Sounds wise at first, but that is true only if one assumes that things worth having are those that do not come naturally or are not possessed by the majority.
Therefore people work hard do get successful, famous and among all things possess things majority don't have, expensive phones, computers, cars, houses, watches, cloths and even spirituality or enlightenment i.e. "I am more enlightened than you" e.t.c.
To put it simply, things are hard because you suck at it. There are of course some hard things one inevitably must do in life there is no escaping that, but if you stop chaining your tail for a while you will realize that the amount of hard work required is only determined by your desires.
Not to desire is of course impossible, even Dalai Lama desires a free Tibet and I would guess plenty of other things as well, and it would also be a rather dull life would one to succeed in not to desire, but simply giving your desires an extra thought, what those desires are and why they are is more than majority of people do. Some might be brought upon you by a clever commercial, some by your parent, some by your peers e.t.c.
In the global sense though, if you are tone deaf you will require plenty of hard work to become a mediocre musician. Therefore, if you lack math skills you will need enormous amount of work to become a mathematician.
No amount of polishing will make a rock into a mirror.
Therefore the best one can do is to discover ones talent as early as possible, usually manifests in things you enjoy and find interesting, they don't necessary need to be easy, they can be challenging but will not be hard work and in that sense will come easy.
Anything which comes easy is worth having, why would't it be? Because it might be easy for someone else as well? First of all that doesn't diminish the value of what you have, and also if you want to be so unique, find something which is easy for you, but hard work for others, and you will probably make a fortune in the process, while enjoying your life doing it.
Evolution, can be seen simply as the ability to survive and reproduce in a given environment. Long ago we were living in an environment where we could be eaten, that is being attacked by a predator was a real hazard, and people best able to survive long enough and manage to reproduce presumably passed on those trait, which could be things as better hearing, eyesight, ability to plan, think ahead, and maybe strength to at least have a fair chance to come out on top when everything else fail.
I have seen some simulations of evolution showing that if environment conditions a certain train, even random deaths and global catastrophes wiping out majority of the population including all those possessing favorable traits, after certain amount of generations those traits will inevitably reappear .
With agricultural and industrial revolutions the environment changed somewhat, no longer did humans need to run away from animals out to get them, but there was of course other environmental constants affecting survival, now mainly controlled by humans. How hardworking you were on your farm or factory decided to a great extent your living conditions. The "fight" at that time I suppose was not to bee so poor that you can't afford to have a family. Basically the trait to posses for reproduction was stable income.
If you listen to your parents and especially grandparents the main advice you can get even today is to get a job, probably a hair cut as well and work hard to climb the carrier ladder.
But what are the traits that todays environment produce in the generations to come?
You can no be too successful or passionate about something because as we can see people that are, such as scientists, businessmen and other overly concerned with their carrier, changing the world, being creative, don't have time or will to have many children.
At the same time people not being successful, defined in this case by not having or doing anything don't have the means to have many children.
Hence the ones that reproduce the most are the ones not having any higher goals in life or a will to change the world or dedicate themselves for any greater cause but at the same time being smart enough to work, this is the natural progression from the industrial era. That big mass produces some that become passionate about something, and engage in great things, but due to the reasons stated above will be extinct in 0 or more generations. And this mass produces some which fail to get around in their environment and also get extinct.
What I am getting at is that we are conditioned by our environment not to give a damn, the most successful people in term of number of kinds are the ones that do work to survive and do nothing useful with their time but to increase their own happiness.
To cut on all that typing I will just claim things and you will have to figure out for yourself if that is so.
The reason that todays environment produces dispassionate ignorant people that are still able to work though is this: As long time ago getting away from predators and hunting for food was the main driving force of evolution, and after that the ability to farm and work in a factory, the two main driving forces for evolution today are, money and hedonism.
If you pursuit money you will probably end up rich old man with no children because you had no time for a family and got by with hookers.
If you only pursuit instant gratification you will probably and up addict with no means to support a family.
If you pursuit neither, you will probably end up as a scientist or an artist or some other altruistic person having no means for yourself therefore a family.
But pursuing both as mentioned before ends up in a person having money, and at some point realizing that maybe a family will give you pleasure you are missing in your life all those parties and random sex just don't do it for you when you are 30.
People know that this is happening but can't pinpoint it, they say there is a conspiracy to intentionally stupefy education, put florid in the water to make people complacent, dumbing down TV, to produce sheeple, working drones unable to do anything but to work and consume.
But as I hope I have managed to motivate above, there is no need for a conspiracy, it's just evolution, and that is much more sad, because it is much harder to change that put some shady government to the wall, mainly because the cause is in all of us, and that is the hardest thing to admit.
I also don't understand the debate about nature vs nurture, because any nature we are born with is decided by previous generations nurture, i.e. the environment in which the evolution occurred.
Hence to make any change for the future generation, what has to change is the environment, not only physical but also values.
But what should those values be? Consumption and hedonism of today produces sheeple. Altruism, depopulation.
What will the values of tomorrow be? How will those affect our evolution? Or maybe it is all inevitable? Maybe we are not greedy hedonists because of out environment, but the environment is like that because of our nature?
Look at the Soviet Union, they tried to change that, build a system where everyone got what he deserved, and everyone did to the best of their abilities, and in the end the whole system collapsed because due to corruption and inefficiency, with the usual exceptions majority just did as little as possible and tried to get as much as possible, that is greed and hedonism prevailed.
In that sense "Democracy" which is based on those values did win over Communism which tried to get away from greed and hedonism, and now those values are rampaging across the world with no counter-values. What will we become?
As I said people do see all the problems with todays system, some attribute it to conspiracy, other propose utopian visions, but no matter what we do and whom we put to the wall when revolution comes, we will end up in the same place unless values are changed, "democracy" is just a way to steer our uncontrolled human nature in the desired direction which is basically what politics should do, and hence does it's job adequately.
Just look at any developed "democracy" there are always two sides one promising more money, the other more happiness, usually in for of equality and better social benefits.
Anyway, it is getting late, the text getting long, I start to repeat myself and I am not really going anywhere with this, but sir Winston Churchill was a wise man when he said:
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
Rant over.
