I find your counter interesting.
I've wondered for example why those living North of the Mason / Dixon line seemed in the 18th & 19th centuries more prosperous. Why did the North, the Yankees win the U.S. War of Northern Aggression?
Please pardon me if the following is an oversimplification:
North or South, we all need some basic essentials.
- A home.
- A water supply.
- Food.
BUT !!
Those in the North have some additional adversities Southerners are spared by their climate.
- The growing season is shorter in the North, thus reducing the number of crops that can be grown there.
- The home heating season is longer in the North, and more severe. That necessitates both:
- more expensive houses, better insulated, AND
- more heating fuel, in those centuries, often firewood, a labor-intensive heating fuel.
So with these and other adversities, why was it not the South that had the advantage?
Could it be that Northerners accustomed to dealing with greater adversity are simply more robust competitors?
And if that is a viable explanation for the prevailing North in centuries past, might a similar dynamic apply to professional athletes? What might to the layman seem to be an impediment to maximized professional athleticism may actually augment such physical prowess.
One other example comes to mind.
Black women have two strikes against them.
a) They're Black. (in a White dominated culture)
b) They're women. (in a male dominated culture)
Yet their suicide rate is disproportionately low.
Why?
Could it be that they're so accustomed to dealing with adversity that the thing that would drive others to suicide leave Black women unfettered?
