Complex Things

Life is both simple and complex.

Everyone deals with life and either instinctively or through early learning we develop a set of skills that we use every day.  Walking, talking, observing, planning, and other almost automatic things that we do without thinking much about them at all.

These skills were the ones required to survive before we achieved a civilized status.  Of course some skill common among primitive people have been lost in our civilized world.  Generally most of us don't need to know how to make a fire, something that was essential to our ancestors.

Life gets complex as we attempt to answer the question why.

This may be the trait that makes us most unique on this planet, although we certainly see a certain amount of inquisitive behavior in other species.

I doubt that many animals, even those close to us genetically speaking, spend a lot of time figuring out how did they get here or why the sun rises and sets.  They have to deal with surviving on a daily basis.

It requires a certain degree of security to worry about things that you don't need today to survive.

We want answers that explain the world around us.  The answers are important and it is this quest for knowledge that led to the rise of our civilizations as we learned how to grow the right plants, exploit the right animals, build shelters that allowed us to populate even hostile portion of the planet and our continuing technological development.

Still, many if not most of us understand very little of how much of this works and we rely on people with knowledge to make things work.

We don't even know how to gather and kill our own food, let alone survive in the "wild".

We certainly don't understand how much of the things we use everyday actually work.

This complexity and lack of knowledge makes us susceptible to those who know or claim to know the answers.  It is this lack of knowledge that leads to both gullibility and suspicion.

We like politicians who give us simple answers.  It is reassuring to think that we can solve a problem simply by doing something simple.

Unfortunately it doesn't work so we start to suspect they are lying to us.  They are, some more than others, but we still go for it over and over.

Its just easier to go with the simple answer, we think we understand it.

Make a Wonderful Life

In the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" we see the story of a supposedly ordinary man who was never able to do the great things he dreamed about but did sacrifice for his family and his neighbors while standing up to the evil bully.

In the middle of the movie, after we get a review of his life he is brought to despair because of an event that wasn't his fault but which threatens to ruin him and everything he has worked for.

He is saved by a Guardian angel who shows him what the town would have been like if he had not been in it, and of course all the "little" things we saw him do weren't done and everything was a lot worse.

In the end it all works out but of course the message is our actions have more impact than we can know.

If you haven't seen the movie, I recommend it, although it is a bit dated.

Its hard non to see it as a fight between the little people and the evil rich person, and there is a message of populism built in where the Building and Loan is helping average folks lead a better life while the rich villain only cares about profits.

Oddly we live in a bit of a topsy-turvy time where a wealthy person  has convinced at least some average folk think he is their champion and the Building and Loan would be the enemy preventing the monied person from putting the money to better use.

Of course the scenario we see in the second half shows a town where slums are prevalent, prostitution and wild living are rampant and people we met in the first half living good lives are now forced to be, well evil, by their circumstances.

In an episode of Seinfeld, a character who had never seen the movie is made to watch it and his conclusion is that the "bad" town looked like a lot more fun than the "wholesome" town and the heroes were reversed.

Its a bit like our current situation with the dotard in charge, Mr. Costanza would be happy.

However, the vast majority of us prefer the town where the average folks live a more wholesome life so do everything you can to help, not hinder is the real message.  It may not seem like much but it may be more than you know.

Life is Hard but Worth It

I've come to the conclusion, possibly erroneously, that we are not making it clear to our children and grandchildren how hard life actually is.

When I was growing up my parents had lived through the great depression and World War 2 and they had no illusions about how life was a struggle and this got communicated to me and my compatriots in many ways.

Of course we had it a lot easier than they did, although of course we had Vietnam which for many was devastating and individuals had their trials but all in all the years I grew up in were just easier and different than the past.

We also had TV which, more than radio, showed you a rosy view of the world and how all problems got solved.  You had families that seemed too perfect to be true (they were) and everyone was good looking, well dressed and in a mere 30 minutes to an hour less commercials, the situations got resolved.

Of course for many of us life wasn't like T.V. but we all wanted it to be like that and disregarding the fact that bad things did happen to some people, we were able as a generation to celebrate the sexual revolution, the age of Aquarius, the overall success of the economy and the abundance of good paying jobs.

We had been taught by the prior generation that things could be hard, but most of the time they weren't and when they did go bad we had identity crises.

The ideas and values we passed along were very different than the ones we were raised with and the new reality was reinforced by technology which was explosive in development and usage.

Our children weren't sent out to play, they went on play dates, carefully arranged to be with the right people.

They didn't play pick up games, they engaged in organized sports supervised and watched.

We started awarding people for participation instead of winning and while at some point winning was rewarded, losing wasn't your fault anymore.

The list goes on and on and of course there are exceptions but the world the latter generations grew up in was presented as less dangerous and more reliable.

It wasn't though, its still hard and so when things like the financial crisis or tech bust came along, the reaction of many wasn't to get up and work harder, it was to look for someone to blame.

Others looked for someone who promised to fix it.

I have a lot of faith in humanity and ultimately people will rise to the occasion, they always have.  I'm a afraid though we did many a disservice and because of that they might have to deal with harder times than they should have.

Don't give up.  It might seem harder than it looked (it is) but life is a glorious thing and when you finally do what you need to do to get past your troubles, it will all be worth it.

It really will because in the end life is actually all about participation so participate.

Saturday Thoughts

America is not falling apart and the current generation is doing just fine.

The old days weren't better, we were just younger.

Live the best you can and treat others with respect.

If you let a rabble rouser get you excited, it makes you rabble.

We really need to take care of the world we are in, don't have any others.

We only get to use it for a time before we have to give it to the next generation.

If someone came into your house and released a bunch of noxious fumes, you would be pretty pissed off.

Bad things happen to good people, its not their fault.

Remember, news is not the whole story, just report mostly bad things.

Don't worry about what everyone else is doing, do all the good you can.

We all live in a world that we create, make it a good one.

Have some fun.