cpwill said:
I blame the Boomers. As (admittedly) I tend to do for alot. The adoption of the idea that Life Was All About You And Fulfilling YourSelf has led to some very unfulfilling lives.
I guess I have a few comments.
Historically, it seems to me that the Boomer mentality and approach to life was predictable due to the lessons of the Great Depression and World War II. The Great Depression taught people that things (food, house, tools, medicine, clothes, toys or a means of amusement) matter. Only people who are spiritually oriented toward sainthood are able to transcend this, and most people simply are not suited for such a life.
World War II, Korea, and then Vietnam taught people that other human beings can be taken away, whether young or old, rich or poor. The more I think about it, the more I think WWII was devastating to the moral order proposed by Christianity and Judaism. It was unthinkable to many people that a just God would allow human beings to commit such attrocities as those perpetrated by the Nazis and the Japanese military.
At the same time, in the academic world, especially in my own discipline (philosophy) there was a growing belief in ontological materialism. And this seemed to provide all the answers, even if they were uncomfortable ones. If all there is is material stuff, then there is no God to guarantee a moral order to the world, and there is also nothing left to pursue but material stuff and personal pleasure. Thus, the boomer mentality. I think this is what enabled hippies to be so liberal in their youths, and conservative when they're older. I know many ex-hippies who are nearly reactionary. They've spent their lives pursuing whatever makes them happy, and now they have money, they adopt policies that would have been repugnant to them when they were younger.
With that said, there is a counter current that has to be understood. You can see what I'm getting ready to describe throughout history, and it's part of human nature. The reason we have an economy in the first place is because when human beings stand apart, they don't last very long. Thomas Hobbes got this part right: for people who try to completely eschew cooperation, life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. With the need for cooperation arises an implicit social contract. We enter into a society with the understanding that we make good on another's loss, and we each individually do our best.
To put it bluntly, that contract is frayed to the point it's nearly gone, and that implies a very dangerous time ahead. On the one hand, I agree that there are some people who simply don't try as hard as should be reasonably expected. The reasons why are manifold (some of them are hinted at above). I think this is the part that conservatives have right about the state of our country and what's wrong with it. It's not merely people on welfare. There are plenty of people who don't buckle down and do well in school. As this poll shows, there are plenty of people who just show up at work and basically check out.
On the other hand, here's what liberals have right: implicit in the social contract is the notion that the spoils of economic activity will be shared in a fair and just manner. when you have income and wealth gaps as wide as the ones we see today, it's discouraging, especially when it goes on for a long time (going on 50 years, in our case) and rather than getting any better, it just seems to get worse. When this trend first started, I don't think it's correct to say that people were as disengaged as they are now.
So it seems to be a chicken-and-egg problem. On the one hand, workers are backing out of their end of the bargain by not doing their best. On the other hand, employers are backing out of their end by paying the people at the top salaries that are thousands of times greater than the average worker. This is highly discouraging, and it does nothing but make matters worse. I'm not sure it matters who threw the first stone at this point, the question is how we get back to a solution.
Welcome a world of people raised in the expectation that everyone deserves a trophy.
