oh god, you're right. kibbutz work is amazingly tough. Several members of my family have worked on one.
Now that I think about it... maybe I need to go on one of those.. get my sorry ass whipped into shape and get some perspective.
thanks for reminding me about that...
i ditto that sentiment.
It seems to me that jews have evolved a sort of super-quick adaptive skill as a result of their constantly changing conditions, but it goes both ways. jews that spend their time in big american and european cities, locked up all day indoors studying (or smoking weed and playing video games) until the age of 30, seem to de-evolve very rapidly into spoiled lazy woody allen-type complaining homebodies. at the same time, jews quickly adapt to harsh conditions and hard work (even ones that spent their whole lives on their asses eating gifeltefish), and can be as or more tough and smart than any other group of people. It's ironic: Due to our so called "chosen" status, our ancestors have been persecuted for thousands of years. That very persecution resulted in natural hyper-selection and faster evolution, which in turn resulted in jews being arguably evolutionarily a step ahead of the rest of the world...therefore actually "chosen" in a way. god does work in mysterious ways.
i'm not really a racist, i dont think any race is really superior. i like to think of races like choosing character types in role playing games. Every character type/race starts off with the same amout of total attribute points. different races slightly favor different attributes while disfavoring others. You can theoretically build your character over time to match any other race's pros and cons, but you start off the same (genetic predisposition). take for example black people. although it's not "proven" and no one likes to talk about it, one can safely say that as a race, black people tend to be better athletes. disagree? look at the black/white ratio in the NBA, NFL, and american olympic teams. even other foreign countries which are not known for their black population is having black athletes on their olympic teams (france, england, germany, italy). black people also have their disadvantages: they tend to have lower IQ's and do not attend college in the same numbers, and also have much higher delinquency and teen pregnancy rates. not to say black people are ALL good at sports and stupid at everything else. theres tons of smart black people, tons of non athletic black people, etc. theres a rule in anthropology: There is more diversity within any given group of people than between different groups of people.... but when you compare races, compare specific groups of people, you find striking statistical anomalies that completely disprove the "everyone is created equal" bullshit.
Or take asians: really smart, hard working, highly skilled and focused, but completely lacking in athletic abilities.
or say the sherpas of nepal: they have evolved tolerance to extreme conditions present in the himalayas, and can handle much lower oxygen concentrations than any other group of people on the planet....which gives them superhuman endurance at sea-level. at the same time, most dont grow much taller than chest-height compared to the average white guy.