Vivek Ramaswamy, the former presidential candidate running as a Republican for governor of Ohio, posted a Halloween photo of himself and his two sons on Friday. The post received a wave of xenophobic and racist replies, including one user who wrote, “I see this year Vivek went as an H1B immigrant here to steal your jobs. Very scary. Like the brown version of the Grinch.”
It all boils down to:
“Suffering is the highest moral good.”
Just suffer because suffering is some flavor of good, and then later throw on some ruleset that specifices what kinds of suffering are more or less good.
Can suffering eventually build character, lead to meaningful realizations, growth, development of useful habits and ethics?
Yes.
But suffering for suffering’s sake is pointless, destructive, a form of masturbation really.
Suffering because other people tell you its good for you, even when it uh, doesn’t actually do anything good for you?
Well now you’re actually something of an ideological cuck/masochist, despite all the exaggerated outward signalling toward the opposite.
Like, I’m a white trash dude, I’ve known poor latinos, asians, blacks, native americans… yeah, its certainly got different variations and specific details for different ethnicities and cultures, but it ultimately just boils down to ‘suffering for suffering’s sake is a moral good, that is tied into your worth as a man.’
Its an archetype of a moral/identity structure that is at least more than ‘I am a worthless failure’ for broken/broke men, as you say, with very low self esteem and self respect.
Unfortunately… it does not actually produce genuine self esteem or self respect, it produces contempt, a worldview where your worth is based on being ‘better’ in some way, than someone else…
It’s not an inward originating worldview, based on actual deliberation and consideration, that, while more difficult to create, does actually produce a stable, model of the self, which thus then actually allows for real self esteem and self respect.