Kenyon College Commencement, May 20, 1990
Speaker: Bill Watterson
I have a recurring dream about Kenyon. In it, I'm walking to the post office on the way to my first class at the start of the school year. Suddenly it occurs to me that I don't have my schedule memorized, and I'm not sure which classes I'm taking, or where exactly I'm supposed to be going. As I walk up the steps to the post office, I realize I don't have my box key, and in fact, I can't remember what my box number is. I'm certain that everyone I know has written me a letter, but I can't get them. I get more flustered and annoyed by the minute. I head back to Middle Path, racking my brains and asking myself, "How many more years until I graduate? Wait, didn't I graduate already? How old AM I?" Then I wake up.
Experience is food for the brain. And four years at Kenyon is a rich meal. I suppose it should be no surprise that your brains will probably burp up Kenyon for a long time. And I think the reason I keep having the dream is because its central image is a metaphor for a good part of life: that is, not knowing where you're going or what you're doing.
I graduated exactly ten years ago. That doesn't give me a great deal of experience to speak from, but I'm emboldened by the fact that I can't remember a bit of MY commencement, and I trust that in half an hour, you won't remember of yours either.
In the middle of my sophomore year at Kenyon, I decided to paint a copy of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of my dorm room. By standing on a chair, I could reach the ceiling, and I taped off a section, made a grid, and started to copy the picture from my art history book. Working with your arm over your head is hard work, so a few of my more ingenious friends rigged up a scaffold for me by stacking two chairs on my bed, and laying the table from the hall lounge across the chairs and over to the top of my closet. By climbing up onto my bed and up the chairs, I could hoist myself onto the table, and lie in relative comfort two feet under my painting. My roommate would then hand up my paints, and I could work for several hours at a stretch. The picture took me months to do, and in fact, I didn't finish the work until very near the end of the school year. I wasn't much of a painter then, but what the work lacked in color sense and technical flourish, it gained in the incongruity of having a High Renaissance masterpiece in a college dorm that had the unmistakable odor of old beer cans and older laundry. The painting lent an air of cosmic grandeur to my room, and it seemed to put life into a larger perspective. Those boring, flowery English poets didn't seem quite so important, when right above my head God was transmitting the spark of life to man.
My friends and I liked the finished painting so much in fact, that we decided I should ask permission to do it. As you might expect, the housing director was curious to know why I wanted to paint this elaborate picture on my ceiling a few weeks before school let out. Well, you don't get to be a sophomore at Kenyon without learning how to fabricate ideas you never had, but I guess it was obvious that my idea was being proposed retroactively. It ended up that I was allowed to paint the picture, so long as I painted over it and returned the ceiling to normal at the end of the year. And that's what I did. Despite the futility of the whole episode, my fondest memories of college are times like these, where things were done out of some inexplicable inner imperative, rather than because the work was demanded. Clearly, I never spent as much time or work on any authorized art project, or any poli-sci paper, as I spent on this one act of vandalism.
It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I've learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it's how important playing is to creativity and happiness. My job is essentially to come up with 365 ideas a year. If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I've found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I've had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.
We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery- it recharges by running.
You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of “just getting by” absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your politics and religion become matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people's expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.
At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you'll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you'll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you'll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems. For me, it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I've been amazed at how one ideas leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander. I know a lot about dinosaurs now, and the information has helped me out of quite a few deadlines.
A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you'll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.
So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it. I don't look back on my first few years out of school with much affection, and if I could have talked to you six months ago, I'd have encouraged you all to flunk some classes and postpone this moment as long as possible. But now it's too late. Unfortunately, that was all the advice I really had. When I was sitting where you are, I was one of the lucky few who had a cushy job waiting for me. I'd drawn political cartoons for the Collegian for four years, and the Cincinnati Post had hired me as an editorial cartoonist. All my friends were either dreading the infamous first year of law school, or despondent about their chances of convincing anyone that a history degree had any real application outside of academia.
Boy, was I smug.
As it turned out, my editor instantly regretted his decision to hire me. By the end of the summer, I'd been given notice; by the beginning of winter, I was in an unemployment line; and by the end of my first year away from Kenyon, I was broke and living with my parents again. You can imagine how upset my dad was when he learned that Kenyon doesn't give refunds.
Watching my career explode on the lauchpad caused some soul searching. I eventually admitted that I didn't have what it takes to be a good political cartoonist, that is, an interest in politics, and I returned to my firs love, comic strips. For years I got nothing but rejection letters, and I was forced to accept a real job. A REAL job is a job you hate. I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the 4-1/2 million minutes I worked there. My fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without doing any work for it. It was incredible: after every break, the entire staff would stand around in the garage where the time clock was, and wait for that last click. And after my used car needed the head gasket replaced twice, I waited in the garage too.
It's funny how at Kenyon, you take for granted that the people around you think about more than the last episode of Dynasty. I guess that's what it means to be in an ivory tower.
Anyway, after a few months at this job, I was starved for some life of the mind that, during my lunch break, I used to read those poli-sci books that I'd somehow never quite finished when I was here. Some of those books were actually kind of interesting. It was a rude shock to see just how empty and robotic life can be when you don't care about what you're doing, and the only reason you're there is to pay the bills. Thoreau said, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." That's one of those dumb cocktail quotations that will strike fear in your heart as you get older. Actually, I was leading a life of loud desperation.
When it seemed I would be writing about "Midnite Madness Sale-abrations" for the rest of my life, a friend used to console me that cream always rises to the top. I used to think, so do people who throw themselves into the sea.
I tell you all this because it's worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It's a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you'll probably take a few.
I still haven't drawn the strip as long as it took me to get the job. To endure five years of rejection to get a job requires either a faith in oneself that borders on delusion, or a love of the work. I loved the work.
Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn't in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came.
Like many people, I found that what I was chasing wasn't what I caught. I've wanted to be a cartoonist since I was old enough to read cartoons, and I never really thought about cartoons as being a business. It never occurred to me that a comic strip I created would be at the mercy of a bloodsucking corporate parasite called a syndicate, and that I'd be faced with countless ethical decisions masquerading as simple business decisions. To make a business decision, you don't need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works.
As my comic strip became popular, the pressure to capitalize on that popularity increased to the point where I was spending almost as much time screaming at executives as drawing. Cartoon merchandising is a $12 billion dollar a year industry and the syndicate understandably wanted apiece of that pie. But the more I though about what they wanted to do with my creation, the more inconsistent it seemed with the reasons I draw cartoons. Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards.
The so-called "opportunity" I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I'd need. What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts. On those terms, I found the offer easy to refuse. Unfortunately, the syndicate also found my refusal easy to refuse, and we've been fighting for over three years now. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience.
You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.
Many of you will be going on to law school, business school, medical school, or other graduate work, and you can expect the kind of starting salary that, with luck, will allow you to pay off your own tuition debts within your own lifetime. But having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them. To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time. I think you'll find that Kenyon touched a deep part of you. These have been formative years. Chances are, at least of your roommates has taught you everything ugly about human nature you ever wanted to know. With luck, you've also had a class that transmitted a spark of insight or interest you'd never had before. Cultivate that interest, and you may find a deeper meaning in your life that feeds your soul and spirit. Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you've learned, but in the questions you've learned how to ask yourself.
Graduating from Kenyon, I suspect you'll find yourselves quite well prepared indeed. I wish you all fulfillment and happiness. Congratulations on your achievement.
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Why We Don't Learn
While I was in college, my grandpa asked what I planned to do with my education. “I don’t know, I’m just going to college to learn,” I announced.
“Well, you have to think about investing in your future. You want to focus on courses where you can best capitalize on your investment. You have to look at the market, and the demand, and how you can best use your education to exploit that demand,” he instructed.
I found this concept repulsive. I felt that exploitation was bad and sacrificing the present for the future even worse. I wasn’t interested in money; I found it a distraction from the important things in life: equality, integrity and truth.
Today, I vividly understand and appreciate that grandpa was giving sound advice. I have never used my degrees in philosophy and psychology for anything practical, and consequently have only been hired for jobs requiring a high school education, if that. Not only do these types of job not pay as much, performing them means certain others are likely to assume I’m a moron. On the contrary, I have almost always had jobs that I enjoyed and currently make enough money to save a couple hundred dollars every month. I never took out student loans and currently don’t have debt of any sort: no car payments, mortgage payments or credit card bills. That makes my net worth more than most Americans. I am not owned by money.
The most prominent distraction related to money is excess. A few years ago, I decided to move and knew I couldn’t take my beloved 1993 Toyota pickup with me. I had just stupidly paid $2400 to rebuild the engine. I put out an ad asking $1000 and got a call. It went like this:
“Hello?”
“I’m calling about the truck for sale?”
“Yes, I still have it.”
“It has a 5-speed manual transmission?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And it says here in the ad it doesn’t have anything automatic, by which I assume you mean windows and locks, but obviously it has things like power steering.”
“No, it does not have power steering.”
“Does it have a CD player or just a tape deck?”
“Neither. It doesn’t even have a radio. Just a hole in the middle of the dashboard.”
“A/C?”
“No, but you can crank down the windows”
“How’s the condition of the body?”
“It’s okay. There’s a fair amount of rust and the back bumper’s missing, but the tailgate works.”
“So basically, all you have is a manual engine in a shell.”
“Yes. It runs great. I’m not sure what else you’d need.”
He hung up.
I don’t know whether you can purchase love, but I am certain you can’t buy contentment. Capitalism calls contentment a lack of ambition, and I do agree that people are far too eager to be as lazy as possible. But instead of lauding satisfaction, Americans like to impress others with their things. Absurdly, people actually do seem to be impressed by the things of others. I’m much more impressed by humility, but this is so antithetical to Western culture the declaration comes across as coy.
Humility is important because it makes learning possible. Most people don’t like to learn because it requires overcoming the reality that one doesn’t already know everything. Learning, by definition, requires confronting the unknown, which is a major stressor. Accepting the reality of one’s personal shortcomings can be profoundly affective, evoking anything from frustration to physical pain. Most would rather persist in being wrong than endure the experience of learning. “I love you” is simple to say compared to “I don’t know” or “I was wrong.” Most would rather lie, invent or insist upon untruth than concede ignorance or guilt. People don’t even want to hear “I don’t know,” and assume being able to spew placating bullshit is a demonstration of competence.
When I was in college, I figured out that the most successful method for getting good grades on multiple choice tests was to choose the answer that best reflected the values and opinions of the teacher. This reveals something fascinating about what a multiple choice test teaches. Knowing the answer is less important than telling another what they want to hear. Towards that end, we become experts at things like understanding accepted norms and reading body language. These are indeed important survival skills to learn, but also develops a dependence upon external validation. The overriding concern of most is not how to excel, but how to convince others they are excellent. In the end, people don’t generally care whether they’re wrong- they just don’t want to get called out for it. Honesty is considered mean, imprudent and rude.
We usually expect to be right. In situations where we lack confidence in our competence, we tend to defer to whoever seems to have the most confidence in their opinion. This bizarrely includes situations where “right” in an objective sense does not even exist. While still in high school, I had a conversation with an adult who had expressed her dislike for the philosophy class she had been required to take in college. She didn’t understand why the professor toyed with the class by asking them questions instead of just giving them the answers. This would actually be funny if it wasn’t so depressing. I’ve had arguments with religious fans who insist there must be a god because otherwise nobody would have all the answers. People don’t want accuracy, they want answers.
Tests are sometimes graded on a curve in order to measure what you have learned relative to your peers. I was always considered one of the smartest kids throughout school, so I knew the goal of curved tests for a lot of others was to get as good a score as me. Therefore, as I took these tests, I would intentionally mark wrong answers. Then, just before turning it in, I would go through and change those answers to the correct ones. I would score well on these tests not necessarily because I was the smartest, but because others thought I was smatter than them and were therefore cheating off me.
People often think of learning in competitive terms- you only have to know enough to stay ahead of those around you. People read overviews of topics they know nothing about to impress at parties. This results in a lot of specific superficial knowledge but often lacks learning sophisticated enough to be prudently and effectively applied. The result of only having ever read the Cliffs Notes on a work is it seemingly justifies you to smugly ridicule those who actually read the source material and should therefore be experts but obviously aren’t smart enough to understand it. The easiest trick for staying ahead of others is not simply through growth but by restricting the progress of others. This is accomplished in many ways, including sabotage, propaganda and belittling. Making others believe that they are inferior is a powerful force, but it can only go so far. The confidence gained by believing others are inferior, on the other hand, knows no limits.
The people I despise most are those with a sense of entitlement. People claim they get paid a higher wage because they work harder. On the contrary, people get paid a higher wage so that they don’t have to work as hard. If you think blue collar work is beneath you, what does that say about your opinion of those who do the job? It should tell you that you’re an asshole, and if you can’t figure that out, you’re also a dumb ass. The person who works should always be revered by those he is doing the work for, and even moreso by those profiting from the work. Telling another to do something and then wondering why they can’t perform to your expectations without being able or willing to perform and teach that task yourself is unacceptable. Pondering hypotheticals is much easier than dealing with realities. If there was as much getting done as there was talk about how things should be done this world would be a much better place.
I assume most are familiar with the story of the sword in the stone, from the King Arthur legend. Whoever could pull the sword out of the stone would become king. Thus, men traveled from around the world to try. This is a great allegory revealing man’s bias toward egocentrically assuming they are singularly destined for great things. (Maybe a few women tried too, but for the most part they, do to their culture, would assume they had no chance.) Certainly the strongest men assumed they had the best chance. Logic sees no reason why physical strength would qualify one for political savvy, and yet we still tend to perceive physical prowess as an indicator of leadership. All you need to do to remove the sword is apply force greater than the resistance, right? Everything is easy in theory.
In the early 20th Century, prominent behaviorist psychologists such as John B.Watson and B.F. Skinner stated that you can completely control the actions of others, as what people do are a reaction to the information received by their environment. Behaviorism teaches that actions are learned as a result of being manipulated by reinforcement and punishment. This concept has been adapted by governments, advertisers, employers and whoever else feels they can use it to gain power and money. A fundamental premise of Behaviorism is that internal thoughts are irrelevant, but in reality that is only accurate if internal thoughts are kept to a minimum, and the best way to do this is by distracting us from having them. Think about it, people. Think. About. It.
Perceiving education as a form of manipulation makes many suspicious of both the educated and exposure to information. Those possessing knowledge are considered uppity and snobbish. It’s rebelliously hip to be dumb. “We don’t need no education.” This is exactly what those selling want you to buy. Learning is antithetical to a consumer-driven society, which relies upon the masses to continue purchasing. Toward that end, they must be continually made aware of things they need. This entails encouraging material dependence and discouraging self-sufficiency. I am constantly surprised how quickly others want to purchase replacements instead of fixing and maintaining what they have. Others will say they don’t have the time or patience. These are the same people who can’t understand why others trying to fix things are taking so long.
Education is considered a luxury of the affluent, but that downplays the significant education and discipline required to excel at things like hunting, farming, cooking, constructing and sewing. These skills are tied to actual instead of theoretical results. You can’t chalk up a bad harvest to having been misunderstood. Well, unless you introduce religion, which is mankind’s ultimate invention for eschewing responsibility. I don’t have a problem with religion; I have a problem with people who insist that what someone else told them to believe or what they want to believe is the only thing that everyone needs to learn.
Learning does not have to happen in a structured setting with somebody telling you what they think you should know. The priorities of education should include respecting life, diversity, beauty, logic and languages. I cannot fathom why fostering tolerance in an environment of peers is not touted. Our group-based education system lends itself perfectly toward promoting an appreciation and empathy for others in unfamiliar circumstances but, inexplicably, human interaction is generally regarded as beyond the bounds of the academic curriculum. I personally think America’s current system spends far too much time teaching us who to be impressed by, and firmly believe any education system that does not place utmost importance on teaching its students how to survive is a failure. Even worse is an education system that does not ignite and foster in its students the desire to learn and work.
It is vogue to discuss that people have different types of intelligences, but that is usually interpreted in public perception as a hierarchy of intelligences mostly paralleling our social hierarchy. I contest that notion wholeheartedly. Allow me an attempt to demonstrate using the following illustration:
The question is: Assuming the yellow apparatus is a three-dimensional screw, which direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise) do you turn the red handle in order to lower the blue lift and connect it with the green platform? To some, this may look like the type of thing that would be on an IQ test. I am interested in whether you chose: A) Don’t know, don’t care, B) I’ll just guess, because I have a 50% chance of getting it right, C) I’m not sure, but give me a few minutes to try and figure it out, or D) I know fairly quickly. My hypotheses are: of the four options, the least chosen will be C and those who choose D are more likely to be manual laborers. People such as car mechanics, construction workers and plumbers deal with this type of problem-solving all the time. I did, after all, design the illustration on an adjustable (Crescent) wrench. I have another hypothesis: after receiving that information, many are more likely to try and discern the solution, because they will suddenly assume it is easier than they did when they thought it was an IQ test puzzle. It doesn’t take a genius to work a wrench, right? Well, perhaps it doesn’t take a genius to master logic puzzles, either.
Learning takes effort. People vary in which things to learn are more intuitive as well as the scope of their learning potential, but without effort, potential remains dormant. Repetition and practice are great ways to learn, but do not necessarily lead to an improvement in knowledge or execution of a task. People are constantly stating how many years they’ve been doing a job as if it’s understood that none of that time was wasted. There is no limit to how many times the same mistake can be repeated. A stubborn refusal to change is a sign of ignorance rather than insight. A better assessment of wisdom can be found in how long a person has devoted to learning and improving. We learn from our mistakes only as long as we confront them.
People consistently think that their reasons for not being able to do things are perfectly reasonable while being appalled by the excuses of others. We are constantly searching for someone else to be able to blame. People think that others should do the things they don’t want to, and don’t understand why those others don’t appreciate the opportunity they’ve been generously granted. A local newsletter column writer explained that she has her husband put gas in the car because she doesn’t like the smell of gasoline on her hands. This only makes sense if her husband does like the smell of gasoline on his hands. Everyone, including those reading this, thinks they’re the exception and not the rule. Just this morning, a co-worker, referring to a discussion in the background, exclaimed, “Bitch, bitch, bitch- that’s all anybody freakin’ does around here!” That’s not ironic at all.
The truth about learning can be ascertained with a few questions: Have you studied any topics in the past to the point that you are now confident they’ll never need revisited by you? Do you tend to think things are common sense? Do you tend to think they best way to do things is the way they’ve always been done? Do you tend to think all opinions contrary to your own are ignorant and absurd? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, there is a high probability that you resist learning. If you are now instantly qualifying or changing your answer or have immediately decided that that test was bogus, you almost certainly resist learning. I myself often resist learning and need to remind myself of its importance on a daily basis.
People don’t like chaos. We don’t want to believe it exists or be exposed to it. We demand for answers to be concrete and eternal. Towards that end, we become dependent on maintaining ignorance and denial. Our desire for control overwhelms us to the degree of being outraged by the sight of anything that does not belong to us, like bugs and stray hairs. We harden our reclusive, protective shells in which everything makes sense. When camping in nice weather, why use a tent? People fear exposure. Even while sleeping in the dark, we want to be able to have a divider between ourselves and reality.
“When I look back on all that I’ve seen, the one thing I see is that I haven’t truly seen anything.” - Socrates
“Well, you have to think about investing in your future. You want to focus on courses where you can best capitalize on your investment. You have to look at the market, and the demand, and how you can best use your education to exploit that demand,” he instructed.
I found this concept repulsive. I felt that exploitation was bad and sacrificing the present for the future even worse. I wasn’t interested in money; I found it a distraction from the important things in life: equality, integrity and truth.
Today, I vividly understand and appreciate that grandpa was giving sound advice. I have never used my degrees in philosophy and psychology for anything practical, and consequently have only been hired for jobs requiring a high school education, if that. Not only do these types of job not pay as much, performing them means certain others are likely to assume I’m a moron. On the contrary, I have almost always had jobs that I enjoyed and currently make enough money to save a couple hundred dollars every month. I never took out student loans and currently don’t have debt of any sort: no car payments, mortgage payments or credit card bills. That makes my net worth more than most Americans. I am not owned by money.
The most prominent distraction related to money is excess. A few years ago, I decided to move and knew I couldn’t take my beloved 1993 Toyota pickup with me. I had just stupidly paid $2400 to rebuild the engine. I put out an ad asking $1000 and got a call. It went like this:
“Hello?”
“I’m calling about the truck for sale?”
“Yes, I still have it.”
“It has a 5-speed manual transmission?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And it says here in the ad it doesn’t have anything automatic, by which I assume you mean windows and locks, but obviously it has things like power steering.”
“No, it does not have power steering.”
“Does it have a CD player or just a tape deck?”
“Neither. It doesn’t even have a radio. Just a hole in the middle of the dashboard.”
“A/C?”
“No, but you can crank down the windows”
“How’s the condition of the body?”
“It’s okay. There’s a fair amount of rust and the back bumper’s missing, but the tailgate works.”
“So basically, all you have is a manual engine in a shell.”
“Yes. It runs great. I’m not sure what else you’d need.”
He hung up.
I don’t know whether you can purchase love, but I am certain you can’t buy contentment. Capitalism calls contentment a lack of ambition, and I do agree that people are far too eager to be as lazy as possible. But instead of lauding satisfaction, Americans like to impress others with their things. Absurdly, people actually do seem to be impressed by the things of others. I’m much more impressed by humility, but this is so antithetical to Western culture the declaration comes across as coy.
Humility is important because it makes learning possible. Most people don’t like to learn because it requires overcoming the reality that one doesn’t already know everything. Learning, by definition, requires confronting the unknown, which is a major stressor. Accepting the reality of one’s personal shortcomings can be profoundly affective, evoking anything from frustration to physical pain. Most would rather persist in being wrong than endure the experience of learning. “I love you” is simple to say compared to “I don’t know” or “I was wrong.” Most would rather lie, invent or insist upon untruth than concede ignorance or guilt. People don’t even want to hear “I don’t know,” and assume being able to spew placating bullshit is a demonstration of competence.
When I was in college, I figured out that the most successful method for getting good grades on multiple choice tests was to choose the answer that best reflected the values and opinions of the teacher. This reveals something fascinating about what a multiple choice test teaches. Knowing the answer is less important than telling another what they want to hear. Towards that end, we become experts at things like understanding accepted norms and reading body language. These are indeed important survival skills to learn, but also develops a dependence upon external validation. The overriding concern of most is not how to excel, but how to convince others they are excellent. In the end, people don’t generally care whether they’re wrong- they just don’t want to get called out for it. Honesty is considered mean, imprudent and rude.
We usually expect to be right. In situations where we lack confidence in our competence, we tend to defer to whoever seems to have the most confidence in their opinion. This bizarrely includes situations where “right” in an objective sense does not even exist. While still in high school, I had a conversation with an adult who had expressed her dislike for the philosophy class she had been required to take in college. She didn’t understand why the professor toyed with the class by asking them questions instead of just giving them the answers. This would actually be funny if it wasn’t so depressing. I’ve had arguments with religious fans who insist there must be a god because otherwise nobody would have all the answers. People don’t want accuracy, they want answers.
Tests are sometimes graded on a curve in order to measure what you have learned relative to your peers. I was always considered one of the smartest kids throughout school, so I knew the goal of curved tests for a lot of others was to get as good a score as me. Therefore, as I took these tests, I would intentionally mark wrong answers. Then, just before turning it in, I would go through and change those answers to the correct ones. I would score well on these tests not necessarily because I was the smartest, but because others thought I was smatter than them and were therefore cheating off me.
People often think of learning in competitive terms- you only have to know enough to stay ahead of those around you. People read overviews of topics they know nothing about to impress at parties. This results in a lot of specific superficial knowledge but often lacks learning sophisticated enough to be prudently and effectively applied. The result of only having ever read the Cliffs Notes on a work is it seemingly justifies you to smugly ridicule those who actually read the source material and should therefore be experts but obviously aren’t smart enough to understand it. The easiest trick for staying ahead of others is not simply through growth but by restricting the progress of others. This is accomplished in many ways, including sabotage, propaganda and belittling. Making others believe that they are inferior is a powerful force, but it can only go so far. The confidence gained by believing others are inferior, on the other hand, knows no limits.
The people I despise most are those with a sense of entitlement. People claim they get paid a higher wage because they work harder. On the contrary, people get paid a higher wage so that they don’t have to work as hard. If you think blue collar work is beneath you, what does that say about your opinion of those who do the job? It should tell you that you’re an asshole, and if you can’t figure that out, you’re also a dumb ass. The person who works should always be revered by those he is doing the work for, and even moreso by those profiting from the work. Telling another to do something and then wondering why they can’t perform to your expectations without being able or willing to perform and teach that task yourself is unacceptable. Pondering hypotheticals is much easier than dealing with realities. If there was as much getting done as there was talk about how things should be done this world would be a much better place.
I assume most are familiar with the story of the sword in the stone, from the King Arthur legend. Whoever could pull the sword out of the stone would become king. Thus, men traveled from around the world to try. This is a great allegory revealing man’s bias toward egocentrically assuming they are singularly destined for great things. (Maybe a few women tried too, but for the most part they, do to their culture, would assume they had no chance.) Certainly the strongest men assumed they had the best chance. Logic sees no reason why physical strength would qualify one for political savvy, and yet we still tend to perceive physical prowess as an indicator of leadership. All you need to do to remove the sword is apply force greater than the resistance, right? Everything is easy in theory.
In the early 20th Century, prominent behaviorist psychologists such as John B.Watson and B.F. Skinner stated that you can completely control the actions of others, as what people do are a reaction to the information received by their environment. Behaviorism teaches that actions are learned as a result of being manipulated by reinforcement and punishment. This concept has been adapted by governments, advertisers, employers and whoever else feels they can use it to gain power and money. A fundamental premise of Behaviorism is that internal thoughts are irrelevant, but in reality that is only accurate if internal thoughts are kept to a minimum, and the best way to do this is by distracting us from having them. Think about it, people. Think. About. It.
Perceiving education as a form of manipulation makes many suspicious of both the educated and exposure to information. Those possessing knowledge are considered uppity and snobbish. It’s rebelliously hip to be dumb. “We don’t need no education.” This is exactly what those selling want you to buy. Learning is antithetical to a consumer-driven society, which relies upon the masses to continue purchasing. Toward that end, they must be continually made aware of things they need. This entails encouraging material dependence and discouraging self-sufficiency. I am constantly surprised how quickly others want to purchase replacements instead of fixing and maintaining what they have. Others will say they don’t have the time or patience. These are the same people who can’t understand why others trying to fix things are taking so long.
Education is considered a luxury of the affluent, but that downplays the significant education and discipline required to excel at things like hunting, farming, cooking, constructing and sewing. These skills are tied to actual instead of theoretical results. You can’t chalk up a bad harvest to having been misunderstood. Well, unless you introduce religion, which is mankind’s ultimate invention for eschewing responsibility. I don’t have a problem with religion; I have a problem with people who insist that what someone else told them to believe or what they want to believe is the only thing that everyone needs to learn.
Learning does not have to happen in a structured setting with somebody telling you what they think you should know. The priorities of education should include respecting life, diversity, beauty, logic and languages. I cannot fathom why fostering tolerance in an environment of peers is not touted. Our group-based education system lends itself perfectly toward promoting an appreciation and empathy for others in unfamiliar circumstances but, inexplicably, human interaction is generally regarded as beyond the bounds of the academic curriculum. I personally think America’s current system spends far too much time teaching us who to be impressed by, and firmly believe any education system that does not place utmost importance on teaching its students how to survive is a failure. Even worse is an education system that does not ignite and foster in its students the desire to learn and work.
It is vogue to discuss that people have different types of intelligences, but that is usually interpreted in public perception as a hierarchy of intelligences mostly paralleling our social hierarchy. I contest that notion wholeheartedly. Allow me an attempt to demonstrate using the following illustration:
The question is: Assuming the yellow apparatus is a three-dimensional screw, which direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise) do you turn the red handle in order to lower the blue lift and connect it with the green platform? To some, this may look like the type of thing that would be on an IQ test. I am interested in whether you chose: A) Don’t know, don’t care, B) I’ll just guess, because I have a 50% chance of getting it right, C) I’m not sure, but give me a few minutes to try and figure it out, or D) I know fairly quickly. My hypotheses are: of the four options, the least chosen will be C and those who choose D are more likely to be manual laborers. People such as car mechanics, construction workers and plumbers deal with this type of problem-solving all the time. I did, after all, design the illustration on an adjustable (Crescent) wrench. I have another hypothesis: after receiving that information, many are more likely to try and discern the solution, because they will suddenly assume it is easier than they did when they thought it was an IQ test puzzle. It doesn’t take a genius to work a wrench, right? Well, perhaps it doesn’t take a genius to master logic puzzles, either.
Learning takes effort. People vary in which things to learn are more intuitive as well as the scope of their learning potential, but without effort, potential remains dormant. Repetition and practice are great ways to learn, but do not necessarily lead to an improvement in knowledge or execution of a task. People are constantly stating how many years they’ve been doing a job as if it’s understood that none of that time was wasted. There is no limit to how many times the same mistake can be repeated. A stubborn refusal to change is a sign of ignorance rather than insight. A better assessment of wisdom can be found in how long a person has devoted to learning and improving. We learn from our mistakes only as long as we confront them.
People consistently think that their reasons for not being able to do things are perfectly reasonable while being appalled by the excuses of others. We are constantly searching for someone else to be able to blame. People think that others should do the things they don’t want to, and don’t understand why those others don’t appreciate the opportunity they’ve been generously granted. A local newsletter column writer explained that she has her husband put gas in the car because she doesn’t like the smell of gasoline on her hands. This only makes sense if her husband does like the smell of gasoline on his hands. Everyone, including those reading this, thinks they’re the exception and not the rule. Just this morning, a co-worker, referring to a discussion in the background, exclaimed, “Bitch, bitch, bitch- that’s all anybody freakin’ does around here!” That’s not ironic at all.
The truth about learning can be ascertained with a few questions: Have you studied any topics in the past to the point that you are now confident they’ll never need revisited by you? Do you tend to think things are common sense? Do you tend to think they best way to do things is the way they’ve always been done? Do you tend to think all opinions contrary to your own are ignorant and absurd? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, there is a high probability that you resist learning. If you are now instantly qualifying or changing your answer or have immediately decided that that test was bogus, you almost certainly resist learning. I myself often resist learning and need to remind myself of its importance on a daily basis.
People don’t like chaos. We don’t want to believe it exists or be exposed to it. We demand for answers to be concrete and eternal. Towards that end, we become dependent on maintaining ignorance and denial. Our desire for control overwhelms us to the degree of being outraged by the sight of anything that does not belong to us, like bugs and stray hairs. We harden our reclusive, protective shells in which everything makes sense. When camping in nice weather, why use a tent? People fear exposure. Even while sleeping in the dark, we want to be able to have a divider between ourselves and reality.
“When I look back on all that I’ve seen, the one thing I see is that I haven’t truly seen anything.” - Socrates
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Hard Work
There was a time when my second favorite cartoon (after G.I. Joe) was DuckTales. It was about the adventures of Uncle Scrooge and his three nephews, whom he was constantly telling, “Work smarter, not harder.” I was always suspicious of this advice, as I knew it was coming from a Disney cartoon, but was never able to quite put my finger on what it was about it that struck me as odd until now. The allure of this statement seems to be that it gives permission to avoid hard work. If it were simply an encouragement to be innovative, why not say, “Work smart while working hard”? Second, it implies everyone is capable of correctly applying intelligence to work situations, which, in my observed experience, is rarely the case.
During the same time I was watching DuckTales, I was reading Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Sherlock is famous for his unmatched perspective abilities, but the books stress that the key to his success is by using those skills toward correctly applying his tireless movements in order to secure results. He is constantly on the go, and Watson has considerable trouble keeping up with him in a physical sense as well as mental. One way this is highlighted is through the character of Mycroft Holmes, who is Sherlock’s older, and more clever, brother. Mycroft sits in a private club in which silence is required and solves crimes he reads about in the newspaper. He does not see the point in being bothered with practicalities. He does not capture villains. Mycroft Holmes is overtly intended to be the embodiment of bureaucracy. (In one story Sherlock remarks that Mycroft sometimes is the government, and explains, “The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance.”)
Some people work smarter and not harder by delegating tasks. Delegating should be used to give tasks to more qualified persons and when there is more work than one person can handle, and so ideally, delegating does not eschew hard work. Unfortunately, it is too often used to enable shifting blame when work isn’t done correctly and taking credit when it is. People who aren’t working have a curious habit of telling those who are how they should be doing it. One obstacle I am trying to unlearn is the paranoia that when others suggest alternative approaches, they are suggesting that I’m incompetent. In reality, others, especially males, aren’t taking another’s competence into consideration at all and are merely demonstrating theirs, or at least attempting to. There is nothing easier than pointing out the flaws in others, so there is nothing more obnoxious than it being done smugly. Those who refuse to find a solution to a problem are responsible for the problem continuing to exist, even while they point their finger at those who caused it. There is nobody lower than he who thinks there is work beneath him. Leaving problems for whoever is blamed for causing them to fix is often not prudent or effective, but problems caused by ignorance must be addressed. A person can’t be blamed for continuously making the same mistake if nobody is informing them of the mistake being made. Deciding, “They should know better,” rather than determining if they do is just another example of ducking hard work and responsibility.
I spent a lot of time this week pulling weeds. Every so often someone would wander up to inform me that it would go much faster if I used RoundUp. If I wasn’t at work, where I’m obliged to maintain a modicum of professionalism, I’d respond it would go a lot quicker if I dropped a missile on it, too. Why use a poison that destroys everything to do a task I can perform with my bare hands? I wasn’t trying to get rid of grass or poison ivy. In order to avoid debate, I responded by saying corporate didn’t want RoundUp to be used (a great example of effectively shifting blame). They would then point out that I should get a weed-pulling tool. This tool is actually useful for using on broken-off roots, but I broke my weed-pulling tool last fall. For most weeding, though, using a weed-pulling tool would simply add an unnecessary extra step. Strangely, and tellingly, nobody pointed out that I should be wearing gloves. I wasn’t, not only because they are cumbersome and because I’ve perfected the art of kicking thistles to get to their root without getting stabbed, but because I had an ulterior motive of using the opportunity to build my grip strength for playing disc golf, which is currently my main hobby.
Anybody who appreciates The Karate Kid (1984), which was, of course, was my second favorite childhood movie, after the Star Wars trilogy, understands the necessity of dedicated hard work in obtaining any goal, even when it seems irrelevant or pointless. Hard work can be fulfilling or frustrating, depending upon whether you can see its results. Along with the motivation to improve, stubborn persistence is one of the most useful traits a human can possess. Hard work demands having faith in the process and a belief that it is beneficial in and of itself. If you can’t be proud of having the work you are responsible for completed correctly and timely, how can you exhibit any pride at all? One thing hard work does not necessarily lead to is monetary success, which is enough to make it seem pointless to many.
One maxim I have is: If you aren’t working harder than everybody else, you’re not working hard enough. Another is: If it’s not your job to worry about someone else’s job, don’t. It is difficult to remain a diligent worker without others attempting to take advantage of your willingness to contribute. It is difficult to remain a diligent worker without others attempting to take advantage of your willingness to contribute. There is certainly a limit to how much work a person can do, and a time when that fact should be voiced. How hard you work should not be tied to how much you are being paid until an actual risk to your life is involved. Aside from breaks and lunch, no employee has ever negotiated for a percentage of the work day being set aside for slacking off.
The only alternatives to working hard are to let everything fall into ruin or be dependent upon others to work hard instead. Some people seem to have been given the impression that they should only do things that are fun. The Jane’s Addiction song So What? begins, “Man wasn’t made to work; c’mon build a machine!” which always makes me wonder who should build said machine. If work was fun, they wouldn’t pay you to do it, they’d charge. However, working hard is more satisfying and enjoyable than avoiding it by doing nothing. People don’t generally exclaim, “I really love my job because I get to sit around and do nothing all day.”
The embracement of laziness leads directly to learned helplessness and incompetence. In our quest to avoid doing anything, we avoid learning how to do anything, and become increasingly dependent upon others to perform any tasks we require and produce any goods we need. As we continue to avoid doing things we feel we don’t have to know how to do, learning how to perform new tasks becomes more and more uncomfortable, until we succumb to uselessness and irrelevance. In many aspects of our everyday lives, automatons have already taken over, which I suppose is okay if our ambitions are to “sleep and make love deeper,” or at least stare at a computer screen waiting for something entertaining to appear.
During the same time I was watching DuckTales, I was reading Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Sherlock is famous for his unmatched perspective abilities, but the books stress that the key to his success is by using those skills toward correctly applying his tireless movements in order to secure results. He is constantly on the go, and Watson has considerable trouble keeping up with him in a physical sense as well as mental. One way this is highlighted is through the character of Mycroft Holmes, who is Sherlock’s older, and more clever, brother. Mycroft sits in a private club in which silence is required and solves crimes he reads about in the newspaper. He does not see the point in being bothered with practicalities. He does not capture villains. Mycroft Holmes is overtly intended to be the embodiment of bureaucracy. (In one story Sherlock remarks that Mycroft sometimes is the government, and explains, “The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance.”)
Some people work smarter and not harder by delegating tasks. Delegating should be used to give tasks to more qualified persons and when there is more work than one person can handle, and so ideally, delegating does not eschew hard work. Unfortunately, it is too often used to enable shifting blame when work isn’t done correctly and taking credit when it is. People who aren’t working have a curious habit of telling those who are how they should be doing it. One obstacle I am trying to unlearn is the paranoia that when others suggest alternative approaches, they are suggesting that I’m incompetent. In reality, others, especially males, aren’t taking another’s competence into consideration at all and are merely demonstrating theirs, or at least attempting to. There is nothing easier than pointing out the flaws in others, so there is nothing more obnoxious than it being done smugly. Those who refuse to find a solution to a problem are responsible for the problem continuing to exist, even while they point their finger at those who caused it. There is nobody lower than he who thinks there is work beneath him. Leaving problems for whoever is blamed for causing them to fix is often not prudent or effective, but problems caused by ignorance must be addressed. A person can’t be blamed for continuously making the same mistake if nobody is informing them of the mistake being made. Deciding, “They should know better,” rather than determining if they do is just another example of ducking hard work and responsibility.
I spent a lot of time this week pulling weeds. Every so often someone would wander up to inform me that it would go much faster if I used RoundUp. If I wasn’t at work, where I’m obliged to maintain a modicum of professionalism, I’d respond it would go a lot quicker if I dropped a missile on it, too. Why use a poison that destroys everything to do a task I can perform with my bare hands? I wasn’t trying to get rid of grass or poison ivy. In order to avoid debate, I responded by saying corporate didn’t want RoundUp to be used (a great example of effectively shifting blame). They would then point out that I should get a weed-pulling tool. This tool is actually useful for using on broken-off roots, but I broke my weed-pulling tool last fall. For most weeding, though, using a weed-pulling tool would simply add an unnecessary extra step. Strangely, and tellingly, nobody pointed out that I should be wearing gloves. I wasn’t, not only because they are cumbersome and because I’ve perfected the art of kicking thistles to get to their root without getting stabbed, but because I had an ulterior motive of using the opportunity to build my grip strength for playing disc golf, which is currently my main hobby.
Anybody who appreciates The Karate Kid (1984), which was, of course, was my second favorite childhood movie, after the Star Wars trilogy, understands the necessity of dedicated hard work in obtaining any goal, even when it seems irrelevant or pointless. Hard work can be fulfilling or frustrating, depending upon whether you can see its results. Along with the motivation to improve, stubborn persistence is one of the most useful traits a human can possess. Hard work demands having faith in the process and a belief that it is beneficial in and of itself. If you can’t be proud of having the work you are responsible for completed correctly and timely, how can you exhibit any pride at all? One thing hard work does not necessarily lead to is monetary success, which is enough to make it seem pointless to many.
One maxim I have is: If you aren’t working harder than everybody else, you’re not working hard enough. Another is: If it’s not your job to worry about someone else’s job, don’t. It is difficult to remain a diligent worker without others attempting to take advantage of your willingness to contribute. It is difficult to remain a diligent worker without others attempting to take advantage of your willingness to contribute. There is certainly a limit to how much work a person can do, and a time when that fact should be voiced. How hard you work should not be tied to how much you are being paid until an actual risk to your life is involved. Aside from breaks and lunch, no employee has ever negotiated for a percentage of the work day being set aside for slacking off.
The only alternatives to working hard are to let everything fall into ruin or be dependent upon others to work hard instead. Some people seem to have been given the impression that they should only do things that are fun. The Jane’s Addiction song So What? begins, “Man wasn’t made to work; c’mon build a machine!” which always makes me wonder who should build said machine. If work was fun, they wouldn’t pay you to do it, they’d charge. However, working hard is more satisfying and enjoyable than avoiding it by doing nothing. People don’t generally exclaim, “I really love my job because I get to sit around and do nothing all day.”
The embracement of laziness leads directly to learned helplessness and incompetence. In our quest to avoid doing anything, we avoid learning how to do anything, and become increasingly dependent upon others to perform any tasks we require and produce any goods we need. As we continue to avoid doing things we feel we don’t have to know how to do, learning how to perform new tasks becomes more and more uncomfortable, until we succumb to uselessness and irrelevance. In many aspects of our everyday lives, automatons have already taken over, which I suppose is okay if our ambitions are to “sleep and make love deeper,” or at least stare at a computer screen waiting for something entertaining to appear.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Comfort
Comfort is vastly over-rated. I am skeptical that it should even be desired. Strength, courage and truth all possess greater cultural worth than comfort, but more often than not these are the first things sacrificed in the effort for comfort to be attained. Comfort seems to extol both laziness and cowardice. For example, we find admitting to mistakes excruciatingly uncomfortable, but I firmly believe that integrity must be prioritized over comfort.
People want to be coddled, comforted and validated. We want to be mollified. We want to hear motivational speeches, read books and watch movies that make us feel better about ourselves while doing absolutely nothing to justify that state and are willing to pay handily to fulfill this desire. I find this reliance upon positive reinforcement utterly pathetic. We use blind affirmations to evade progress; our abilities, intelligences and potential remain, for the most part, untested. We are exceedingly adept at pointing out the flaws in others while conveniently rejecting criticism regarding ourselves. Depending upon constant external validation is almost assuredly setting oneself up for failure. Stepping on others to lift oneself up is a failure in itself.
Despite constant claims to the contrary, self-sufficiency is not something we particularly value in America. We want our clothes, food, shelter, transportation, devices and toys made for us, and would rather enslave ourselves to a job and debt to pay for them than figure out how to make them ourselves. Comfort is frequently confused as a necessity. I actively cringe whenever I hear someone exclaim they need some new gadget or can’t live without something nonsensical like face cream. We don’t even want to know how to get by without these things, even when we value their ability to impress over their function. I don’t grasp why more aren’t instead concerned about knowing how to survive alone for a week with nothing but a rope, knife, lighter, blanket and bowl.
Without a degree of independence, we are nothing but groveling babies. “Every person should stand on their own two feet.” This only applies, of course, to those that have been given and still have two feet upon which to stand, a privilege which we must not forget some lack. Perfectly capable people unwilling to do things that those less fortunate would give almost anything to be able to do ought to be ashamed.
Hard work, especially manual labor, is actively avoided by most. We seem to have gotten the idea that physical tasks are somehow beneath us. I strongly oppose having a sense of entitlement that excludes us from doing the things we expect from others. The oft repeated claim that one should do what one loves or enjoys is frankly immature. Nobody should exist in suffering, but we should all pull our own weight whether we like it or not. Striving to improve, seeking insight and maintaining compassion are often anything but fun.
Anyone who would avoid suffering by bringing it upon another is the lowest example of humanity, and yet it not only happens all the time but is actively encouraged by our society. We should seek out the things that make us uncomfortable, not to desensitize ourselves, but to strengthen our humanity. I have no respect for anyone who would eat animal meat yet refuse to kill and dress that animal or sit in their heated home yet refuse to mine the coal used to heat it.
If one is not proud of having a strong work ethic, what is left be proud of? Conversely, one should not brag about doing work as if it somehow going above and beyond what is expected. While all should resist being taken advantage of, complaining about doing more work than someone else is not necessarily justifiable. It can be akin to running a marathon and then complaining that some people didn’t finish.
Comfort is a privilege, not a right, and, while great in small doses, is not worth gaining at the sacrifice of more honorable pursuits offered in life, such as competence, fortitude, integrity, empathy and wisdom.
People want to be coddled, comforted and validated. We want to be mollified. We want to hear motivational speeches, read books and watch movies that make us feel better about ourselves while doing absolutely nothing to justify that state and are willing to pay handily to fulfill this desire. I find this reliance upon positive reinforcement utterly pathetic. We use blind affirmations to evade progress; our abilities, intelligences and potential remain, for the most part, untested. We are exceedingly adept at pointing out the flaws in others while conveniently rejecting criticism regarding ourselves. Depending upon constant external validation is almost assuredly setting oneself up for failure. Stepping on others to lift oneself up is a failure in itself.
Despite constant claims to the contrary, self-sufficiency is not something we particularly value in America. We want our clothes, food, shelter, transportation, devices and toys made for us, and would rather enslave ourselves to a job and debt to pay for them than figure out how to make them ourselves. Comfort is frequently confused as a necessity. I actively cringe whenever I hear someone exclaim they need some new gadget or can’t live without something nonsensical like face cream. We don’t even want to know how to get by without these things, even when we value their ability to impress over their function. I don’t grasp why more aren’t instead concerned about knowing how to survive alone for a week with nothing but a rope, knife, lighter, blanket and bowl.
Without a degree of independence, we are nothing but groveling babies. “Every person should stand on their own two feet.” This only applies, of course, to those that have been given and still have two feet upon which to stand, a privilege which we must not forget some lack. Perfectly capable people unwilling to do things that those less fortunate would give almost anything to be able to do ought to be ashamed.
Hard work, especially manual labor, is actively avoided by most. We seem to have gotten the idea that physical tasks are somehow beneath us. I strongly oppose having a sense of entitlement that excludes us from doing the things we expect from others. The oft repeated claim that one should do what one loves or enjoys is frankly immature. Nobody should exist in suffering, but we should all pull our own weight whether we like it or not. Striving to improve, seeking insight and maintaining compassion are often anything but fun.
Anyone who would avoid suffering by bringing it upon another is the lowest example of humanity, and yet it not only happens all the time but is actively encouraged by our society. We should seek out the things that make us uncomfortable, not to desensitize ourselves, but to strengthen our humanity. I have no respect for anyone who would eat animal meat yet refuse to kill and dress that animal or sit in their heated home yet refuse to mine the coal used to heat it.
If one is not proud of having a strong work ethic, what is left be proud of? Conversely, one should not brag about doing work as if it somehow going above and beyond what is expected. While all should resist being taken advantage of, complaining about doing more work than someone else is not necessarily justifiable. It can be akin to running a marathon and then complaining that some people didn’t finish.
Comfort is a privilege, not a right, and, while great in small doses, is not worth gaining at the sacrifice of more honorable pursuits offered in life, such as competence, fortitude, integrity, empathy and wisdom.
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