> [!infobox] <s class="aside-in"><em>mentioned in 1 topic, 14 evergreens</em></s> #### [[You can't blame people for failing to rise above their circumstances]] %% #TO/TEND/WEED %% Most humans will not rise above their situation. %% ^[In fact, it could be said that no person does depending on your belief in [[free will]]: [[Do we have free will]]] %% In fact, it is unfair to expect everyone to. Modern [[America|American]] [[Culture]] often blames people for not "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps." This widespread belief is mainly due to the myth of the "[[American dream]]", %% ^[and thus is largely rooted in [[white supremacy]]: [[Race is a social construct]]] %% which falsely purports that anybody who works hard enough will be able to succeed. The problem here is that we can't just look at the amount of work somebody is putting in and say whether they will be successful or not, because that relies much more on the environment they are putting the work into than the amount of work they are doing. People don't try to understand why other people would make decisions differently than they would, but [[Empathy isn't understanding how you would make the decision it's understanding why they made the decision]]. They judge other people's positions without understanding what brought them there. %% - [[Empathy does not disallow judgment]] Blaming people for failing to rise above their situation is not only unfair, it is unsupported by evidence. #TO/EXPLORE/RESEARCH %% ### <hr class="footnote"/> **Status**:: #EVER/GREEN *edited 7:35 AM - July 08, 2022* **Topics**:: [[human experience]], [[socialization]], [[judgement]], [[empathy]]