As much as I might like people like Jello Biafra or Hunter S. Thompson, those shouldn’t be the _only_ people informing you on society.
You can completely wreck your credit and still bounce back and even prosper. I’ve seen it happen with bankruptcy and have fixed my own credit after a charge off in my youth, and now own a home, with paid off cars and student debt, and a solid cushion in savings. It takes time; everyone wants everything now, which to me is a sign of poor reasoning leading to poor decision making.
I think an important difference is: are you in dire straights because of poor decision making, or bad luck? If you consistently make poor decisions, you’ll eventually wreck your life and may not be able to get out of the hole.
If you make sound decisions, bad luck can just as easily turn into good luck. You just have to be executing when the opportunity arises. This is of course no guarantee, I definitely believe there are good people out there who were never able to make it. But that doesn’t mean that nobody good will ever make it.
To me, that is what the American Dream aspired to be. Something other than a caste or feudal system, or religious monarchy, that pretty much keeps everyone in their place, with no motivation to innovate or take a risk to try something new, and then propelling general society upwards with each breakthrough.
Gracious, I never said that they were the only people informing me on society. They make for some interesting seed quotes and ideas for further discussion. The American Dream as a concept is probably worthy of a series of books, not really something I can cram into even a page.
You can completely wreck your credit and still bounce back and even prosper. I’ve seen it happen with bankruptcy and have fixed my own credit after a charge off in my youth, and now own a home, with paid off cars and student debt, and a solid cushion in savings. It takes time; everyone wants everything now, which to me is a sign of poor reasoning leading to poor decision making.
I think an important difference is: are you in dire straights because of poor decision making, or bad luck? If you consistently make poor decisions, you’ll eventually wreck your life and may not be able to get out of the hole.
If you make sound decisions, bad luck can just as easily turn into good luck. You just have to be executing when the opportunity arises. This is of course no guarantee, I definitely believe there are good people out there who were never able to make it. But that doesn’t mean that nobody good will ever make it.
To me, that is what the American Dream aspired to be. Something other than a caste or feudal system, or religious monarchy, that pretty much keeps everyone in their place, with no motivation to innovate or take a risk to try something new, and then propelling general society upwards with each breakthrough.