r/BeAmazed 11d ago

History Hope in humanity.

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u/Acrobatic-Tax8459 11d ago

Man sacrifices all his life so that others might have a chance.

Did he want to marry? Did he want more than he got? He deserved a happy life, too.

This glorification of never taking any joy for yourself and sacrificing your entire life for others - makes me sad, but at the same time, I do want to honor him for so much sacrifice.

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u/MisterVovo 11d ago

He wouldn't need to do such sacrifice in a serious country

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u/919471 11d ago edited 11d ago

This one's a reach, ngl. Sending 33 kids to college is not a life-or-death decision. We don't know why he didn't marry. I don't see why we should assume he was miserable. He had a steady job, a frugal lifestyle and a charitable disposition. None of those is a systemic failing.

Edit: I checked the Wiki article. He had 3 million in savings at the time of his death, which he then arranged to be spent on giving poor Iowans access to college. He lived frugally and decided to do some good once his time was up. Definitely not orphan crushing machine. If it wasn't college it would've been something else.

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u/Manbro25 11d ago

The point here was that these kids should've been able to go to college without the philanthropy of a random man from iowa.

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u/919471 11d ago

Yeah I mean the post is "elderly retiree donates all his savings for a good cause" and the case here is "why was a good thing necessary at all?"

This is just a really underwhelming orphan crushing machine. Nobody was relying on the man, he just decided to do a good thing. College costing money is kinda normal, there are a few countries where it's free and good for them, but like... this isn't "your money or your life" healthcare-tier OCM.

Making this out to be some failure of humanity is just needlessly cynical.

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u/5510 10d ago

College costing money is kinda normal, there are a few countries where it's free and good for them, but like... this isn't "your money or your life" healthcare-tier OCM.

I mean, those are generally considered good countries though.

Also even if it's not completely free, it could still be way more affordable than it is. Yeah it's not like an immediate medical crisis, but we are still talking about people needing the philanthropy of a random super frugal dude from Iowa to be be able to try and live a good life.

It's still OCM.

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u/5510 10d ago

College costing money is kinda normal, there are a few countries where it's free and good for them, but like... this isn't "your money or your life" healthcare-tier OCM.

I mean, those are generally considered good countries though.

Also even if it's not completely free, it could still be way more affordable than it is. Yeah it's not like an immediate medical crisis, but we are still talking about people needing the philanthropy of a random super frugal dude from Iowa to be be able to try and live a good life.

It's still OCM.

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u/919471 10d ago

I'm pretty left leaning and I agree tuition is way too high but this just gives fragile. "Things could be better, how dystopian"

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u/Accomplished_Rip_362 10d ago

So no kids and no wife = $3M in the bank. Got it !

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u/919471 10d ago

Well, kinda... maybe if you could secure a house at 1950s prices lol

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u/YourNextHomie 11d ago

You think helping others wasn’t his joy? otherwise he would have done other stuff

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u/Draguss 11d ago

Do you think he would've been *less* happy if giving so much of his life for others weren't necessary?