| If by right of center you mean Republicans and not say Chinese or Japanese, who also fit the bill. (All of which are just as conservative. Chinese believe in circumstance, Japanese believe in maximum effort in current circumstance with a few key choices, Republicans believe any decision is mostly on the individual.) It's never an absolute, but there is a big difference between living as if effort is a major thing that matters and believing it is the only thing that matters or more important than the other two. Former can get you to push harder, latter brings nothing good - it is a problem because it brings pathologies especially blame, false hope and exploitation. Ultimately there are only a few impactful things most of us can control. Therefore these things are important. These are key decisions and it is rather hard to change them. The unfortunate fact is that we get to make them too early when we're inexperienced and some are still dumb. And you get few or no retries.
(High school, college, these impact where you live, with whom, your late life social circles, even health.) Whether you become bitter because of this is up to you. |