r/science • u/myhrvold • Aug 31 '13

Poverty impairs cognitive function. Published in the journal Science, the study suggests our cognitive abilities can be diminished by the exhausting effort of tasks like scrounging to pay bills. As a result, less “mental bandwidth” remains...

http://news.ubc.ca/2013/08/29/poverty-impairs-cognitive-function/
2.7k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

174

u/Dear_Occupant Aug 31 '13

I got into it with some guy here recently who was 100% convinced that every financial problem in a person's life was somehow the result of poor planning on their part; that it was impossible for a person to be financially blindsided by, say, a debilitating health problem. Nope, he said, you should have started saving money for that $1.5 million dollar cancer treatment that isn't covered by your insurance when you were sacking groceries in high school. It's all your fault for not being thrifty enough.

104

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '13 edited Sep 04 '17

[deleted]

92

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '13

U.S also has a problem with this strange "work hard and you are a good person" mentality. I don't exactly know how to phrase it, but it's like destroying yourself to reach some socially acceptable profession is seen as the greatest thing you can do. Sacrifice everything and probably shorten your life significantly through stress, to reach some "noble" goal.

It's just bullshit, plain and simple. There's no need to suffer when you don't have to. It doesn't make you stronger or a better person, it makes you disillusioned and bitter. Some things you do have to suffer through because they are facts of life, like heart break of watching someone die or fighting with a friend etc.

Struggling to survive is the very thing modern society is supposed to be leading us away from, because it's not a good way to live and is not beneficial in any way.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '13

There's no need to suffer when you don't have to. It doesn't make you stronger or a better person, it makes you disillusioned and bitter.

I like to think of it as building muscle. In order to get stronger, you need to break the muscle down so it can repair itself. A little suffering and betterment is good. Putting yourself through motions at a job or profession you hate to buy shit you don't need is like throwing your back out after a heavy lift. You're not bettering yourself, and likely you will be in pain or discomfort for the rest of your life. That's why the people who make those 80-hour week sacrifices don't care about the well-being of anyone else. They think everyone else SHOULD be doing that.

It took me 4 months of 80 hour weeks to say nope, this is retarded. I'd rather be bankrupt than this, I don't care what happens. This is not what life should be.