We had a young black tom cat that had the run of the place. He was so full of life he even bullied the dog. All his previous experience and knowledge led him to believe that life would always be the way it had been before. One day he confidently wandered into the dark woods and met something that was beyond his ability to cope. It reminds me of a book I read, "The Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable ”. The author tells the story of a turkey who lives for a thousand days. It is fed by the farmer every day. Each feeding reinforces the belief that it will always be fed my a member of the human race “looking out for it’s best interests“. Then the day before Thanksgiving the farmer shows up with an axe.
Those of us who grew up during the 50’s and 60’s, like the turkey, learned things we thought would always be true. That our homes would always increase in value and be a source of wealth. That a college education would always guarantee a job. That our jobs would always be secure, our wages would increase over time, and there would be a pension waiting for us at the end of our careers. And that the people we elected to protect the American Dream for us would always act “in our best interests.”
I’ve always wondered what life was like for that generation that came of age on the east side of the Berlin Wall. They weren’t allowed to enjoy the freedoms of those on the west side , but surely they were able to find life partners, have children, and experience some joy in the everyday of life. I’ve read that when the wall came down many people were frustrated at the thought of finding their own job instead of one the government provided for them, or having to find their own housing instead of having it assigned to them by the Politburo. So there was a certain security for them in living without freedom.
Japan calls the years of the 1990’s the Lost Decade. That country was rolling along with an expanding economy until it imploded . The circumstances that caused the economic downturn for Japan are similar to what we are seeing in our own country today. The Japanese are traditionally a frugal people and that mitigated the effects of the downturn on everyday life. But, here in America conspicuous consumption is a way of life and if our economy continues to plummet the perceived quality of life for many people will also sink.
In my opinion freedom and security are illusory. We are all like the turkey. We live our lives according to the knowledge we have and the lessons of past experience not even dreaming that there may be something we are unaware of and incapable of discovering that will do us in. We yearn for certainty but meet vicissitude. Perhaps accumulating wealth and possessions should not be the measure of our success considering how things can change so rapidly.
I always go back to Alan Watts who said, :"But tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly."
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4 comments:
Well said. We have to live with those assurances, the expectations but I think the most successful people are those who are open to change and flexible when something new changes what was. Our world may see more changes than has happened in some time but if a person looks at history, it's easy to see how abruptly what one 'knows' can be undone. Sometimes we welcome the change-- sometimes not so much.
You're in a philosophical mood today.
Reading about Christians in the former Soviet Union, they said they were only free in spirit, and that had to be enough. Gone was the gold, guns and private ownership of property. Gone were the churches and a system that rewarded hard work with extra income. I'm afraid we are heading in that direction. Our founders were eagles and we became turkeys, just as you said. The book Aftershock is a good read and quite scary....but a must read.
Eloquent and very representational of the boomer mindset and expectations. The only thing that could have (and should have) prepared us for this turn of events was our unprecedented educations: history tells this same story over and over and over.
How hard to imagine that is the intelligentsia that are coming under attack in a country that deeply valued education and educators...right up until the last quarter of the twentieth century.
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