Perseverance Porn is a term invented by the people in this podcast to describe the idea of 'rugged individualism', which was invented in the 1980's and came from the American Dream myth.This 'perseverance' narrative has been used by the right to counter all collectivism or socialist thought; the idea being that no one needs to be poor because all they have to do is work very hard and then they can make it, which throws all the failure to succeed back on the individual. In this way, the right believe that nothing should be done to help the poor because it's their fault. But the US has some of the worst social mobility statistics and socialist Europe has some of the best.There are always going to be individuals that go from the very bottom to the very top, and some of this may be due to
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This 'perseverance' narrative has been used by the right to counter all collectivism or socialist thought; the idea being that no one needs to be poor because all they have to do is work very hard and then they can make it, which throws all the failure to succeed back on the individual. In this way, the right believe that nothing should be done to help the poor because it's their fault. But the US has some of the worst social mobility statistics and socialist Europe has some of the best.
There are always going to be individuals that go from the very bottom to the very top, and some of this may be due to hard work, but luck and the law of averages also plays a major part. When a few individuals make it to the top it is then paraded as an example to the rest of us.