PHKaplok Kaplok
Forum Guru
The first question we're likely to encounter in a new meeting with somebody is
"what do you do (for a living)?"
and according to how you answer that question, you'll either be praised and become a subject of interest, or you'll be left alone by the peanuts and this suggests to me that we live in a world of snobs. And a snob is really anyone who takes a small part of you, and uses that to come to a universal and rigid sense of who you are, and how much you matter.
The kind of snobbery that is dominant in the world today is not around bloodlines or lineage or your closeness to the president, as it used to be but:
what job you have and in particular;
how impressive your powers of financial
accumulation are;
And according to that criteria, people will judge you immediately.
So it's sometimes said that we live in a materialistic world.
I don't think we live in a materialistic world. We simply live in a world where material accumulation has become the gateway to the respect and love that we all crave. It's not really the riches and the fast cars, etc, that we crave. It's the honor and love that they are a conduit to.
They are perhaps the only conduit to.
And that's a different way of looking at so-called greed. The next time you drive, those time you walk down the road and you see somebody driving a ferrari don't think this is somebody who's greedy, who's materialistic. Think first and foremost, this is somebody with an incredibly intense need for love. Who has not been able to find the honor and respect they need in normal ways and therefore they're needing so much more stuff in order to feel they have the right to exist.
If you can deal with just riding a bike through town and that's okay. Something's gone right in your past.
If you're a parent, and your child has no ambition to become famous you're doing something right, because that means that that person is able to deal with being them - without too much other stuff.
I think one of the most beautiful but also dangerous ideas, it's an American idea, is the notion that anyone can achieve anything. And we hear these messages from everywhere. That is the spirit of our times. It's a beautiful message but it's a dangerous message.
Because if you really believe in a world where you can do anything..
and you've only done a bit..
you've only done something..
my goodness how crushed you will feel the possibilities for humiliation are so much greater now.
If you go to an American bookshop and you look at the self-help section, there are basically two kinds of books:
On that shelf, the first kind is books telling you how to make a million dollars in an afternoon.
And the other books are books telling you how to cope with, what they call, "low self-esteem". The two are totally related! If you live in a culture that's telling you how to make a million dollars in an afternoon, you can have a massive self-esteem problem because, how can you achieve esteem of yourself when you're going to be part of the 99%, not the 1%, most of us are going to have an ordinary life.
So what have we done?
Building a world in which an ordinary life is not good enough.
This is crazy.
This is a form of self torture.
We've now created a life where an ordinary life is materially more comfortable than it's ever been, an ordinary life:
you're going to have a good vehicle;
you're going to be able to have a bath every night;
you're going to have a roof over your head;
you're going to have pretty nourishing food.
So materially, an ordinary life is terrific...
..But then we've put a snake in the grass. We've ruined paradise that we've built and our ancestors have built for ourselves. By telling ourselves that actually contrary to everything we hoped for, actually an ordinary life is, psychologically, not good enough. It's not good enough just to ride an ordinary vehicle and have an ordinary house and have an ordinary bath once a day and have an ordinary meal.
"No.. that's not good enough."
You need to be extraordinary. Become Mark Zuckerberg. Become somebody else. This is a kind of torture that we've imposed on ourselves. We're insane...
How have we made a life where the the statistical odds of you leading that life the 99% surety that you will lead that life has come to seem like a humiliation and the wrong sort of life? This is setting yourself up for disaster.
The Danish are clever. In Denmark they've built a society for losers. They have understood, unlike the Americans or the Brits, that most of us are going to be losers. So, they've made sure that schools for losers are going to be fantastic. And trains for losers are going to be beautiful. And kindergarten's for losers...
...I'm using the word "Loser" with irony. I'm using the word loser to define actually all of us the 99% are going to be. We are all of us almost fated and in every area of life we will encounter failure. We're fated to be ordinary. An ordinary life is a good life. And let's not torture ourselves that the only way to be good enough is to be extraordinary. This is poison.
Don't get me wrong. A bit of ambition is fantastic a bit of get up and go is fantastic. We're not in any danger of being unambitious. The danger now is suicide.
I'm putting it at its darkest. the danger is that we will feel so inadequate in relation to the expectations placed upon us, that we may choose to end our own lives.
And this happens in huge numbers. We are suffering from an epidemic of mental unwellness largely bred by the expectation that our lives will be stellar. When in fact they are far more likely only to be ordinary. Our lack of acceptance of ourselves has made us sick.
Meritocracy is based on the idea that people will get what they deserve. If you really believe in a world in which those who get to the top, deserve to get to the top, you're going to be believing in a world in which those who are at the bottom deserve to be there. So, being poor and so-called unsuccessful moves from being 'a problem' to being a condemnation of your society on you. You move from being an unfortunate to being a loser, and it's incredibly punitive.
So, no wonder people take that very badly and they do. We don't need any more reminders from General Patton or anyone else to
"get up and go and be a winner."
We know that that's in our DNA now as modern human beings. We've had that message and it's making us sick. We know it's so well. We know it too well.
And we need to hear another message and that message is:
you're okay...
it's okay...
it's okay to fail...
it's okay to be ordinary..
it's okay not to know what's going on...
it's okay to be lost in the universe, most of whose recesses will always be darkness to us...
....That's all of it, it's okay.
Joy is not gonna be making 10 million dollars. Joy is going to be a drink with a friend. Joy is going to be a meal that turns out okay. Joy is going to be a day at the end of which no one's died there's been no crisis it's been, more or less, all right.
Love is not going to be perfection. Love is going to be occasionally a hand held by somebody who understands bits of you, never the whole of you, but has charity towards your darkest moments.
You know that is the life we're going to lead and...
LET THAT BE OKAY.
"what do you do (for a living)?"
and according to how you answer that question, you'll either be praised and become a subject of interest, or you'll be left alone by the peanuts and this suggests to me that we live in a world of snobs. And a snob is really anyone who takes a small part of you, and uses that to come to a universal and rigid sense of who you are, and how much you matter.
The kind of snobbery that is dominant in the world today is not around bloodlines or lineage or your closeness to the president, as it used to be but:
what job you have and in particular;
how impressive your powers of financial
accumulation are;
And according to that criteria, people will judge you immediately.
So it's sometimes said that we live in a materialistic world.
I don't think we live in a materialistic world. We simply live in a world where material accumulation has become the gateway to the respect and love that we all crave. It's not really the riches and the fast cars, etc, that we crave. It's the honor and love that they are a conduit to.
They are perhaps the only conduit to.
And that's a different way of looking at so-called greed. The next time you drive, those time you walk down the road and you see somebody driving a ferrari don't think this is somebody who's greedy, who's materialistic. Think first and foremost, this is somebody with an incredibly intense need for love. Who has not been able to find the honor and respect they need in normal ways and therefore they're needing so much more stuff in order to feel they have the right to exist.
If you can deal with just riding a bike through town and that's okay. Something's gone right in your past.
If you're a parent, and your child has no ambition to become famous you're doing something right, because that means that that person is able to deal with being them - without too much other stuff.
I think one of the most beautiful but also dangerous ideas, it's an American idea, is the notion that anyone can achieve anything. And we hear these messages from everywhere. That is the spirit of our times. It's a beautiful message but it's a dangerous message.
Because if you really believe in a world where you can do anything..
and you've only done a bit..
you've only done something..
my goodness how crushed you will feel the possibilities for humiliation are so much greater now.
If you go to an American bookshop and you look at the self-help section, there are basically two kinds of books:
On that shelf, the first kind is books telling you how to make a million dollars in an afternoon.
And the other books are books telling you how to cope with, what they call, "low self-esteem". The two are totally related! If you live in a culture that's telling you how to make a million dollars in an afternoon, you can have a massive self-esteem problem because, how can you achieve esteem of yourself when you're going to be part of the 99%, not the 1%, most of us are going to have an ordinary life.
So what have we done?
Building a world in which an ordinary life is not good enough.
This is crazy.
This is a form of self torture.
We've now created a life where an ordinary life is materially more comfortable than it's ever been, an ordinary life:
you're going to have a good vehicle;
you're going to be able to have a bath every night;
you're going to have a roof over your head;
you're going to have pretty nourishing food.
So materially, an ordinary life is terrific...
..But then we've put a snake in the grass. We've ruined paradise that we've built and our ancestors have built for ourselves. By telling ourselves that actually contrary to everything we hoped for, actually an ordinary life is, psychologically, not good enough. It's not good enough just to ride an ordinary vehicle and have an ordinary house and have an ordinary bath once a day and have an ordinary meal.
"No.. that's not good enough."
You need to be extraordinary. Become Mark Zuckerberg. Become somebody else. This is a kind of torture that we've imposed on ourselves. We're insane...
How have we made a life where the the statistical odds of you leading that life the 99% surety that you will lead that life has come to seem like a humiliation and the wrong sort of life? This is setting yourself up for disaster.
The Danish are clever. In Denmark they've built a society for losers. They have understood, unlike the Americans or the Brits, that most of us are going to be losers. So, they've made sure that schools for losers are going to be fantastic. And trains for losers are going to be beautiful. And kindergarten's for losers...
...I'm using the word "Loser" with irony. I'm using the word loser to define actually all of us the 99% are going to be. We are all of us almost fated and in every area of life we will encounter failure. We're fated to be ordinary. An ordinary life is a good life. And let's not torture ourselves that the only way to be good enough is to be extraordinary. This is poison.
Don't get me wrong. A bit of ambition is fantastic a bit of get up and go is fantastic. We're not in any danger of being unambitious. The danger now is suicide.
I'm putting it at its darkest. the danger is that we will feel so inadequate in relation to the expectations placed upon us, that we may choose to end our own lives.
And this happens in huge numbers. We are suffering from an epidemic of mental unwellness largely bred by the expectation that our lives will be stellar. When in fact they are far more likely only to be ordinary. Our lack of acceptance of ourselves has made us sick.
Meritocracy is based on the idea that people will get what they deserve. If you really believe in a world in which those who get to the top, deserve to get to the top, you're going to be believing in a world in which those who are at the bottom deserve to be there. So, being poor and so-called unsuccessful moves from being 'a problem' to being a condemnation of your society on you. You move from being an unfortunate to being a loser, and it's incredibly punitive.
So, no wonder people take that very badly and they do. We don't need any more reminders from General Patton or anyone else to
"get up and go and be a winner."
We know that that's in our DNA now as modern human beings. We've had that message and it's making us sick. We know it's so well. We know it too well.
And we need to hear another message and that message is:
you're okay...
it's okay...
it's okay to fail...
it's okay to be ordinary..
it's okay not to know what's going on...
it's okay to be lost in the universe, most of whose recesses will always be darkness to us...
....That's all of it, it's okay.
Joy is not gonna be making 10 million dollars. Joy is going to be a drink with a friend. Joy is going to be a meal that turns out okay. Joy is going to be a day at the end of which no one's died there's been no crisis it's been, more or less, all right.
Love is not going to be perfection. Love is going to be occasionally a hand held by somebody who understands bits of you, never the whole of you, but has charity towards your darkest moments.
You know that is the life we're going to lead and...
LET THAT BE OKAY.