Thank you for your politesse. Human language is a crude tool. There are always tradeoffs with the words we choose. "Anyone can do Anything" is a good mnemonic (the alliteration really helps) which takes away any excuses (not a bad thing, in my case.) Still, it does sacrifice literal truth. There are no four-year-olds in the NFL, for example.
"If you think you can't do something, you can't." Is another way I've heard the same thought expressed. Maybe even more semantically respectable would be "Almost everyone who decides they can't do something, is wrong."
The native american expression is one I like a lot: "If you don't know how to do something, that's because you don't want it enough."
This still assumes a level of human equality that is belied in reality. Most people that are living good and healthy lives do not do so as a result of basic aptitude + wanting + grinding (1) it out. They are more like a particular type of seed that moved about different soils until it found one it could flourish in. Anyone can do anything-ism implies that a watermelon seed can flourish in a rice field if it “wants enough”.
(1) grinding is a particular type of experience that deserves explanation. It is not merely working at something- it is the subjective personal experience of the work. I can code for an hour and be psychologically rejuvenated by it and my cousin could feel like she was in a prison for months. You will never grind your way to a satisfactory life; grinding is a symptom that you need to change the “soil” and that the “want” you have was memed into you and is unsuitable for you.
I"m over 65, I don't think you'll ever get to a truly satisfactory life without some grinding at self-introspection. Meditation is nothing if not a very deliberate grind. You can grind badly and not get a result from meditation, but you can't get a good result from meditation without grinding. A lot.
Otherwise, I think we are agreeing, neither I nor the guy I'm in effect defending think that soils (privilege, fer instance) don't matter, or that humans aren't unequal. Four-year-old blocking not equal to 24-year-old blocking. I think I covered that. There are sometimes advantages in not being fully literal, which is lucky because language cannot but be vague (it's just a matter of degree.) Hence the tradeoffs, impressing the message firmly matters because the temptation to give ourselves excuses is difficult to fully elide.
"If you think you can't do something, you can't." Is another way I've heard the same thought expressed. Maybe even more semantically respectable would be "Almost everyone who decides they can't do something, is wrong."
The native american expression is one I like a lot: "If you don't know how to do something, that's because you don't want it enough."