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To: GraceZ who wrote (107889)	6/9/2001 8:39:41 PM
From: NOW	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Your example ( fine as it may be) is in no way proof that what he wrote was BS, would you not agree?

To: GraceZ who wrote (107889)	6/9/2001 11:01:39 PM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

>>I heard BS like this from well meaning people my whole life. That my chances of success were somehow predetermined by my lousy lot in life<< shake the paradigm. that is not what i said at all. i'm speaking about macro FACTS. a micro view is something entirely different. >>We were told that there was a really good chance we'd wind up as drug addicts or criminals or child abusers like our parents were. The terrible thing is that if you feed someone these ideas long enough they start believing it and then they start using it as an excuse for their own bad behavior.<< first, those people who feed people this crap are pathetic. second, thanks for illustrating my point perfectly. :-) >>Even as a small child I was determined to prove the stupid social workers wrong. I decided a long time ago that if I was ever going to be free of this predetermined fate they had for me, I had to have a different future in my head for how things would turn out. But even being aware of these things didn't save me from heading down the path to a drug addiction, but it did helped me get out of it.<< being adopted at a very young age, i realize that i was extremely close to growing up in a similar type environment. i feel fortunate that i was lucky through no doing of my own. wrt developing a strong desire to succeed and overcome obstacles, good for you. you had the right approach and it sounds like you benefited from it. >>Success is a learned behavior. I was fortunate in that I had any number of people who were successful who were more than happy to show me how things worked once I got up the courage to ask.<< exactly! good fortune shined upon you. there is nothing wrong with that. but it is true and ought to be acknowledge, imho, by acknowledging that not all others are as fortunate. >>Once you figure that out, once you leave behind the idea that your future is somehow laid out by your accident of birth you can then change those behaviors in your life that keep you locked up in a ten by ten foot room. The important thing to realize is that there is a lock on the door and you are the only one who has the key.<< totally agree. i interact with folks on a micro level all the time and i frame everything in terms of the control that they personally have over the situation. the power of choice is HUGE. i attempt to empower individuals. it seems that we now know some of the ingredients to success, hopefully you and i and others can care enough about other children as your mentors cared about you. perhaps we could move the success probability distribution up just a bit. however, what works with one person can't always be applied to tens of millions of folks. therefore, one must take a macro view to discuss macro issues. as an example to make this clear, folks i work with have said, "we built one product perfectly, why can we build them all perfectly? what is wrong with you?" this statement is silly b/c it extrapolates the micro into the macro. the answer is that the system can't sustain perfection, although it does allow for some perfect products. i hope the analogy is clear. viewing various populations in terms of success probability distributions is both reasonable and rational, imho, and much can be learned about why certain outcomes occur more frequently in certain groups than others. this is data based learning. anecdotal evidence is put forth as proof of a particular agenda far to much. this approach is neither reasonable nor rational, but it is quite easy and popular.