Wasteland America

Determination and the American Dream

There’s a great ol’ American tradition of ours, most actively performed by people who most identify as “patriots”, of putting the winner on a pedestal and blaming the loser for not being more like the winner. This type of opinion frequently comes up in discussions about the American Dream. You know the opinion…The rich got that way because they had the drive and the diligence that you don’t, bum. Maybe if you worked harder, you’d be one of them. You also see this idea promoted by health and beauty magazines about weight loss. Just replace “rich” with “skinny”, and “bum” with “fatty”. You also see this when in sports training. The best athletes train hardest. You snooze, you lose. And maybe you’ve heard the childhood variation of the philosophy. You can do anything you set your mind to. When you grow up, well…it gets meaner and starts to blame you for not getting what you want.

When stuff like this gets said over and over, people start to believe it. They also start to hate themselves for not being like how everyone wants them to be. It makes you feel bad and then gives you a way out. Like you’re some twisted wretch of a person unfit to live, but even you can work your way out of this hole you dug yourself in. It gives you a problem and then sells you a solution.

I recently came across this idea during a research paper I was outlining a couple nights ago. The topic was “What are the factors that determine if a place gets broadband internet or if it doesn’t?”. There hasn’t been a ton of work on this topic, or at least I can’t find it. I took a look at a map of broadband distribution in the country, and there’s huge hubs precisely located around certain cities. New York, Silicon Valley, Chicago, Miami, Dallas. These hubs connect to other hubs in huge fiber wire cables. The way that everyone gets their Internet one way or another is through smaller fiber-wire cables that branch off of the main channels. The further you get away from the hubs, the smaller the fiber wire cables are and the slower the connection speeds are. Here’s the map, or at least the best I can find.

An idea popped into my head. The reason why these places are hubs is because they have something the world wants. They’ve got the fastest, best Internet connections in the country and that’s because every single hub has something to offer the world via internet. New York has financial wizards. Silicon Valley has programmers that never sleep. And then turn it around: every place that isn’t connected to the internet or has slow internet doesn’t have anything the world wants. Maybe if Cleveland was more like New York and had some talent maybe they’d have faster internet speeds. Maybe their economy wouldn’t be lagging. Maybe they’d find jobs for all those worthless, lazy homeless people.

Again, the idea that the loser lost because of their own character, and the idea that anyone can be a winner if they just imitate the winner or just try enough.

It sounds good, doesn’t it? How all encompassing it is. I’d like to live in that world, where anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it, a world where there is no such thing as practicalities and the only resource is willpower, and you get it from the depths of your own soul. You can safely hate all the fat people, all the poor people, and all the homeless people with the knowledge that they’re despicable people. You might even scold people who try to help them, since they, after all, deserve everything they get.

It made me really happy to know that my theory simply wasn’t true. The number one factor for determining who gets connected and what speed they get is the whether or not the internet service provider thinks it’s profitable to do so. Because fiber optic wire is expensive, and people aren’t willing to pay fortunes for internet service, the best way internet service providers bank even on such a huge cost is by providing internet to cities first, where millions of people can spread the cost of a costly fiber optic line with small monthly payments. They continue to upgrade the speed of the internet to these places because they know they will see a return on their money. Laying down fiber optic wire in Wyoming just won’t cut it, no offense to the state of Wyoming. 5.4 people per square mile isn’t enough to spread the costs around. And everywhere you look, you can see how social phenomenon like divorces aren’t necessarily because of lack of effort but because of specific factors.

As you can tell, I don’t like the effort theory. (I really need a better name for this) As far as I can tell, on a whole they’re based on casual observations and a small handful of examples that prove the theory. Judgments about homelessness are made rashly from a couple personal experiences, try to make a theory that explains all of the experiences, and then treat the theory as fact. A man in a suit walks past five homeless men on his way to work, and each one of them is getting drunk. A correlational theory he could put together is that homeless people are poor because they drink, but what’s equally likely is that they are poor because of something else, and being homeless makes them feel bad about themselves so they turn to drinking. Just because you see two things together often it doesn’t mean that once causes the other, or else ice cream would induce homicide. (The more ice cream that’s sold in a given day, the more murders there are. The reason why is because people get more violent when it’s hot outside, and people also want to eat ice cream when it’s hot).

It also doesn’t account for anything other than willpower. I’m 5 foot 7. I will never play for the NBA. I don’t have the body type for it, and nothing will change that. It doesn’t matter how determined I am, I will not play professional basketball. Instead of blindly following my dreams and getting crushed every time, maybe it would be a good idea to be realistic. That doesn’t mean giving up, but at the very least thinking realistically will set me in the right direction. Okay, now I just need to get really long legs and arms and at least I’ll be one step closer.

I wonder how many people out there waste their lives away on an idea like this, that if they try hard enough they’ll get everything they’ve wanted, and ignore all the practicalities. How many Americans left their families and ran to Los Angeles to be a rockstar? How many of them came back empty handed and disillusioned? And do you know that person who just tries to too hard? It’s the same idea! Willpower can’t solve everything

Now, I bet people are going to read this and think that I believe everything you do is determined by your environment. I’m not. I’m a big believer in willpower. Properly placed willpower can be a powerful force for good, making people conscious of the decisions they make. I’m not a big believer in stupidity, recklessness, or human suffering. And there’s also people out there that live like Dante in Clerks, people who are too lazy or afraid to take control of their lives. They could benefit from an injection of willpower. But thinking that everything boils down to willpower is setting yourself up for failure plain and simple. The personal emotional damage isn’t worth it. The life you waste away hoping your dreams will come true isn’t worth it. The damage we cause to each other when we divide each other isn’t worth it. And it’s not even accurate! Whatever your goal is determination alone will not get you there. America really needs to look themselves in the face with this determination crap and think!

PS: Not that anyone reads this, but updating looks like it’s going to be rather infrequent unless more people want to post content of their own or give me topics/links to write about. This blog is basically me going through my life, finding screwy viewpoints and writing about them. This type of stuff doesn’t change every day, and discovering content isn’t easy, y’know, ’cause it’s my life. But if you’ve come to any screwy conclusions, drop me a line and we’ll see about setting you up.

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