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ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

cpk, that is metaphor and analogy. Don't start a war over it.

T

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ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

I am a hopeless failure. I mean, to this day I'm still not entirely sure which way to tighten and which way to loosen a screw or a bolt. Anything mechanical that needs assembling or repairing sends me running; truly a useless loser at anything practical.

On the other hand, I am a spectacular success who can win out without too much effort over the vast majority of the population when it comes to knowledge, its acquisition and application and especially in terms of its communication. Truly a brilliant winner.

Much of our socio-economic troubles arise from the false notion that there is only one form of success - my kind. Yet when my car has broken down, who is the loser, who is the useless failure then? And who the brilliant winner?

And when we run an economy on the same lines - that "booksmarts" is the arbiter of success and we dismiss any other form of success such as my practical friend might be suited to achieve, and worse still dismiss him as a stupid loser because he cannot conform to the single model which we enforce through our ideas of equality, and our economy breaks down because of that?

It seems to me that my success is dependent on others' success. If I deny them their opportunities to contribute then eventually my success will be undermined. Its no good some guy in China knowing how to fix my car; I need someone here. With my car broken down all my booksmarts are totally useless in that I cant get to the office to make my contribution with them.

We require a total system overhaul to recognise the interdependence of human societies. We need to do away with the "one size fits all" model of success that "equality" produces, and replace it with equality of opportunity that recognises the innate differences between us and values them each as important contributions to the whole.

Success is to be contributing to the whole and receiving one's dues for that, whatever one's talents. Failure is to be forced into making a contribution to which one is not suited or being denied the opportunity to contribute at all, because one's talents do not fit the model. Happiness and unhappiness arise from the same mechanisms - the latter of which our societies are riddled with for the reasons described here, and no amount of consumerism can replace that true success and true happiness that we could instead procure.

E

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ORIGINAL: MrQwerty

The way to remember best is that all bolts start out at a point in time unscrewed then as time moves forward so does the screw in a clockwise direction destined to become tight as was it's function in life. If however we feel the need to go back in time we can turn the screw in the opposite direction and cross the thread meaning the little bugger won't come out "Why you little &^$GH%!" said in best Homer Simpson voice.

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ORIGINAL: CaringandReal
We all want to be forgiven, helped, excused, understood when we fail.  To deny that same help to others simply because they fail at different things than we do is  inhumane, hypocritical in the extreme, childishly selfish, and it retards the growth or evolution of human social organisms (through the retardation of the social instincts of their members), which are, despite this hell we live in, becoming slowly more cohesive and conscious.

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Notwithstanding our nature as social animals, at what point should failure be allowed to run its course?

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ORIGINAL: philosophy
So how do we draw the line? Where's the balance point?