He didn’t have a ton of money certainly. It’s fair to say he wasn’t a complete idiot but I think that even the example I’ve given so far argues against any claim to sagacity.
Well what it ‘proves’ to them is that mankind is supposed to follow the exact same routine that works for them. My Dad was forever saying “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” Died when he was 45.
Or yet another way to look at it is that when people are venting it’s not the actual problem that they’re venting about it’s the uncomfortable emotions that come about as a result of problem. Very usually, someone is doing something that makes their lives harder but it is within a very specific environment, e.g. work, school, some kind of committee, where there are rules against settling disputes by right of arms. So even though I might have a really elegant solution for ‘solving’ that particular dispute, what I tend to be listening to long term tends to be, 'Coworkers… can’t live with 'em, can’t kill ‘em’. To which the correct answer is obviously not ‘You could solve that problem with Piranha Solution - removes organic material from the substrate’, it’s ‘Yes, we do have to put up with annoying people for a long time sometimes.’