This is exactly the kind of attitude which keeps (a certain subgroup of) poor people perpetually poor. Learned helplessness born from government handouts paid by the sweat and tears of hard-working classes further exacerbates the challenge.
What you point is absolutely right.
I was talking more about the very very little part of the population that leads the game's rule.
An observation.
Paris, Madrid, I observe exactly the same phenomenon.
Just go in the tube in the morning, rush hours then the same on the evening, sit and watch for awhile with no prejudice, as if you where watching a movie.
After a while, the ridiculous of this scenery appears clearly.
An enormous mass of people, an immense energy is putting into action every single day, and for the vast majority of people, life is spent from 6 in the morning to 8 or 9 in being used by the machinery to make it work properly.
There is absolutly no freedom here, neither free will. They have to eat, pay the mortagage they have been influenced to get (many are paying amongs 30, 40 years for little horrible flats, overpriced by the speculation), etc...They are programmed to act so and the choice, if margen exists, is very very narrow.
For the vast majority of the people in our rich countries, (arrownd a 90%), life is spent between the rush, the tube or the mortorway traffic jams (some hours in Madrid, every single day of their lifes...), then the all day at work in something that they mostly hate, then when they come home at night, they need to eat and they are too tired for romance anyway because they have to sleep and wake up again next day at 6...this will be done every single day till the system decide they have contributed enough to the overall prosperity and put them on a side, a sort of dead end road. (cheap cruise etc... as a recompense for being a good guy)
But what about the Inner prosperity? This is something that does not matter at all for the powers.
What matters really is that they can reproduce clones (and that the clone does not even know he is trapped, generally he feels it but as there is little escape so this truth is rejected). For that, manipulation is used and abused.
To make that non-sense bearable, the very very old roman's rule "bread and games", we have the football world-cup, the soup operas tv show etc...cheap distractions for cheap lifes. The places where these masses lives are also cheap, depressing, unhuman.
You can see that Paris is big machine, but the parisians are contribuiting to make it work, and get very very little benefits.
Yes we do not starve, we have many gadgets and distractions, but we have to understand that to maintain this level of prosperity we "enjoy" in the west, we have to maintain the rest of the planet in a state of bondage and rob the ressources that are not ours. The irony and pathetic is when you see these buses of red neck western tourist in Africa or Asia, visiting these exotic countries without understanding that the exploitater is visiting its victim. But most of the people in our countries, if they will not die for hunger are just dead inside. That is why they all fear death. There is no accomplishment, there is slavery. The difference between our economies and the poorest countries is that our slavery differs in nature but not in essence.
In our country we do not have to worry that much (BUT THAT IS STARTING TO CHANGE) about looking for the basics; food, water, home and health care. But halth of the population is in mental therapy. In the poor countries, our phychological problems have no room. There is no psychanalist for the masses in Africa.
Whatever the system involved, until it is based on profits and not on harmony and cooperation, the old french saying will remains true:
I participate
You participate
He/she participate
We participate
You participate
They benefit
The "they" is known as being approx 3% of the world population.