Opportunity or Opression?

This week we talked about the myth of individual opportunity and what it really means to be successful. I honestly don’t believe that there is equal opportunity because not everyone has the same chances or opportunities to rise up in the world. We read an essay called From Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger about a poor uneducated boy suddenly given a chance to move significantly higher up on the social totem pole.

Every once in a while, we hear of a rags to riches story, but how often do they really happen? What had to happen to get us from under class to upper-or even middle class? The cold, hard truth is that we don’t have equal opportunity or decent chances that we can rise in our social standing.

 Let’s take doctors for instance; doctors are classified as a respectable peer group. Doctors earn a fairly good amount of money, they’re respected, and they live pretty good lives. Do we all have the opportunity to become doctors? No, because even though they get paid well, they had to pay a lot of money to go to med school and countless years of other higher education. Some people can’t afford to send their kids to high school. They obviously do not have good chances of becoming doctors if they had to drop out of high school to get a fast food job. Is it possible for them to become doctors? Technically, yes, but the chances are so slim it’s devastating.

My point is that in our current society, there are so many obstacles one has to overcome in life to keep their parent’s social standing, much less go beyond what their parents did. It is totally possible to rise above, but chances are very slim. Chances are out there, you just need to find them, work for them and hope for the best.