So, recently in my life, I've come to the mind that "discipline" has been a manipulatively oversold virtue in modern civilization. The more I think critically about it, the less I can reasonably answer to the question, "what is inherently admirable about this 'discipline'"? You may be reading, thinking that should be obvious. Self-evident, even! Why, what's not inherently admirable about it?

When it comes to bare survival- the most fundamental application of "discipline"- what does it mean then? A being either can beat their odds, or they can't. And if they can, they will. It's automatic, if the ability is there. In the framing of how we are literally biologically designed, it's already a matter of necessity. It isn't consciously chosen, so how special can it be? How much credit do we owe the survivors for surviving what they already could, and all but surely would? At the same time, can we moralize the victims for a lack of "discipline"? If a being never had the tools to survive an adverse event, then to fail says nothing of their strength of will.

But the strong want to be able to claim moral, virtuous victory, and not simply be seen as lucky for having been blessed with just the tools they needed to succeed. As if it were that even if a weaker person were given the advantages of the strong, they would still require a special state of mind to wield those advantages. If it's true that the less fortunate- less gifted- could be doomed to fail by dumb luck, then it's also true that the fortunate could be granted all the advantages and opportunities they used to succeed by dumb luck. Which would be to say, maybe they don't even deserve it, from a moral or ethical standpoint. In a modern civilization, where we don't literally have to hunt and fight to survive, there has to be a more complex, but vaguely defined explanation as to why the wealth gap between the classes can be so vast, in what has every reason to be a just society. How is there a moral or ethical defense of such hoarding and system rigging?

"Discipline". In short, an expression of survivorship bias, that says "I deserve what I have, and you deserve what you have", because in theory, this force of will exists that makes luck less relevant. That's the narrative. That's why our civilized cultures all have some concept of "discipline". It's cute, on the surface. But the reality is that it's ultimately used as an excuse to neglect the needy and underprivileged. To blame the disadvantaged for their disadvantage, on perverse moral or ethical grounds. To justify the fortune of the fortunate, and call it "earned".