With difficulty comes ease

12-22-2020

Some thoughts about why many of us are stuggling so very much right now.

complacence has become rampant

“You all know," said the Guide, "that security is mortals' greatest enemy.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress
We have come to rely on technology of every stripe, our governments, and social safety nets to make life easy for us. This in turn has made many of us anxious and caused an almost complete loss of self-reliance and grit.

I was amazed

Yesterday, I was watching a Netflix video on the topic of joblessness among college graduates. A group of six fairly recent graduates were sitting around a lavish Thai dinner complaining about how the system had failed them and how much better their parents had it.

As you can imagine (as as 79 year old) I was stunned! Where did they get the money to eat at such a fancy place? How could they afford the new outfits they were all wearing? I could only suspect that they were being supported by their parents as none of them talked about their jobs.

I wish I could have been part of the dinner and told them about how hard it was for me in the beginning: Working in a pizza parlor as a waiter, unloading TV's from freight cars, working as a parking lot attendant while paying my way through college.

I know this goes aginst the popular grain, but if everyone had to pay their own way through college, we would have a citizenry of competent people who would automatically care for others, be frugal, and demand a small effective government.

They would automatically learn the really important lessons from a college education, and the education they enjoy would be theirs to own and not the banks. And obviously the cost of a college eduction would drop to what people could afford.

large systems are self-repairing - or nature bats last

There is a natural order to life on this planet and we violate those laws to our peril. This is just basic Physics (the Physics of social systems, ecological systems, and economic systems).

We need our suffering. Suffering and difficulty are the gifts that signal us that we need to make some change. Again via technology and social safety nets we have, for a short time, disregarded nature's signals for a long time and are due for some big changes in our way of living.

We all know what these changes are. Pretending not to know is breaking down fast!

some responses to our suffering

Today is my birthday (seventy nine), so I'm entitled to be an "old man who does not get it" for a day. So here are some things I would do if I were Dr. Suess in charge of the zoo:

stop all garbage pick-up

end all gambling - including insurance and short term trading in the market

stop all government subsidies like farm subsidies and tax exemptions

have a law that would make it illegal for any CEO of a company to make more than 10 times his/her lowest paid employee

post the Ten Commandments in every public place including schools.

that's enough for now - short term pain for long term gain.

Peace be upon you.