I had begun to lose faith in humanity.
Having spent some weeks frequenting an urban hospital that serves a diverse population, I had encountered a shocking number of people who function on an astoundingly low level. I've always argued that very few people are utterly hopeless. I've had numerous debates with conservative friends and family wherein I take the side of those whose livelihood depends on social safety nets (don't we all rely on the security inherent to our social contract to some degree?). But over the past month it started to dawn on me that there is a pretty substantial population of legitimately dependent, utterly un-self-aware people in this country, simply going through the motions, however distasteful, however physically uncomfortable.
I wondered:
Is this a local phenomenon?
Is this a recent thing?
Have there always been large chucks of society that are essentially on autopilot?
A few thoughts emerged from some discussion and pondering. Initially, it didn't seem possible that this has always been the case, as we have been through some tough times as a species, and I'm sure we didn't, and couldn't, lug around such dead weight through that. So did this just crop up, or is it instead a new manifestation of something that has been around but maybe not an issue in the past, when environmental/social circumstances would have provided a productive outlet for these tendencies?
Maybe, I wondered, freeing most people from the burden of decision-making is adaptive in the long run? Maybe that human ballast functions as a keel at times, rather than our modern result: dragging anchor-like.
I like that explanation. So I'll run with it for a bit...
The problem, then, is that the default actions of the choiceless many are only recently dysfunctional. The unstated barking orders of our modern times are destructive; the culture/paradigm of the impoverished among us is polluted with toxic expectations and norms.
I have seen the other end of the spectrum, where folks are brought into a high functioning culture. It would be easy to attribute their functionality to good breeding, but the same proportion of adherents exist there, only they adhere to policies and practices that work better, and their families work hard to ensure that this is so. They live in "bubbles" of high-functioning humanity, buffeted against the din of the dominant American paradigm.
And here I'm unfairly casting, as nearly all people (myself included) exhibit the behavior patterns I'm referring to as ”adherence,” as opposed to independent decision-making. Truth is, the analysis required to thoughtfully make choices is taxing. Perpetually questioning the paradigm is exhausting. So it is that we all benefit from immersion into a functioning culture that sets default settings which keep us healthy and well.
Let the goal be to immerse our people in cultural habits that promote health, opportunity, and happiness. Let us enrich our world and provide fall-back protocols that carry us through trying times. May we fold more of the masses into the security and empowerment of well-being.
Grass-roots can only grow in reasonably rich soil. Let's rid ourselves of the toxic...
Having spent some weeks frequenting an urban hospital that serves a diverse population, I had encountered a shocking number of people who function on an astoundingly low level. I've always argued that very few people are utterly hopeless. I've had numerous debates with conservative friends and family wherein I take the side of those whose livelihood depends on social safety nets (don't we all rely on the security inherent to our social contract to some degree?). But over the past month it started to dawn on me that there is a pretty substantial population of legitimately dependent, utterly un-self-aware people in this country, simply going through the motions, however distasteful, however physically uncomfortable.
I wondered:
Is this a local phenomenon?
Is this a recent thing?
Have there always been large chucks of society that are essentially on autopilot?
A few thoughts emerged from some discussion and pondering. Initially, it didn't seem possible that this has always been the case, as we have been through some tough times as a species, and I'm sure we didn't, and couldn't, lug around such dead weight through that. So did this just crop up, or is it instead a new manifestation of something that has been around but maybe not an issue in the past, when environmental/social circumstances would have provided a productive outlet for these tendencies?
Maybe, I wondered, freeing most people from the burden of decision-making is adaptive in the long run? Maybe that human ballast functions as a keel at times, rather than our modern result: dragging anchor-like.
I like that explanation. So I'll run with it for a bit...
The problem, then, is that the default actions of the choiceless many are only recently dysfunctional. The unstated barking orders of our modern times are destructive; the culture/paradigm of the impoverished among us is polluted with toxic expectations and norms.
I have seen the other end of the spectrum, where folks are brought into a high functioning culture. It would be easy to attribute their functionality to good breeding, but the same proportion of adherents exist there, only they adhere to policies and practices that work better, and their families work hard to ensure that this is so. They live in "bubbles" of high-functioning humanity, buffeted against the din of the dominant American paradigm.
And here I'm unfairly casting, as nearly all people (myself included) exhibit the behavior patterns I'm referring to as ”adherence,” as opposed to independent decision-making. Truth is, the analysis required to thoughtfully make choices is taxing. Perpetually questioning the paradigm is exhausting. So it is that we all benefit from immersion into a functioning culture that sets default settings which keep us healthy and well.
Let the goal be to immerse our people in cultural habits that promote health, opportunity, and happiness. Let us enrich our world and provide fall-back protocols that carry us through trying times. May we fold more of the masses into the security and empowerment of well-being.
Grass-roots can only grow in reasonably rich soil. Let's rid ourselves of the toxic...
I think this will be a kind of a cycle. Many will reach the conclusion you have reached in the first sentence, believing that life is utterly hopeless and therefore live on "autopilot" because there is no point in life. Others see them, and if they're not really struggling to survive or anything, they sink into this auto pilot as well.
ReplyDeleteThe problem for me is this: why do they sink into this cycle when they reach the conclusion?
Being the Christian that I am, I'm going to look at it in a bit of a religious point of view.
The problem I see is this: when atheism becomes one's belief, goal in life cease to exist in most people's life. Only a select few can rise above the notion "we are all products of random chance that will live for a short time and die with no meaning" to try and create a meaning for their lives. Of course, it is fair to say that one can still strive for "health, opportunity, and happiness", as you said, even if life presents no purpose if given the premise that there is no god. However, that requires effort. It requires effort to achieve these things. You reap what you sow, there's no other way around that. Frankly, when many people see that there is no point in the end, they don't want to put in the effort because they are lazy. It doesn't matter whether life felt good the moment when you graduate with a 4.0, when the ending for you and that 1.7 GPA student are the same, dead and rotten in the soil.
There is no hope in humanity, no hope in the end. Good guys and bad guys end up the same.
I kinda of think of this like communism. It doesn't matter whether you worked hard or not, you're going to get that same bag of rice just like the person next to you. When the payback is the same no matter what, then working hard kind of loses it's meaning because there is no reward.
Like I said earlier, there are a select few who can function beyond that. They are willing to work hard for that satisfaction, whether it's feeling like they've done a good job, or knowing that they deserved that bag of rice (which wouldn't really motivate life I guess if the end reward is death, something most people dread), or something else. However, those people are rare. I don't know if it's a mentality we can brain wash people to believe, to become a productive part of society when the end result is death anyway.
I, however, see an alternative to this path, and that is to know a purpose for life. If there is a purpose to live for and it's a good one, then life doesn't seem so hopeless, so meaningless.
of course, to believe in a purpose in life is to believe there is a creator, because only a creator can give purpose. You maybe able to use a hammer to do many things, but only when it is being used to knock things together is it fulfilling it's purpose (It's not the same as being useful). When you see something odd, something strange, and you ponder what it is meant to do, there is only one way to find out. That is to find the designer, the creator. To believe in a creator, a designer, is to believe in something higher than humans, something capable of designing and creating the universe as we know it.
For many, this is their hope, their motivation for life. For me, that motivation is Jesus. It is to know that I am worth something more than flesh and bones. It is to know my life will mean something. It is to know that death is not the end.
I wish you the best in finding your motivation in life;I wish you the best in your endeavors; and I am glad to know that there are people like you out there, noticing a problem and looking for answers, even if their answers may not be the same as mine.
Come back to I.S. soon!
Paul Y.
International School 2013
I'm having a bit of a hard time understanding what you're saying, but I'm going to take my interpretation and run with it. If it's completely off, then feel free to disregard this comment!
ReplyDeleteI like to think that I'm part of the "high functioning culture" that works hard and all that. However, Junior year has taught me that it's easier to work half as hard and still get a somewhat satisfactory result (I have no idea why it took me this long to realize that). However, the issue with this is that I've become less and less intelligent, and I'm beginning to fall behind all the rest of the "high functioning culture". This is something that's slowly begun to alarm me as I look back and see how half-assed I've been this year.
The thing is, it's easy to be lazy. Or, well, not "lazy" - that's a bit too harsh of a word. I wouldn't say that I was "lazy" this year; rather, I didn't try the usual 100 to 150%. In any case, it's much easier to sort of trail along behind other people, do what they're doing, without really thinking about or caring much about how it's adversely affecting me in the long run.
Okay, now I'm just echoing your earlier statement that "we all benefit from immersion into a functioning culture that sets default settings which keep us healthy and well".
The point I'm trying to make, I guess, is
- Auto-pilot is easier, therefore I can see why people would shift gears and just sail with the tide
- If people are going to go into auto-pilot, then yes, we should make auto-pilot into something that's not quite as lethargic or not quite as destructive as it is now.
In other words, my comment is basically just reinforcing your entire blog entry... sorry I don't have much to add.
Thank you for your thoughts!