Not every boss earns the respect of their employees... in fact most people worthy of respect end up being removed from a managerial role, I've found. Sorta like a good politician - more likely to end up killed than reforming the system.:-(
It perhaps shows how successful the trolly experiment has been, playing its part in changing our cultural attitudes as a whole, since its' purpose (lately, I dunno about originally) was to get people to realize exactly what you just said: that choosing to do nothing is still a choice. Sort of a "wake up, sheeple!" message.
Older generations like Boomers and especially Great before that were ignoring climate change and so much else - not having access to the internet, knowledge was more difficult to come by back then.
Today's era involves different struggles, mainly against misinformation, but at least people more often have their eyes open.
Every single time the FCC tries to do absolutely anything (no matter how modest), the telecom industry works with the GOP to first demonize the proposal (or regulatory nominee as we saw with Gigi Sohn) as extreme, and then set about working to dismantle it. Usually successfully. And often with the help of Democrats.
Keep in mind that many math teachers are incompetent at their jobs - some of that may have had little to do with you.
Though you are correct that math does involve patience, a willingness to fail often until you eventually get it right, and a logical progression of steps where at each stage you keep track of the results of previous steps.
I'm saying that you can most likely do it! Though it may be frustrating, especially at first, while you sharpen those skills that math should have taught you but bc of cheapening out in education, you may have skipped over. It's all up to you now though... my advice is that even if it takes you 10 to 100 times longer than someone else to do some little thing, so the fuck what, the important thing is that you can do it! (And if you practice, it gets a heck of a lot easier over time) I love this quote (from C.S. Lewis):
Don't judge a man by where he is, because you don't know how far he has come.
I am not sure how democracy can survive, globally. It takes so very much effort, but people are so extremely lazy, yet those two factors seem like they work against one another? Many parents just want to use schools as daycare centers, and I've even heard of some schools having to potty train the youngest ones, who somehow never did learn that at home.
While at the same time, globalization and mechanization make schooling irrelevant for so many, who will earn less in service jobs that don't need it, but still are told to vote, as if they are capable of properly understanding political discourse, and especially how to spot misinformation. Places like Russia heavily push misinformation, and many of the dumbest Western societies seem to lack any defense against it, by people who kinda don't even care which message they send so long as it lines their personal pocketbooks.
In this time period we live in where technology is at a higher level than it's ever been, so very many people fall through the cracks and cannot access the most basic tenants of previous eras - like the ability to work hard and thus buy a home, or at least be able to afford rent so as to avoid becoming homeless.
In the face of all that, schooling seems to be not a priority for people just trying to hold on for dear life through these economic upsets. It's like in chess, in order to perform a really cool end-game move, you have to survive the next few rounds first, and then the next several after that, and so on. So even if schooling would have been "the solution to all (many) of our problems", it nevertheless may get ignored, especially as several Western nations go through major constitutional crises in the next decade.
Another big one is obesity - most people in the Western world are affected by it, and therefore we all are indirectly; and even skinny people can be full of saturated fats at the biochemical level. And yet we are pumped full of ads for it 24/7. You can stop watching TV or reading things where those show up... but nevertheless it surroundeds you still.
Some people fall prey to all of the things - alcoholism, obesity, overspending, and more besides - while some may be immune to some of them, but nobody among us is perfectly capable of avoiding all of them. So as you said, perfection isn't a goal that we can reach so much as something to strive for, but it is so very much worth striving for!
However, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.
Normalizing (the opposite of shaming) people living in debt all the time is not necessarily a good thing either. Whether you actually end up able to retire or not, it is a good practice to live within your means. It's like all Zen and shit - seriously, it lowers stress, saves marriages, and eats babies, or like two of those three I can't quite recall which...
It doesn't have to be all prim & proper - things like just eating at home more than eating out, or the REALLY big one living in a cheaper place, can make such a difference.
OpenStars @ OpenStars @kbin.social Posts 0Comments 370Joined 2 yr. ago 
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