by evilgenius » Wed 27 Apr 2016, 13:51:14
I think this is one of the central issues of our day, our complaints. I was talking about this kind of thing the other day with a friend of mine. I said to him that what we have today is a whole lot of people complaining about everything when they all live better than the king ever did 200 years ago, even those on welfare. What people do, no matter how well off, is compare themselves to each other. Once they latch onto the top 1% or .1% then they really start to bitch. That's when all of their problems become somebody Else's fault.
Do any of us know how to delay instant gratification at birth in order to achieve a set goal or series of goals later because we haven't fouled up our personal resources with consumption, but used them toward investing in our future? I think we learn that as we go along, usually sometime during or after the hormone rush of our teens teaches us the folly of having given in to what we thought we wanted. Experience is a harsh teacher, though. Some people wind up with children they have to take care of as children themselves, and without ever having learned the value of delaying personal gratification. Once this happens they become parents who don't know how or what to teach their own kids when they get to the same place where they could begin to learn the lesson. Yes, and many who do learn the lesson actually fail to pass it along because they don't want to see their children suffer.
We don't learn that, for the most part, whatever our situation is it is most likely our own fault. This is also a spiritual truth. The character of most people who are reprehensible is mostly due to how selfish they are. Most of us have to learn respect and value for others by learning what it is like to be on the bottom ourselves and then imagining what it must be like for other people. Some of us learn to pay attention, and thus to visualize planning, and don't have to experience the most painful aspects of those lessons, but those people are rare. The sad truth, however, is that unless we grow up there is too much temptation to treat others just as unfairly as we have been treated once we attain to some position of power. When I worked in an office I used to watch people who were once underlings complaining about how bad management was manage in the very same manner once they got promoted. When you meet a manager who knows how to truly empower their people that's when the light goes on, not in the opportunity but in the teaching. If we don't get some hand up we tend as people to never learn and thus never enter a new cycle where better ways are passed along. Succeeding isn't enough. It alone won't teach you not to crap on others.
I suppose the answer is systemic. You have to attempt to change people's lives for the better at the beginnings of new stages in their lives. Teaching alone doesn't seem to have the full effect either. Some of the stuff that people argue the most over, like access to abortion and family planning, appears to be vital to not entering into another generation of self-reinforcing dependency. Headstart is good too, as well as many of the other programs designed to try and help kids escape the constraints that keep them from thinking well. It doesn't half hurt, also, to realize the better place of complaint, it too can be your enemy if you let it. Otherwise you waste all your energy consumed with bitterness toward everyone else and never see how well you have it yourself.
