[boplicity]

Or, as a recent politician evocatively put it: "“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn't lose any voters, okay?"

There really is pain associated with acknowledging reality sometimes. I certainly know that from my personal life.

Wisdom comes from willingness to go through pain. Something our general culture ain't great at.

[legutierr]

> Something our general culture ain't great at.

What culture is good at it? People in general try to avoid pain. This tendency is not unique to our culture, is it?

[bobthepanda]

The US is uniquely oriented around pain elimination. For example, the opioid epidemic ravaging the US after the overprescription of painkillers is absent in most European and Asian countries, because they were not optimizing patient outcomes for pain elimination.

[epicureanideal]

It may also be that working conditions, poverty, lack of vacation, and differences in the practice of medicine, put Americans in more physical and mental pain than the average European, and so are more likely to turn to painkillers.

[xvilka]

Stoicism.

[swayvil]

98% of the population gets its reality from authority (the opinions of the hive being #1). Independent thought is unimaginable. Not even on the table. May as well ask a grain of sand lodged in a eastgoing glacier to consider heading south.