's not morally acceptable and this isn't even a "smart" rite of passage, this is basically how 90% of countries have operated throughout history. Some still very much do (OP's example of Korea is far from the only one), and there's plenty of famous historical examples of countries (or at least city states) doing things like this with arguable levels of success (sparta comes to mind)
RE: point four, see also the Backfire Effect. Read past the introductory paragraphs that indicate that it is not always applicable because it seems to be applicable where intellectual dishonest exists such as seems likely in this case.
From the piece, here's hot to fight the effect:
The reasons you give after this sentence means that it was more like 75% of the country didn't vote for him (though two-thirds of that didnt/couldnt vote at all).
It was more contradicting the statement that half the country voted for him. They were, as I understood it, saying that this statement was untrue, not giving the percentage that didn't vote for him.
I don't know. After reading about Americans working three jobs and still living paycheck to paycheck, going to work while sick because they don't have more sick days, dying of cancer because they can't pay for chemo, taking an Uber to the hospital to avoid paying for an ambulance, driving themselves during contractions to their own delivery, and removing their own teeth to save on a dentist appointment, I arrived at the conclusion that Americans are actually pretty tough already.
The idea that Americans need any more suffering sounds insane to me. You guys need less. Much much less.
Oh great, more baseles America bashing. At this point I'm really struggling to see what people get out of it. Is it just the cool internet points or do people really need a raw hit of smug to make them briefly feel superior? For the actually sensible people in the crowd, these situations do happen in the US but they're edge cases. Not excusing that the US has severe problems to address, and what country doesn't, but the vast majority of Americans are doing just fine and live lives roughly analogous to our other Western counterparts (cultural differences aside). Take the first smack, Americans working three jobs: around 5% of Americans are working more than one job and almost all of those are multiple part-time jobs. Not many Americans are running around working multiple full-time jobs. How many Germans work more than one job for comparison? 4.5% and hey, even though they're better paid, European minimum wage workers also struggle to make ends meet in larger cities. At this point the memes about the US being a third world country are immensely insulting to people who actually do live in terrible conditions of the third world and I think is pretty telling of the superiority mindset of the people who parrot these ridiculous claims.
Context is important. It's easy to bash a country to make yourself feel better about whatever it is but it's pretty intellectually lazy and a little cringe at this point
I am sorry, I believe you misunderstand me. I may be wrong and baseless in my statements, but I am emphatically praising Americans for their strength and resilience. Not bashing.
EDIT: I am also Brazilian. Reality prevents me from feeling superior to the US in any way shape or form.
You're not wrong, but I think one thing you are missing is the arrogance most of us in the US have (being an American I think I can speak on this). Being arrogant about how great your country is while simultaneously not having a understanding of the major ways in which it fails is a recipe for people to knock you down a peg or two.
We export culture more than anything else, and part of that is exporting the idea of American exceptionalism. It also include exporting the idea that the country is infallible. And that American power is always justified in all ways at all times.
So when outsiders see/read stories like mentioned above, even if they are "edge cases" it becomes a knee jerk reaction to say "Look at how dumb Americans are" or "Look how bad their system is" as a way to confront or combat the story we put out in the world.
Not to say that it doesn't get tiring being on the receiving end of this, but I think this is something Americans do too. It doesn't excuse any of it, but we all have a mental model of the world and certain prejudices that we carry around all the time.
It's funny because I used to see this from the exact opposite perspective. I was an American in the US who questioned why we can't have all the nice things that places like Europe have. Then I actually lived abroad for over a decade - in a third world island-nation, in a hyper-capitalist Asian capital, and now many years in the heart of Europe and I realized just how bad things were in other parts of the world and just how good Americans actually have it even when they themselves don't realize it.
There are ways to combat narratives of American Exceptionalism without being toxic and without perpetuating stereotypes that people really do not understand are untruths. Anecdotal but I can't count the number of Europeans I've met that won't travel to the US because they genuinely believe all the false propaganda, like above, that it's a shithole. My favorite part? Showing up to a party only to have people parrot whatever nonsense they saw on TikTok about my terrible homeland. Um, hi, I'm just here to have a good time and nice conversation with people
Exactly. Everyone can be doing better and maybe start by injecting a little reality and civility into their conduct
Many Americans may believe that the US is the best country in the world, and is often the only one they’ve ever been exposed to, but there’s a gulf of difference between naive belief and openly and aggressively attacking someone’s country with falsehoods. I don’t see a whole lot of Americans attacking telling Europeans how terrible their countries are for example but I can sure easily find exactly those types of comments on virtually any thread about the US and even have to face it in real life conversations with people.
People forget the human on the other side of the screen. These narratives are becoming so pervasive online that many people are starting to internalize them. It's crazy to say it but I've experienced bigotry for being American all based on this toxic online culture. Bashing Americans is fun and games when you're behind a keyboard but did you ever consider you're making real life worse for a lot of people who literally never did anything wrong? And of course this happens to other peoples and often at the hands of American media but two wrongs don't make a right after all
What are some overlooked ways that you believe Americans have it good?
Sure, I'll bight but with a huge disclaimer:
I'll start with the ground basis that the type of comparisons we're talking about are often made between the US and other western nations. Most western nations are inordinately reliant on the US for their defense and are able to save enormously on spending this way. Until recently, European countries (some more than others) were reliant on cheap energy bought from a Russian dictator. Taking into account artificial industrial productivity boosts by cheap energy and major costs savings on defense, it is questionable if these levels of public spending could be sustained with much higher budgetary demands.
Having said that, life in the US is still insanely good on a global scale. The poor in the US are considered middle income by global standards. It's often easy to forget that when comparing ourselves to our peers we're still standing way above the vast majority of humanity.
Quality of life in the US is exceptionally high. People in the US live in much larger housing often of higher quality. They drive newer, more expensive, larger cars. Consumerism spending is unhinged and discretionary spending is unrivaled as highest in the world. I know a lot of people who live paycheck to paycheck while earning good money and it's no wonder when I see how they spend. Look at any European or Asian nation and you'll expect to see people living in spaces 1/4 the size of Americans, much lower rates of vehicle ownership and much older and smaller cars. Older durable goods and just generally much lower levels of spending. If Americans were to live like Europeans do, a lot of their problems could probably be ameliorated by the noticeable increase in disposable income they'd have. American's just don't realize how rich they are in the scheme of things and how much they can afford with all of that extra income.
Tradeoffs in Healthcare. While this is a difficult subject to defend the US on, Americans do enjoy higher access to specialists and cutting edge care than many in other countries. A lot of Americans would find the sight of a public specialist's waiting room unacceptable.
Choice and convenience. Some Asian nations have the US handily beat on this but Americans are among the highest rated countries in the world when it comes to convenience. If you want an easy life, where easy is equated to convenience, then the US is a great place to be. I was surprised how many other nations require a level of involvement in their daily lives that I haven't seen in the US since the 1990's but was something I personally came to enjoy. Americans also have choices when it comes to entertainment, lifestyles, food, nature, products, etc that are unrivaled in most if not all of the world.
Solutions based culture. There is a cultural attitude in the US to get you what you want or need and find a way forward, even extending to bureaucracy that is impossible in other nations. Most places have a take it or leave it attitude to things and this can make life more difficult for those trying to get things done. Cultural affinity for flexibility can go a long way while still preserving enough functionality as a somewhat orderly rules-based society.
Energy costs are very low in the US which helps offset other areas where cost of living may be higher
Opportunity and economic mobility. This may no longer be the American Dream of the early 1900s but people who desire to achieve more or want to raise their standards of living will find a much easier time of it than in other western nations. Incomes are vastly higher and taxes lower, a job-hopping culture can help people find better opportunities or roles that fit their desires better. This is often a point made by Europeans who appreciate life in the US more than in their home countries. This is of course offset by the higher inherent risks of lower job protections but it is a trade off. If you are the type of person who values a stable but "middling" life, then many European countries will be a better fit for you. Life will be good and livable but you should not really expect to excel economically, even when you are a hard worker. Laws and protections for starting businesses in the US are also unrivaled in comparison with most other western nations and even though small businesses are nowhere near as prevalent as they used to be, they are still much easier to get off the ground and have a higher chance of success if guiding your own economic life is what you're interested in.
Culture and diversity. Many other nations are multi-cultural but many of them merely tolerate multiculturalism. The US actually does an immensely good job of celebrating foreign cultures and incorporating those cultures into the fabric of American life and people generally have an easier time of integrating into mainstream society.
Infrastructure in the US is actually pretty decent. I bemoan the lack of good public transit in the US but at least this trend seems to be slowly reversing in large American metros. Auto, freight, and airline infrastructure is however world-class and sometimes more efficient and/or available than many other countries.
Charity. The US has a strong charitable and volunteerism culture that is lacking in a lot of more social service underpinned societies. I think this is an area the US excels in, where there is a general attitude to help thy neighbor, even though this is sometimes more of a necessity due to more limited public support.
Public support. Even though our social support systems are not as robust than our European counterparts, we do still have extensive systems. My viewpoint is that many European philosophies are that "We will not let you fall very far," while the American philosophy is more akin to "We will catch you just before you hit the ground." Our Social Security system pays much more than other countries equivalent pensions, our unemployment insurance is much less generous but is still in place, legal protections exist to protect people's jobs in certain situations of absenteeism, both short and long term disability insurance exists to help people facing medical issues, public medical insurance is available to the elderly and poor, food benefits exists to help people subsist on relatively healthy diets. Many people, even some Americans, falsely believe that these systems just do not exist in the US. Anecdotally, I had to take eight months of medical leave once and received 2/3 of my salary for all but the first two weeks and then I returned to my legally protected job when I was better - these systems won't protect anyone forever but they are still there to help people who really need it. I have a close relative who is mildly mentally disabled, she has maybe worked only a few years in her entire life. She lives in an apartment larger than most single European people in a HCOL state and receives welfare benefits that adequately support her life.
While the above list explores some "Advantages" that the US may have compared to other countries, what I was really getting at is that the false narratives that I take exception to are also widely believed by Americans themselves. The US can be a very difficult place to be poor and we should strive as a society to correct that, but life is just not as bad in the US for about 3/4 of the population as many seem to believe. It took me moving abroad to realize that when you look at the way an average American lives and compare it to the lifestyle the average wealthy westerner lives abroad, Americans have it pretty damn good - it's only that our priorities are often warped and blinded by the culture that surrounds us.
And believe it or not, a lot of the same problems associated with poverty do exist in the other wealthy nations. Using Germany as an example because I live here and it is among the richest western nations: homelessness and poverty rates are comparable with the US and despite strong social systems, a significant portion of the population does face struggle in their daily lives.
There are definitely scary stories out there of people losing everything because they don't have insurance or because they were treated out of network (hopefully corrected by surprise medical billing legislation passed in the last few years), of people unceremoniously losing their jobs, etc. but we have to keep in mind that even in a country like the US these stories are not the norm. Americans are culturally willing to trade off a level of security for flexibility and opportunity that just doesn't exist in other countries. Conversely, many Europeans trade flexibility and opportunity for guarantees of a more secure life. I think that instead of fighting with each other over which system is better, while the vast majority of people in the world do actually suffer real adversity and poverty, we could probably learn more from each other about what works best and what fits our own cultural sensibilities best to make all of our systems more just and better.
As someone that's been able to see the good side of the American economy - the remnants of the once common American Dream - the culture here can work really well. The issue is that since the 1970s the wealthy have been stealing productivity gains from the workers. Look at the old productivity vs. income graph.
Like you said - job hopping, problem solving, generosity, etc. I see a stark difference among 1st and even 2nd generation immigrants and myself. They are less likely to tip, or tip less if they do. Among a group of highly paid software engineers that is flush with immigrants I can often be the lone person that views tipping as a virtuous means of income redistribution. They also embody the struggles of their parents in their need to see immense success with finances and status. The first of my ancestors came to America over 400 years ago. Growing up seeing the country through the eyes of generations that saw relative stability gives me a different mindset (which I acknowledge is not a privilege everyone living here gets to have).
I'm not well traveled. But I expect the career culture we have - at least in our major cities - is special. And the access to tremendous wealth is still there if you've got a little luck. If you have a bachelors degree you could end up making $300k per year writing code a few years after graduation. Even with the job market as it is 2/3 of my recent CS grad friends are working for major tech companies. The one that isn't wouldn't leave his red state to find work. Thanks to networking I've been able to consistently find work that pays outstanding, is interesting, is in the city I live in, and is available when I want it.
I'm not trying to say this is how America is experienced by anything close to the average American. But I wish it was, and I don't see why other countries would beat us to it. The needle's been going in the wrong direction. But it could always turn around.
I'm just some guy in the audience here, but for what it's worth the only thing I read into that previous post was a nod of genuine care and solidarity to those who are struggling and who are about to see their struggles become significantly harder.
I'm not saying that to invalidate your reply, at all - now that I've read it I can totally see how it could have been interpreted as condescending or critical, and your frustration entirely makes sense in that context - but it was different enough to my own interpretation that it seemed worth mentioning.
Going to work sick because you don't have enough sick days absolutely isn't an edge case, though. Neither is living paycheck-to-paycheck tbqh, though it's less common than not having enough sick days. I understand your criticism of things that are genuinely edge cases making there way into criticisms of the US, but that shouldn't come at the cost of criticizing US systems that are genuinely harmful and poorly designed. There are a lot of systemic failures in the US that result in both those edge cases and a lot of day-to-day suffering among those in the US who don't have enough money or external support to protect them. That's something that can't -- and shouldn't -- be denied.
Can't suffer when you've been deluded into thinking you aren't....
The other half of the expression "short-term pain" is usually "for long-term gain".
I think that's pretty self-explanatory, and generally a good philosophy for life. There are many things that we do, even though they're unpleasant, because we know that they will lead to good outcomes in the long-term that align more closely with our values.
A mundane example might be proper garbage disposal while driving. Sure, it would be more immediately rewarding to just toss the garbage out the window ("Adios, responsibility!"). But (hopefully) littering doesn't align with your values. So you hold onto garbage until you find a place to properly throw it out, even though that adds a few more steps to your journey.
I think if you want to dispute the points that your acquaintances/family are making, you can't dispute the value of suffering for one's ideals (which is noble). I think you need to question what the suffering is for.
Because you're right: suffering isn't a worthwhile end, in and of itself. You could stab a fork through your leg if suffering was worthwhile on its own. You must be suffering for something.
The vast majority of economists agree: Trump's tariffs are insane and they're going to backfire spectacularly. They are reducing American productivity, alienating America's allies, shifting the balance of power to more cooperative trading partners, and causing immense suffering for Americans and for people around the globe... for nothing.
The “for nothing” part is uncertain.
It is clear that the tariffs won’t achieve the stated goal of helping the US economy.
It might achieve other goals that trump and his associates have. This may include intentionally crashing the economy so rich people can get more wealth from bargains. Or it may be that he’s actually Agent Krasnov who is a Russian asset and the biggest traitor in history.
Trump supporters don’t seem to consider these realistic possibilities.
Which is to say, in short, that there is no benefit at all to the American people in these tariffs.
They may achieve some of their stated goals. For all their faults, tariffs do make domestic manufacturing more competitive. Domestically manufactured products would of course be significantly more expensive in many cases, but that doesn't really matter to the billionaires.
I doubt I'd agree with the gentlemen you were talking to but I think I can elaborate on what the book he read might have been getting at.
Generations that went through difficult times (WW2, the great depression, etc.) had a very different outlook on all sorts of things than more recent generations. They had to perfect coping mechanisms like compartmentalization, disassociation and stoicism and as a result they had a higher tolerance to all manner of discomfort. They also had a very different idea of what mental health looks like.
More recently, the west has since gone through multiple generations of relative peace and prosperity. Maybe an unprecedented streak. As a result we've had the time and space to explore more nuanced levels of mental health and psychology. We talk openly about personal feelings, struggles and challenges in a way that would have been unthinkable during any other time period that I'm aware of. We validate one another, we ask questions about what being human should look like, we devote more bandwidth to having empathy and understanding and caring about the experiences of people outside of our immediate circles.
We've also been able to invest huge amounts of time and energy into creating comfort and security on all levels. We've created technologies that improve quality of life which would be seen as impractical and decadent in a different context. We've expanded art and science in all sorts of directions they wouldn't have gone under more challenging circumstances.
I believe that, on the whole, it's been a really good thing. Sort of exploring the upper reaches of Maslow's hierarchy on a civilization level. This is how we work towards being a more enlightened species.
But also, we've inadvertently sold our collective souls to capitalism. We've damaged the environment and badly upset the balance that makes earth habitable (or at least comfortable). As a result we're likely headed towards trying times.
And we aren't adapted to trying times in the west. For example, the pandemic was a lot harder, for a lot of people, than it would have been for the generation coming out of the great depression. It's just a matter of pain tolerance.
There's a quote that comes to mind:
No idea who originally said it and there is definitely a bit of a toxic masculinity vibe to it. Also I wouldn't necessarily classify the kinds of people that easier times create as weak or the kinds of people hard times create as strong. There's a lot of missing nuance.
But the underlying concept is valid I think. We're very likely going to need to get harder for the challenging times to come.
All that being said, equating that with Trump intentionally tanking the economy, stripping away human rights and destroying American soft power, while Russia, China and dictatorships the world over ecstatically cheer... seems silly.
I agree with almost all of this when said in a vacuum, but I do think it’s almost… too even handed?
The quote is one I’ve always thought had a ring of truth to it, and you’ve captured my exact discomfort with the lack of nuance as well. The thing is, the only people I’ve ever heard say it in complete seriousness are people whose age and demographic put them squarely in the group that were born into the easiest and most consistent “good times” in human history - yet somehow they manage to say it with the implication that they are the “strong men”, and that their children and grandchildren (who are objectively, provably living harder lives specifically because of those older generations’ choices) are being made weak by the apparent good times they (we) are living through.
It’s such a clear and total reversal of reality that it taints the entire concept: we’re seeing the descent into “hard times” with every passing decade, yet the people responsible for creating the situation are so wildly out of touch that not only do they not see the difficulties as being real, they actively want to throw up additional challenges - artificial challenges they themselves never had to deal with, on top of the real challenges they also never had to deal with - as some kind of paternalistic lesson in noble suffering.
The hard times we’re facing are largely the fault of people, not external circumstances beyond our control. The pandemic was a notable exception, and one where the self-described “strong” screamed about masks, flouted rules, and derided the cooperation that would have actually saved lives as being soft and weak. The rest of our challenges, rooted in the damage that uncontrolled greed is doing to the planet and the people on it, are broadly caused by the exact same people hypocritically preaching the need for others to toughen up through suffering, and are broadly solved by those working at the top of Maslow’s pyramid - at least if we let them.
Related to your last paragraph, how the "strong" pushed back against reasonable community practices like masks - It makes me think about the 1940s and the world war.
During the war, the government of the United States asked citizens to help with the war effort. There was rationing of gasoline, rubber, food, and anything that would help make it possible to provide more strength where it was needed. There was recycling and collection of rubber, metal, and even cooking grease since all of those things could be used to make weapons. From what I can tell, there was not a huge pushback to this, and there was a general sense of pride and community and working together to achieve a goal.
I know other countries involved in the war had similar experiences with the level of cooperation and support from the general population, and culturally it was considered shameful if you weren't contributing and helping.
This is such a contrast to the ridiculous response to the COVID pandemic in the United States, where the virus quickly became a wedge issue to score political points, and people acted like obstinate children who could not be bothered to show a minimum of care and respect to each other. The President himself constantly undermined a rational response and I consider him directly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people. And now the same mentally ill person is destroying the economy for just as selfish and capricious reasons.
(resigned laugh) so true.
I agree with this... though when the worst of climate change starts to hit, probably when most of us are very old or dead, it's going to be hard to stay at the top of the pyramid. Barring dramatic changes and/or technological solutions of course, it's probably too early to call climate apocalypse a foregone conclusion.
Unfortunately there's more than "a bit" of toxic masculinity to this one. It is also, historically speaking, bogus, drawing heavily from some wildly incorrect things people believe about the fall of the Roman empire.
What isn't the cause of fall of the Roman Empire according to certain folks
(Strong men apparently)
At risk of a temp ban.
Because many people are actually stupid. Either through choice, upbringing or bad luck.
Poor education specifically related to math, logic, and economics is a huge part of it. People saying a moment of pain will make the country better are not thinking, they are 100% simply parroting a talking point because they don't want to think, or when they do they get confused about tariffs.
It's the same reason so many people get confused by stock options. The idea of being able to make money off of "losing" money (puts) is too bizarro world for them to wrap their minds around.
Tariffs are very similar. I figure the thought process/argument processing goes like this:
A: Tariffs mean we charge people money, so we get more money, yay!
B: No the other people will just raise prices and we will pay more.
A: But we charge them more so we make money!
B: ...
B: You will pay more for the exact same thing.
A: But that's not losing money because we already got more money.
B: Would you rather pay $100 or $150 for Wagyu steak?
A: $100
B: It costs $150 after tariffs
A: Oh, so we made more money!
B: 😶🔫
Even that hypothetical conversation is giving too much credit compared to some of the comments I've seen. There are a nontrivial number of people out there talking about how they're looking forward to the tariffs bringing prices down.
I saw the most snarky, yet appropriate response to that line of thinking in a Bluesky post: "Were you homeschooled by pigeons?"
Unfortunately, most people don't know (or aren't interested in) anything about how economics and international trade work. They don't think about how long it takes to build a factory, where raw materials and parts come from, how much skill and knowledge it takes to manufacture even the simplest things, or how finished goods are distributed.
They're too overwhelmed by the complexities of day to day survival, blinded by propaganda and distractions. Give them simple slogans about bringing jobs home, kicking out the immigrants who are "stealing" jobs, and hurting the enemy others who "deserve" pain, and they're satisfied.
I saw that same reply. I'm keeping that one.
It's not even that people don't know how things work, it's also they're just being lied to constantly about how they work, and it becomes unreasonable to expect anyone's really grasped it all
:(
I have been fortunate not to run into that argument yet.
If you are asking how Trump won the election, the country was faced with a binary choice.
Many of Trump's proposals were not plainly clearly stated to voters. They were in the document project 2025 but that requires reading and research.
I'm not asking how Trump won the election. I'm asking how to have a conversation about this very specific talking point that keeps coming up in conversation and does not make any logical sense to me.
Well there's your problem - it's not logical. It comes from a feeling. He feels that it will "make us stronger" because that's how he's viewed his own struggles and privilege.
Specific talking points frequently come from well funded propaganda that has been designed to be hard to refute.
What you are asking is not easy.
Ok.
It might be that all you can do is listen and learn more about what he thinks the benefit would be and carefully discuss whether the outcome that he wants is likely. People do rise to respond to crises as groups. See the book The Day the World Came to Town and Rebecca Solnit's book A Paradise Built in Hell.
Changing minds is not easy. People get highly invested in their beliefs. People who are scammed by con artists frequently don't admit to themselves that there was ever a con.
To address the suffering bit in relation to Trump's econominc policies I'm going to assume this is mostly related to the tarrifs.
The theory is that the short term pain caused by weening America off of cheap imports will eventually lead to greater gain in the future. I largely agree with the theory and will attempt to break it down in a number of points below, what I don't agree with is the methods Trump is using to bring the theory to fruition. Biden started the process through the Chips and Inflation Reduction Acts and while I completely support those initiatives, I do think a little more muscle was needed to reduce cheap imports, having said that I think the Trump strategy is completely unnuanced and way too extreme.
To talk about suffering in more philosophical terms, I would personally disagree with your assertion that the end goal of societal and technological achievement is a soft life. Many in the West have become lotus eaters, we are susceptible to sloth and this in itself can lead to all sorts of mental and physical illnesses. A whole and complete life involves hardship and challenges, the dream of a soft life is beautiful to think about but sadly the nature of life itself is to include suffering and toil. We may no longer need to break our backs in the field but it's no surprise to see how many fitness freaks there are these days who subject themselves to physical strain in order to avoid breaking their backs from sitting in a chair all day.
While I don't fully agree with your conversation partner, I do empathize with his premise. Even though we are provided historically luxurious and comfortable lives, many people do inject self-imposed suffering into their lives whether intentionally or not. Suffering is a larger part of a whole and beautiful life and as said many times above by others, short term suffering that leads to longer term gain can be a virtue. And to be more nuanced, there are many types of suffering. I would never wish suffering for it's own sake on anyone, that is immoral, but to see someone struggle within reason and knowing that it will lead to better outcomes for them or their community can often be a virtue.
I really appreciate your response.
I hope you don't find me too disagreeable if I disagree with a couple of your points.
These tariffs aren't reciprocal. There is nothing reciprocal about a 10% minimum tariff.
Economists think this will primarily impact the USA. The USA will have a double whammy, consumers will face tariffs on 100% of imports, and a third of exports will face steep retaliatory tariffs. The stock market certainly seems to be quickly pricing in risk of major pain for the USA.
Also, while globalization has been hard on many Americans, it has reduced global poverty significantly. These tariffs are going to reverse those trends, by targeting those countries who can't afford to import US technology & services.
These tariffs are all pain in the short term, and they lack the bipartisan support required for any potential long term benefit for the USA.
This is a really interesting take - I very much see where you're coming from on the economic side, and while I don't fully agree, it sounds like we are on the same page about it being so far from current Trump policy that it's almost unrelated at this point.
The philosophical side, and particularly the "lotus eaters" comment, I think would benefit from taking the alienation and lack of purpose in modern society into account. I absolutely agree that overcoming hurdles and facing challenges are important and valuable parts of personal growth - I think "challenge" captures the meaning more than "suffering", but it does sound like we're thinking of it similarly either way. I just also think a lot of what could look like "sloth" can just as easily be seen through the lens of "why bother?" - it's not that people are so averse to struggle that they avoid it at all costs, more that there's no real link between effort and outcome to be found.
The gym example is a great one to underline that, in fact! It's an example where the effort:reward link is much clearer and more guaranteed - you put in the work, you see the results, and as a result whole swathes of people gravitate to it as a hobby. Nobody's imposing that struggle on people, but they're taking it on as a means to find their own meaning and growth.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that in the vast majority of cases where I've seen someone espousing the value of facing a struggle, they're doing so as a way to deride others for their presumed laziness. I'm not accusing you of doing this, at all - I genuinely think your points were interesting and well considered - but I think putting value on suffering / struggle / challenge / etc. in and of itself is more than likely going to play into the preconceptions of the people who end up supporting it for its own sake, however much you try to avoid that and underline that it isn't the intent.
Reframing the same line of thinking around purpose rather than suffering strikes me as a much better route to the same outcome. People stand up and face challenges for themselves if they can see an actual link to a positive result, and if they believe that the struggle will be worthwhile. But that link has been severed in work, in community, and in politics, so the demotivation manifests as inertia - as sloth, in your words - because people expect no difference in outcome whether they put in the effort or not.
Unless there is a clear purpose and a clear outcome, the suffering will always end up being for its own sake, and we both agree on the immorality of that path.
[Edit] Typos
Thank you for your well thought out response. I think that we're mostly saying the same things but just in different ways. I definitely like how you use the word challenge instead up suffering, it's a much better fit.
I appreciate your framing of the problem with a lack of purpose and/or motivation. That's a topic I've thought about a lot myself but I've never connected the two phenomenon together like this and, honestly, it's quite brilliant. You've definitely nudged my thinking in ways that I'll have to think about over the weekend.
Now I'm thinking about how conditions in the past probably made it pretty easy to find purpose in their lives. When life really isn't so comfortable or you aren't exposed to endless choices via the internet, just making ends meet and supporting a family probably gave people enough drive to overcome alienation and is a ready-made well of purpose.
Thank you for being generous with my intent. You're right, I don't intend or want to deride others for presumed laziness - and this is an area that I am myself immensely guilty in - but I do consider it a failing of modern society that people find themselves so without purpose. If all of this societal and technological advancement has brought us here, then how beautiful could humanity be if we found purpose in something other than sitting on the couch. But I fully acknowledge your arguments and agree that there is a disconnect that's driving this and that it's, for the most part, not inherently anyone's fault.
I do become worried from a mental health standpoint. How much of our modern psychological problems are a result from a lack of purpose? Take any intelligent animal and put them into a low-stimulation environment and see how they begin to scratch and gnaw at themselves out of nervous boredom. Of course, we have endless television and video games to take the edge off but what is purposelessness doing to our psyches?
To be clear, I am not advocating that we inflict suffering on unwilling participants just to inspire purpose - the person OP was speaking with may well be deranged if that was their meaning - we'd lose much more than we've gained to even contemplate rolling back any of our societal and economic achievements. The question I'm now trying to answer for myself is how do we bridge that gap? In the face of an ever-forgiving modern society, where real challenge is so rarely found (in comparison with all other times of life in the western world) how do we overcome the barriers to challenge and growth? How do people (and myself) become invested in leading a more fulfilling life?
I really appreciate the kind words! It's a topic I've found myself thinking about a lot too, and certainly not one I've ever felt like I found a completely satisfying answer to.
The best I've got is that if people felt they had a realistic prospect of improving the world around themselves, I think a lot of the rest would naturally follow. Finding small-scale purpose - enough to get you out of bed on a Saturday to do something constructive even though it's more effort - is surprisingly easy when there's a combination of soft peer pressure (perhaps not even externally imposed, just the knowledge that you'd be letting others down if you didn't) and a tangible result like a new BBQ pit, or a park that's cleaned up and safe for the kids to play in, or a fair compromise to an ongoing dispute, or an agreement for community investment, or any number of other things.
Finding large-scale purpose makes it a lot harder to keep those tangible outcomes in sight, and drastically increases the chances of something outside your control derailing the result. It's tricky. But it's very, very possible if the goals are aligned: just look at the moon landings, for example. And that's a very extreme case - for a lot of people "large scale" can just as easily be a consistent series of small scale purposes, milestones in home and family and social status.
The common threads through all of this are that purpose requires community, and it requires resources. Resources are being hoarded, and community has been disintegrating for a long time now - partly as a direct side effect of that resource hoarding, partly as a political tactic to enable the resource hoarding, and partly for a whole swathe of other reasons.
Cliché though it is to say, I think Star Trek (particularly TNG) does an exceptional job of envisaging a future with purpose divorced from necessity. Coincidentally or not, I find it interesting that it also centers on relatively small, tight-knit communities of people who know each other on a personal enough level to feel an inherent sense of responsibility to the group as a whole, as well as sharing in each others successes and failures along the way. Of course, the canonical route to that society is from the ashes of a major war, caused by the conflicts inherent in technological progress unbalancing an economic and political system that originally grew in a world of scarcity and manual labour; looking at their depiction of 2024 San Francisco, imagined 30 years prior, I'd sadly say we're pretty much on track.
This is a great perspective. Just to clarify on my suffering position a bit: what I’m pushing back against is unnecessary additional suffering. Even though we have more creature comforts now than ever before, everyone still experiences suffering and hardship on an individual and communal level. That will never change as long as people kill, rape, cheat, or die in freak accidents.
I would argue that we have arrived at our current state because Americans are spoiled and historically haven't experienced anything approaching the true horrific depths of human suffering that other nations experienced in the 20th century.
(Suffering on the collective, societal-psyche-shaping level, that is. Individual suffering is, of course, unique and individual.)
There is American ingenuity, yes. But America also enjoyed every imaginable privilege: vast resources and land, being the only industrial nation untouched by any modern war. Collectively Americans failed to appreciate their glorious inheritance.
In WW2, the US' moment of great suffering in its own narrative, of all the major parties to the war, on a per capita basis, the US suffered the fewest military casualties by far and had virtually zero civilian deaths. The darkest of America's times doesn't hold a candle to other countries' dark moments.
The Chinese, in comparison, know suffering on the civilizational level. 20 million Chinese, or 4% of their population, died in WW2. A decade later, 30 million died in the Great Leap Forward, with reports of cannibalism. A decade after that, the Cultural Revolution ushered a period of horrible total political repression — and another 1–2 million deaths.
Xi Jinping's father—a political elite—was purged in the Cultural Revolution, his sister committed suicide from persecution, and he himself had his studies interrupted and was sent to the countryside. China's current crop of leaders is from that generation that saw total upheaval, when even the elites were not spared.
The Civil War is arguably the darkest period in US history for most. It was a very long time ago.
Slavery directly impacted the group whose lives were controlled by that status and those rules.
I guess my quick and simple mobile response would be: why do we HAVE to go through that kind of suffering? We still have (had) the hegemony, resources, innovation, and so forth. Why ruin a good thing? (Of course good is relative and people down on their luck are shaking their fists at me right now)
I was going to respond to your post in a separate top-level comment, but I think this is a better starting point. First, to answer your question, we don't HAVE to go through the level of suffering that the Chinese or Soviets went through. OP didn't elaborate much on their argument, but I don't think it's as simple as suffering leads to prosperity. I do think that China, the USSR, or any of the anti-colonial/revolutionary movements across the globe are good examples of the power of hope in the face of suffering, which speaks to your original question. As I and Ego pointed out, the Chinese and Soviets faced suffering that is unfathomable to Americans, yet they kept going. Why?
The real answer is long and complicated, and oppressing any resistance certainly played an integral part, but one crucial aspect that is relevant to your question is that a lot of people believed they were working towards a better future. That's why there are a bunch of people on the right who are willing to put up with this. They truly believe that this will be good in the long term, so they're willing to "suffer" in the short term. Unfortunately, they live in an alternate reality, but that's a different discussion.
As for this idea that "newer generations have not learned how to suffer, and that is the root cause of many evils in the world today," that sounds like a half-baked regurgitation of Generations. But underneath all of the bullshit, there is a sliver of truth to it. Part of the reason why we've been unable/unwilling to address systemic issues like healthcare, income inequality, and climate change is because we lack the political courage and will to face the suffering that would come as a cost to disrupting our existing systems. Whether it's profits or polling, we're trapped in a cycle that focuses entirely on the short term. As a result, things are slowly getting worse, which is reflected in the restlessness that we see in American society and politics.
I used to say the same thing about the Soviet Union. WWI -> Revolution/Civil War -> Collectivization/Industrialization -> The Great Terror. You could make a case that each of those outweigh any national suffering the US has ever experienced. Oh yeah, then they lost 22 MILLION people in WWII!! My smooth, fat, little American brain cannot even begin to comprehend that level of suffering. And like the Chinese today, they somehow came out of that as a global superpower. Take a minute to suppress your anti-communist reflex and behold the incredible omelettes in front of you.
Like boxer dogs said, the closest thing the US has experienced on a national level is the Civil War, which was so devastating it reshaped the way Americans approach death. But that was quickly followed by a period of mass immigration which accelerated the collective detachment to it outside of the south.
The only people that have any sort of personal connection to collective suffering on that scale are Black, Indigenous/Native, or refugees who fled other parts of the world. Altogether they make up about 15% of the population. When asked to consider the effects of that suffering, a lot of us tend it shrug it off. So yeah, we don't understand suffering. Maybe that's why we're so good at causing it.
He's reasoning backwards from his desired conclusion. When people say trump cultists will never turn on him no matter how bad things get, this is what they mean. They will always make up an excuse that his bad policies are actually good. And even when they can't deny the policy will cause suffering, they'd rather pretend they wanted suffering than admit they were wrong. You saw plenty of this out of Brexit supporters too, or even smokers who'll tell you "I don't want to live that long".
Yeah, this reads like textbook cognitive dissonance -- nobody votes for a candidate expressly because they think the candidate will make things worse.
Presumably this gentleman voted for Trump because he though Trump the better nominee. But by this twisted reasoning, shouldn't he have instead voted for Harris, whom we were repeatedly told would be worse for the economy, crime rates, foreign affairs, etc?
I just wanted to drop in again and express how impressed I am with the discourse on this tiny little forum. I’ve learned a lot from this thread, including many different perspectives.
Now if we could only converse like this in real life…
Let me steelman the argument from a different political lens. Consequences are feedback on the decisions you make. I see generations of people (typically baby boomers and gen Xers) that have been protected from consequences for quite some time. Conservatives who want cheap mortgages, government subsidies for domestic industries, and social security benefits but don't want taxes. Tough on crime, but leniency from the justice system if they get in snagged. Free market capitalism, but protections from malicious companies, markets return 7% YoY but there are no crashes. The list goes on. It seems fair to say that people are soft now and some stress inoculation would be a good thing.
I actually think the mitheridization argument is ignored by folks and this stance is espoused by myopically ignorant / cruel folks. In my experience this worldview is rife with ignorance and hypocrisy. "Folks will have to feel some pain" usually translates to "I'm willing to tolerate minimal discomfort to crush people who I think are freeloaders
Regardless, the cruelty and suffering the people are signing us up for means we'll all get “tougher” out kf necessity.
The gentleman the post is referring to mentioned newer generations not suffering enough though, so using Gen X conservatives is the opposite of what they were going for (liberal Gen Z).
If he's a top 2% earner, he isn't going to suffer. Whereas poorer people will, in effect, feel these tariffs as a regressive tax. When prices go up uniformly, the poor are more greatly impacted than anyone else as they have less to spend to begin with. It's the same as states that lack an income tax but charge a higher sales tax.