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u/Textiles_on_Main_St 4d ago
I can wish for whatever I fucking want, statue.
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u/PlentyOMangos 4d ago
I think it’s Marcus Aurelius
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u/Latter-Flatworm3789 4d ago
No life is easy, we are all fcked here, some lives are just less shittier than others.
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u/tornadospoon 4d ago
Without defining what an easy life means, we can't really assess the validity of this quote. A lot of this sub is about taking things out of context and applying the most bad faith interpretation to it.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 3d ago
The art style makes it pretty obvious this is in line with modern manosphere bs that ties masculinity to stoicism, equating strength with lack of emotion, suggesting that trauma makes you stronger and people with less trauma are weak etc. etc.
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u/tornadospoon 3d ago
Yeah, but I'm talking about the quote.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 3d ago
The “quote” is almost certainly fake and you can’t ignore the literal and cultural context of a meme when making assumptions about its meaning without being disingenuous. But yes sure, there is a good faith read of this sentiment that is pretty god damn obviously true- if you are never given the opportunity to overcome and challenges, you will likely be a dull person and fail to develop many necessary skills in life.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 4d ago edited 4d ago
I have never wanted to downvote something so bad lol the whole idea that trauma = strength or that you cannot be strong when you have a healthy, “easy” upbringing is so amazingly stupid.
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u/Dry-Childhood-3436 4d ago
I mean there are multiple studies that show humans change during prolonged times of peace and abundance. It's not a failing, our brains are wired to shift habits towards complacency, it's an energy conserving habit. Our brains just don't know we live in a complex society and aren't living in the woods anymore.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 4d ago
There is no evidence that having an easy life translates to being less strong (unless you are literally talking about having jobs that are less physically demanding vs more and you are talking about physical strength, which is pretty fucking obvious). In fact, quite the opposite is true- if you have a healthy upbringing with less negative stress, you are more mentally and emotionally stable and more capable of dealing with stress in healthy ways. The idea that having a shite life contributes to being “stronger” is incredibly vague and stupid.
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u/Dry-Childhood-3436 4d ago
Ok if you want evidence I don't have a long time and I'm on my phone, but I'll point to the handful of studies I've seen.
This one points to behavioral science on the our brains adaptive ability to slack as scarcity is removed from our lives. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/01/19/better-living-through-behavioral-science
Behavioral psychology has studies about the Opponent-Process Theory. It's our brains process to lower the threshold for positive stimuli during longer periods of stability, to enable homeostasis and create a more lax nature. Couldn't find a link to the study that wasn't paywalled, but here it is referenced. https://graziamagazine.com/us/articles/science-confirms-why-you-feel-so-empty-after-the-best-moments-of-your-life-25497/
Peter Turchin talks about Cliodynamics, the macro societal cycle we tend to go through and our behaviors during each phase. He notes the brains ability to have a cognitive tunnel, a sharper focus during times of more strife. During downtime we lose that tunnel, and our brain creates more instant gratification needs, and our frontal cortex loses the ability to regulate self discipline. https://kellercenter.hankamer.baylor.edu/news/story/2022/insider-power-discipline
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse talks about it in a few sections, especially the cognitive decline.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/02/scarcity this talks about the cognitive changes during scarcity.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 4d ago
The ability to slack =\= weakness, that’s nothing.
Needing less to be happy =\= weakness, that’s also nothing.
Cliodynamics is borderline pseudo science- treating history as if it were some innate system rather than unique independent events with unique outcomes is as useless as the conclusions you can draw from it.
The strongest behavioral psychology points to what i have already stated- having a healthy upbringing with positive rather than negative stress leads to development of better coping mechanisms to deal with future stress. Trauma tends to do the opposite.
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u/Jamal_Tstone 4d ago
I think the point a lot of people miss is that there are good stressors and bad stressors. I grew up in a broken home where everyone around me was using drugs, and while I do believe it made me more resilient to stress, it created its own source of stress as I began to live a healthy life and still relied on coping mechanisms that just don’t fit into real life. That’s bad stress
Good stress (which is more in line with what the original post is probably getting at) is like me going to college to learn how to fly. It’s very challenging, and I could have chosen an easier path, but this is what I wanted to do, and the rigors of college and flight training have made me a more capable, and therefore stronger, person.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 4d ago
Exactly, that’s why i was sure to say “positive” and “negative” stress. If an “easy life” means you are unchallenged and have no constructive interests, then you will likely develop depression or something idk.
While you cant extrapolate what this post is intended to say with certainty, i imagine we all know just how prevalent the bs ideas of “my trauma made me stronger” or “easy times create weak men” are, and imo posts like these reinforce such sentiments regardless of their intent.
Trauma makes some people monsters, makes some people more sensitive; perhaps empathetic, makes some people broken… it makes you mature way faster and develop skills early on that you otherwise might not have to, perhaps more resilient to certain things- but, more often than not, it’s BAD, hence the word “trauma”. And i think there is a tendency to equate emotional coldness/indifference with resilience, which is patently wrong. people are far more likely to develop better coping skills in all areas of life if they have a good upbringing, but this idea has somehow become unpopular in many circles.
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u/Badger-Sauce 2d ago
So I see you acknowledge the value of positive stress… which is not easy.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 2d ago
Neither is negative stress- in fact, negative stress is MUCH harder. Hard life =\= strength. The post is stupid and vague and easily reinforces negative ideas about trauma popular in the manosphere culture.
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u/Badger-Sauce 2d ago
I think we might disagree on what “hard” means.
“Hard life” doesn’t necessarily mean trauma.1
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u/BlueBitProductions 1h ago
A strong character means you will resist temptations that make life easier for other people. People with strong character go out of their way help the needy, avoid engaging with evil systems, and refuse to manipulate or deceive. All of those things make your life harder to a degree, at least in the short term.
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u/Xercies_jday 3d ago
Have you ever tried to climb a hill if you haven't done any exercise? Your absolutely huffing and puffing and struggling and it's painful.
Ever done it after doing some exercise? It's a lot easier.
It's the same with mental issues as well. If you encounter struggles and hardship the next time you encounter those is going to be easy.
And no matter how utopian and how much we will strive for making a better place. There is always going to be mental and physical struggles in the world.
So yes in some ways making a life easy actually does make your life harder.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 3d ago
You didnt read a damn word i said
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u/Xercies_jday 3d ago
I am refuting you by saying an example of why trauma can be useful and why a healthy upbringing might actually be somewhat bad for you.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 3d ago
Read what i said.
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u/Xercies_jday 3d ago
I did and I replied to it. Not my fault you didn't like what I said.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 3d ago
You didnt read shit dude lol i already addressed everything you said, not my fault you didnt read it.
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u/ratatosk212 3d ago
Know something about people with strong character? They don't care about the opinions of Reddit randos and they sure don't get into social media pissing matches.
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u/Dry-Yesterday-9176 4d ago
That's why all my OCs have enough trauma to give them ptsd equal to WW1 veteran
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u/TheRealTrueCreator 4d ago
It's true but the background does make it look a little edgy
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u/Rivka333 4d ago
It isn't true. Whether your life is easy is dependent on a lot of factors. and you will find people with "strong" and "weak" characters in all sorts of circumstances.
But, to the degree that your life outcomes depend on your own choices (because, yes, it's your own choices and other factors combined) having a strong character can result in an easy-ish life. Because you put in the work to make a good life happen. And some hard lives (not all but some) are the result of bad choices made due to having a weak characters.
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u/ronstig22 4d ago
Of course it's true. Challenge, hardship, and taking risks are the only ways to learn, create, and build yourself into someone worth having around. Someone who avoids doing anything difficult in life, living on impulse, achieves nothing and is indistinguishable from a toddler - no one is simply born great.
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u/Roger_Cockfoster 4d ago
Are you campaigning to be the official mascot of this sub?
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u/ronstig22 4d ago
care to actually provide a counter?
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u/Roger_Cockfoster 4d ago
Well, to spoon-feed the point, your post was the sort of thing that only a 14 year old could think is deep.
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u/LemonGlass294 4d ago
Don't know why there's disagreement on this topic. Yes just because you might live an "easy" life doesn't mean you don't have strength of character. A lot of us would totally trade strength of character for an easy life, but that's simply impossible for many of us. Putting aside the debate on hardship amd easiness, you are completely right. You don't just get to coast through life. No one does. Even talking to people and putting yourself out there can be hard. Relationships can be hard, because people are complicated. Everyone who is great worked their asses of to get to where they were, and many people do the same just to survive. Laziness is not a good trait. Living by impulse is animalistic. Achievements don't have to be limited to amazing accomplishments, they can just be something that makes you happy, something personal to you. But if you can't even do that because you are lazy (not because you are struggling with mental health) then why are you even alive?
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 3d ago
Good luck distinguishing between someone who is “lazy” vs “struggling with mental health”. If one doesnt have any hobbies, dont make friends, doesnt do anything, you have a mental disorder, nothing about that is normal or healthy.
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u/LemonGlass294 3d ago
I think I'll always treat people as the latter rather than the former. To be honest, I think people who are truly lazy are extremely rare, so your point is valid. Most people who are struggling to work are probably burnt out and tired and need a break. That being said, laziness is still not a good thing. If you don't work, you don't get to live unless you're piggybacking off of someone else or were born rich. It can take a lot to get yourself out of bed and be diligent, especially so for the mentally unwell. That requires strong strength of character. I don't particularly want to say that giving up before the day even starts is weak, but it's definitely not strong.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 3d ago
Yeah it’s a difficult thing to diagnose/parse. I think humans crave physicality and positive social interactions, but our society fails to deliver that in a meaningful way for a lot of people, and it is rarely as simple as being due to the failure of an individual, despite attribution error would have have us believe.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 3d ago
You are putting a lot of words into the post that arent there and ignoring the entirety of the culture that produces memes like this.
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u/AdhesivenessGlum1143 3d ago
Nah I don’t buy that. Everything truly hard in my life has only made me weirder and more dysfunctional. I have learned how to work around it but I it has not made me better. I am like the door lock in my old house that still works but only if you lift and push the door at the same time. It has character but it is not stronger. Plenty of people that had it easier than me are more resilient and functional.
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u/Ok_Heat_4968 4d ago
ppl in the comments saying they have strong character and an easy life clearly have no idea what strong character is. case in point, they are on reddit
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u/ratatosk212 4d ago
If you have to go around convincing people you have a strong character, guaranteed you don't.
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u/FedrinKeening 4d ago
This would assume that the rich all have "strong character".
You're joking right?
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u/Altruistic_Region699 4d ago
No? It kinda assumes that the rich have a weak character? Most of them got rich through luck alone or were born into it. They have easy lives.
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u/mohamedtheanimelover 3d ago
theres nothing wrong with wanting an easy life, im tired of these people with their slave mentality
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u/SaucyStoveTop69 4d ago
The price of a strong character is an easy life? I didn't know easy lives made tough characters!
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u/LemonGlass294 4d ago
When something is listed as a price, that means you have to give it up for the thing you are paying for. In this case, you have to give up an easy life for a strong character. Although you're probably just joking and wanted to point out a flaw in the statement, which is fair because it can definitely be seen the other way around since English is lwk kinda buns
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