Understanding Adversity - a prerequisite to considering determinsim and its morality

[Kriminal99]

I'll keep this simple.

Lets say you have 2 rats. One of them is a lab rat, the other lives in the wild.

The first one is fed by scientists who do not wish to waste it because it is an asset. The first one is given free shelter etc. The first one may be mated as part of an experiment or to prevent having to purchase more.

The second has to scrounge for every piece of food it gets and constantly fight for it's survival. Even if it survives, it may have to fight even harder to reproduce. It must seek out shelter on it's own.

So which rat is exposed to more adversity?

Well suppose the first rat belongs to a famous behaviorist scientist. The rat is used in an experiment. In this experiment the rat is exposed to random punishment in which the cage the rat occupies has 2 levers to press and pressing either lever will cause the rat physical pain. Previously only one of the levers shocked the rat and the other caused the rat to receive food. Because of the rat's inability to take any action that will not result in punishment, it has a heart attack and dies.

Note that everything said in the initial description holds true of this lab rat. It still has what appears to be a cushy life inside a lab. However, THE RAT DIED OF A HEART ATTACK FROM SHEER STRESS.

The free rat may have to face random adversity from time to time to which it will adapt and learn how to get what it wants anyways. Once it has adapted to random world produced stresses it just avoids them. It may one day die from an unexpected cause like a hawk attack. But after that it would simply be dead and could not experience related stress, and before it would be unaware of the possibility.

The point here is that the lab rat is actually under more perceived stress. Another point is that random occurrences that produce truly random punishment do not cause as much perceived stress as malicious punishment caused by an intelligent being with the specific goal of producing perceived stress rather than having a goal of killing the entity, physically hurting him.

Thus real adversity should be measured by the amount of perceived stress a person experiences, proximity to malicious entities and not how it superficially appears.

The richest kid in the world may have a utterly sick home life due to parent's with weak personalities that result in malicious treatment of the kid. The poorest kid may have many role models and a strong support network.

This is important because you often see the above poor kid held in comparison to the rich kid as proof that you have the will to overcome your circumstances - this is fallacious.

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

Although I agree with you, if people aren't given the false illusion that they can achieve whatever they want, then many will not even try.

[Kriminal99]

Originally Posted by Inter.spem.et.metum

Although I agree with you, if people aren't given the false illusion that they can achieve whatever they want, then many will not even try.

Well taken a certain way I do not disagree with such a claim. After all every discussion they have on the subject is a cause of their future actions. Every desire to change their circumstances is caused by their past experiences.

If you really want to do something, both consciously and subconsciously, you can. By that point you have already had the experiences necessary to cause you to accomplish your goal. It's when you don't even know of something that you might want to accomplish, or when you think you want to accomplish something (perhaps because other people expect you to) but cannot focus on it because subconsciously you believe your time is better spent that you will be held back.

It is in these latter situations that it is important to realize consciously what is going on, and for other people to accept your decision.