My parents always like to compare me to either my dad or my mom's dad depending upon how generous they're feeling. If I'm doing something they appreciate, they tell me I'm like grandpa. If not I'm my dad. It's a cruel way to treat a child. I was just talking to my good guy friend for the first time in a while yesterday, and he was talking about how you cannot blame people in a professional environment. I don't see why parents think it to be helpful either. And of course, that's the whole problem. They don't think. And then they pass their thoughtlessness and incompetence onto their children. And the only way to break these cycles of mistreating people is to be put into situations where you see yourself for what you truly are. Conservative people tend to be pretty adept at avoiding this, they call it a 'lack of openness to new experiences'. Liberals have the opposite problem. They call that being 'neurotic', being too self critical and willing to tear oneself down psychologically. My parents, they ignore the similarities between these two people, my grandpa and my father, and exacerbate the differences. It's an emotional blindness, motivated cognition, based upon a need to put someone down on the one hand, and to praise someone's wealth and success on the other. But these people aren't so different in the end. Because they make the same choices and have the same addictions. My parents never think to ask what would have happened if these people's roles had been reversed. Would my dad have ended up an alcoholic if he had the resources my grandfather had. Would my grandfather be in a nice house with nice things if it wasn't for a wealthy well connected family and innumerably many other benefits. It's not about being "lazy" or "dumb". It's about being impartial, objective, consistent, and a willingness to apply the same standards to others that you apply to yourself or people you admire.