Don’t Show Up. Be There!
August 29, 2015 Leave a comment
Do you know the Olympics motto? “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Latin for “Faster, Higher, Stronger”)
I bet you know Nike’s motto just from their swipe logo: “Just Do It.”
Why as Americans have we turned from away from meritocracy toward a progressive Disneyland of ‘equal’ ‘happy’ outcomes? Is it because of laziness? Perhaps. Is it due to sociologists and psychologists and therapists promoting untethered self-esteem and dignity? Most likely. Is it due to the politically partisan pandering of materialism by Progressives which demands an unnatural faux-equality to gain votes? Most likely. Whatever the lack of motivation, the Apostle Paul (c. 5 – c. 67) knew that man’s inherent idleness would kick in if he smelled a free lunch:
“And, indeed, when we were with you, we gave you this command: Those who won’t work shouldn’t eat!” Paul’s letter to the church at Thessalonica, 2 Thessalonians 3:10
For the people who have to prove themselves day after day, an athlete for example, the fact is that they have to earn their place on the team. Sports fans take meritocracy as a matter of fact. Why can’t we as an American people not only dream but also train and discipline our lives to create the outcomes that we desire to happen, as a matter of fact?
Every time we let government try to make equal outcomes happen we lose liberty, becoming ever more enslaved.
Do you know Pittsburgh Steelers’ linebacker James Harrison’s motto? “Earn it.”
PITTSBURGH, PA – DECEMBER 28: James Harrison #92 of the Pittsburgh Steelers warms up prior to the game against the Cincinnati Bengals at Heinz Field on December 28, 2014 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)
“James Harrison won’t let his sons accept participation trophies”
Pittsburgh Steelers’ linebacker:
“[James]Harrison took to social media this weekend to lash out at the idea that his sons should receive participation trophies simply for playing sports, saying that when he found out his sons were given such trophies, he demanded that they be sent back. Harrison believes that a trophy should be something you earn by being the best, not something you receive just for trying.
“I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothingmaking them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best…cause sometimes your best is not enough, and that should drive you to want to do better…not cry and whine until somebody gives you something to shut u up and keep you happy.”
Harrison concluded with the hashtag, “Harrison Family Values.” In James Harrison’s household, there’s no credit given for just showing up. If you want a trophy, you’d better win.”
James Harrison Instagram
~~~
At the beginning of last year I posted the following article about the futility of utilitarian egalitarianism
“Egalitarianism. Is It Equal To The Task?”
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”
Here the Apostle Paul is writing a word of encouragement to the church in Corinth (1 Cor. 9:24). Remember Corinth? It is a city is in Greece, Greece being the birthplace of the Olympics.
Should Olympians ‘race’ when everyone gets the same prize at the finish line?
Egalitarianism = equal outcomes. And equal outcomes are what Progressives want to have happen within our legal system, within our education system-within society as a whole.
Egalitarianism is posited as a means to create the unspoken Utopian bureaucratic island where near-perfect socio-politico-legal systems exist and where no one has advantage over another except for the so-called elite who have been ‘blessed’ with “superior intellect.” Only they know enough to define life for you. (e.g., Cass Sunstein’s recent Nudge book).
In my younger days I was a sprinter. I would run many heats and then the final events. To do so I had to prepare for the weekly track meet. I will use my own ‘summer event’ experience to help you to consider whether egalitarianism is equal to the hard work and discipline required for life’s trials and to decide whether the rise of “egalitarianism” will benefit or hurt our society.
I wrote the following anecdote/moral fable based of my understanding of the “Constrained Vision” and the “Unconstrained Vision” as delineated by Thomas Sowell in his own favorite book “A Conflict of Visions”:
A Tale of Two Foot Races
Race Number One:
Eight men enter a race. They are roughly about the same height and weight but come from very different backgrounds. The eight men enter the race knowing that there will only be one winner. It was for this outcome that they had prepared themselves with rigorous discipline during the past four years.
Months prior to the track meet the eight men are told of the rules: A runner must run in qualifying heats. If the runner is successful in those heats the runner will then be allowed to compete in the final race with the other qualifying runners; a runner who jumps the gun twice at the starting line will be disqualified as having a “false start”; the commands “Ready”, “Set” and a gunshot will be used by a track official to start the race fairly; each runner must stay in his lane or he will be disqualified; runners will be timed and the first runner to cross the finish line will be the winner of the race.
The runners all agree and sign off on the rules before the race.
On the day of the race and after qualifying in the heats eight runners come to the starting line. They know that they must run straight ahead in their own lane to reach the one-hundred meter line. They know that if they jump the gun twice they will be disqualified from running. They know that they must sprint as hard as they can to cross the finish line first. They are knowingly competing for first place. The race before them has now become the culmination of years of exhausting training and dedication to finishing the race and receiving first prize.
When the race is announced the runners shed their sweats and come to the starting line. The track official then announces, “Ready”. The runners will then carefully position their legs into the starting blocks and place their open hands stretched behind the starting line.
Once the runners have settled the track official then snaps “Set”. The runners immediately come up to a “set position”, coiled in their starting block. With the burst of the starting pistol eight men bolt from their starting blocks and run down the track as fast as their disciplined bodies will carry them.
The winner of the race is the one who breaks the tape. There is also a second, a third and fourth place finisher. The runners-up each congratulate the winner for his speed and, implicitly, for his fidelity to the rules and his commitment to the sport of racing.
The first three finishers receive medals, adulation and wreaths of honor from the thousands who have come to watch a fair race between those who have so vigorously prepared themselves. The experience of the race has bolstered each runner’s self-esteem. The cheering crowd is also moved by each runner’s self-sacrifice, dedication and self-discipline. This spectacle has confirmed the crowd’s understanding of playing by the rules and aspiring to excel within those rules. Those who witnessed the race that day are stirred, encouraged to excel at what they do.
All eight racers later return home. The runners-up are now more dedicated than ever to prepare for another day of racing and to receiving their own crown of victory. Ciltius, altius, fortius.
Race Number Two:
Eight men enter a race. They are roughly about the same height, weight but come from very different backgrounds. The eight men entered the race knowing that everyone will be a winner. It was for this outcome that they saw no need to prepare themselves with rigorous discipline during the past four years. They just had to show up.
Months prior to the race the eight men are told the rules. They are told the rules are subject to change at the time of the race based on the current ad hoc articulated reasoning of one superior intellectual with unquestionable virtue. A runner must run in qualifying heats but this will not be a constraint. Whether or not a runner is successful in those heats he will be allowed to compete in the final race with other ‘qualifying’ runners. The heats are basically events created to satisfy the need for more equality.
More rules: a runner who jumps the gun twice at the starting line will not be disqualified from running. Instead he will be given another chance; the commands “Ready” and “Set” and a gun shot will be used by a track official to start the race fairly, though any sincere attempt to cooperate with the official will be accepted; each runner must stay in his lane or he will be disqualified unless, of course, their background is such that they have never stayed within the lines; runners will not be timed because such keeping of minutes would be discrimination against slower runners. The first runner to cross the finish line will wait at the finish line so that everyone will be considered a winner of the race. This must be done at any personal cost to the first one crossing the finish line.
The runners agree and sign off on the rules before the race.
On the day of the race all of the runners come to the starting line. They know that they are supposed to run down to the finish line before the outcome-determining patrons. They know that there will be equal prizes and the egalitarian appreciation of well-wishers to look forward to. They are going to run for this reason. This race is now the culmination of years of knowing that the battle is just showing up and doing what you are told.
When all the runners are in their starting blocks and their hands are behind the starting line the track official then says, “Ready”. After a long moment of reasoned judgment the official says “Set”. The runners come up to set position. Then the race official shoots the starting gun. The eight men come out of their starting blocks and run down the track as fast as their unfocused discipline has trained them.
At the finish line everyone is a Finisher, even those who left the race due to being out of breath. There are hand-shakes and kudos all around for having shown up for such an event.
At the awards ceremony all the runners receive medals and congratulations. Thousands have come to watch a race between runners who have shown up for a race where the outcome was predetermined to be fair – fair as defined by the few judges of superior intellect and of unquestioned virtue.
Later, all the runners return home and rest for another day of showing up.
Unions, Socialism and RoadKill?
September 19, 2015 Leave a comment
Just the other day I was verbally assaulted with socialism.
Per my usual workday I was taking the morning commuter into downtown Chicago. As I stand in the train’s vestibule I visit with my fellow travelers. Our conversations run the gamut of silly to bordering on the unspoken: politics, religion and money.
Well, just as I mentioned, I was slimed by socialism.
As I was talking with my friends a guy comes into the vestibule to wait out the rest of the ride. He was apparently eager to get off the train and light up a smoke.
Victory cigarettes
Wearing a chartreuse tee-shirt of a union pipefitter (seen around Chicago) and with a pack of smokes in his one breast pocket, this guy proceeded to let us know that he arrived.
One of our group asked him where he worked and what he did. (We usually try to engage everyone who ‘visits” the vestibule.)
The guy mentioned that he was working in a building downtown “putting in 24” pipe.” He spoke with the raspy demonic-sounding voice of a heavy smoker.
Then, without prompting and like striking flint, he said, “I hate corporate America. I hate the rich, highly paid CEOs. Who needs gold toilet seats?!” “You think union workers get paid a lot. You should see what they take out of my paycheck!”
“OK?” I said to myself. Well, here we go again: typical union griping, now on a Thursday morning.
I have heard the same sort of discontent (putting it nicely) from union postal workers, train conductors, teachers, electricians, plumbers, service workers-from all of them. And, whether the gripe is about pay grade, work time, pecking order, vacation time, labor management (a partial list of complaints, to be sure) I have heard it all. Union people have left their destiny in the hands of others in hopes of being insured against unhappiness. Guess again. Socialism takes regular drawdowns on your account of happiness.
I have heard the same sort of morbid discontent as campaign vote pandering. It slips off the politician’s tongues (here paraphrased) as “zero sum anthropogenic poverty caused by the rich and CO2”, “…limited pie…”, “…we need unlimited government…”, and (verbatim) “Fair share”; “The 1%”.
Victory Gin
All such materialism driven policies enacted to “unionize” society, in my estimation, reduce life to a boring unromantic dystopia. In other words these politicians want you to, “go drink your 1984 Victory Gin and be happy. We will take care of you. Do what you were told with what we gave you. There is no romance in Socialism so don’t even think of love, only of sex.” (Hah, imagine Hollywood under socialist financial constraints! Morally, Hollywood is already dependent on the lowest common cultural denominator.)
I decided not to talk to the union guy unless others broached a response and decided to go there. I could tell by his demeanor that this guys’ mind was probably as darkened as his lungs must be.
He went on to speak about his working on and off again depending on … when work is made available to him…through the union. Months would go by until he got a call.
Then he spoke of his heart’s desire: “My precious!”-The long awaited-for pension. With wide-eyed craving he spoke of his retirement: “Only six more years of this stuff left.”
Unions have a unique way of making people ache for the ring of retirement. I’ve seen it firsthand. It comes, I believe, from the on and off nature of union work along with boredom and plenty of worrisome smokes in between, a situation this guy and others let others control. Socialism is losing control of your life while waiting for the day you can retire and live off your meager pension and then, likely, smoke and drink yourself to death within a short time. Union-socialism roadkill. I’ve seen it over and over.
At this point I wanted to ask him who runs his pension and ask if it was invested in something more than a saving account making 0.01% interest or a CD making 0.09 % interest. Or, was his pension invested in equities and bonds, more appreciable (and risky) financial vehicles.
One could easily figure that the “highly paid” union lords control his pension (and get their cut) and that the union pension fund itself is managed by outside financial managers who manage stock and bond purchases of the union’s pension fund.
The “highly paid” overseers of his pension as fiduciaries must look at the composite financials of companies with stock and bond offerings to determine the best option to apply to a conservative pension, to have it grow while minimizing risk.
Obviously this union guy knew pipefitting and welding. But he did not know finances let alone how to find work on his own. He, instead, left others in charge of providing him work and with overseeing his “precious” pension.
Right then and there I wanted to say to this guy that when you leave your life in the hands of others they will charge you for their effort, including “highly paid” labor leaders (e.g., Richard Trumka).
-“Scores of union leaders earn six-figure salaries”
Here’s the arrogant and petty AFL-CIO union thug Richard Trumka tweeting his call for “two minutes hate” directed at Gov. Scott Walker who is dropping out of the 2016 presidential race:
“Highly paid” CEOs are charged with managing a company so as to make its value grow and to make its stockholders happy with the company’s prospects for future earnings. The company’s worth must appreciate in value. And when a company’s stock appreciates in value many people benefit. This includes employees who receive stock as a bonus. Pension funds invested in such a company’s stock also grow in value. Somehow I think any such statement to him would not meld with his union-socialist-collectivist way of life. He would go into Elizabeth Warren override.
I left out this: companies run by “highly paid” CEOs hire people and pay them to function within the company. Together CEOs and the people make the company profitable or otherwise. The people are free to stay or move on depending on their satisfaction with any number of things including pay, management, location, etc. “Highly paid” CEOs increase value. Collectivist governments, socialist governments and unions depreciate value-especially, your value, via coercive egalitarianism.
Those of us in the Kingdom of God must not take the wide way that is offered to us either by a self-described socialist such as Bernie Sanders or by a self-described “Christian” magazine called Sojourners which uses the banner of “social justice.”
Government is not altruistic. Government could never hit the moving “socially just” target without being totally controlling. Government can never offer a hurting person what a Good Samaritan can-one on one help. Government is impersonal, indifferent, insouciant.
And, as we have seen, redistribution of our wealth, filtered through the labyrinth of government funnels, distributes only fractional amounts of money to people government cannot even begin to keep track of and large amounts just to make bureaucracy function. Socialism burgeons while you diminish.
The unions, the Collective, Progressives, liberal “Christians” and even Pope Francis want “Social Justice”. What is this carrot on a stick dangled in front of us?
~~~
I have written elsewhere about this subject before. When I have I’ve turned to the parable of the Good Samaritan to make the point that we need to be involved in one another’s lives personally (like our Savior) and NOT via the million degrees of separation known as bureaucratic “Social Justice.”
The Rev. Robert Sirico, “American Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the Acton Institute”, provides us with clear-cut insight into the bureaucratization of “good intentions” versus the personification of good (good becoming man):
“The Marxist political analysis that remains popular (if now usually disguised) in many universities and even seminaries, tends to pit the poor against the rich—it’s all about class warfare and alienation. The alternative vision that I have been trying to paint in these pages is beautifully distilled in the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story that has held a persistent fascination for the religious and non-religious readers alike. Of course, like all parables, its primary meaning is Christological and moral, rather than political. But it’s also possible to discern other messages in this story.
In Luke’s Gospel, a Samaritan man (someone on the margins of Jewish society in this period) stops to help a man who was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. When the Samaritan comes upon him, he helps the beaten man from his own resources. Even when the Samaritan has to delegate the care to the man for a time to an innkeeper, he promises to pay the innkeeper back. The Samaritan was on the scene to see and understand the fallen man’s specific needs—he was the man’s “neighbor”—and he went about meeting those needs. From this standpoint, the Samaritan might be justly described as the principle subsidiary in action. Notice, too, that he would have been hard-pressed to meet the needs of the injured man if he hadn’t first possessed enough personal wealth to hire services of the innkeeper. Lady Thatcher’s memorable insight about this text is to the point: “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.”” (emphasis added)
Passage from “Why Smart Charity Works—and Welfare Doesn’t”, “Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for the Economy” by Rev. Robert Sirico
Rev. Sirico recommends reading “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass” by Theodore Dalrymple. I have read it and recommend it as well.
~~~
Added 9-20-2015:
It’s “1984” all over again…
“Within the book [George Orwells’1984], the purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is said to satisfy the citizens’ subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a wretched, controlled existence. By re-directing these subconscious feelings away from the Oceanian government and toward external enemies (which probably do not even exist), the Party minimizes subversive thought and behavior.” (emphasis added)
“Ostensibly, [Emmanuel] Goldstein serves as a convenient scapegoat for the totalitarian regime in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and justifies its surveillance and elimination of civil liberties.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
Union members, as with so many others of the media-collectivist-“It takes a village…” persuasion make use of the “Goldstein Effect”, a term coined by legal scholar Cass Sunstein.
As mentioned above the effect is a means of scapegoating but it is also a means of psychological distraction and redirection.
The subverted thinking of the union member as revealed in my anecdote above is directed with anger at the “highly paid CEOs” and therefore away from the ”highly paid’ labor leaders and away from the “highly paid” Big Brother candidates those “highly paid” labor leaders support. The “enemies” generalized and amorphous existence is a product of the media’s PC Ministry of Truth, the collective’s means to larger-than–life vilification.
[The] “Goldstein Effect”, [is] described as “the ability to intensify public concern by giving a definite face to the adversary, specifying a human source of the underlying threat.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein
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Filed under Culture, Economics, Political Commentary, Progressivism Tagged with 1%, AFL-CIO, CEOs, Goldstein Effect, progressivism, redistribution of wealth, Ricard Trumka, socialism, unions