Saturday, January 31, 2015

Achievement Requires Action Beyond Sharing Lame Memes

It's cute to see people spread motivational sayings around as social media memes.  Toms of Twitter feeds are devoted to squeezing out daily dozens of comforting aphorisms.  It takes zero effort to click a like button.  Unfortunately, real accomplishment always requires far more work than passing a quote around among bots.

Modern Americans have gotten fat, lazy and stupid.  Three generations of expanding middle class entitlement programs got the ball rolling.  Dumbing down public education to the lowest common denominator of what a unionized teacher finds palatable helped move it along.  Cultural worship of self-esteem over the stress of working toward a goal was the coup de grace.  Politicians and popular entertainers who pander to emotionally needy "tall adolescents" put the final nail in the coffin.

Cheap capital and energy make life easy.  Life throughout much of human history has rarely been easy.  Lazy Americans are in for a world of hurt when the the Federal Reserve can no longer accommodate their coddled lifestyles with costless credit.  I expect social media memes during the second half of this decade to reflect the bitterness of many newly impoverished Americans.  Lots of people are going to learn the hard way just how hard life can get.

Wishing on a star does take the wisher to the star.  The star does not care what a wisher thinks.  Goals are great to have.  Making a goal manifest in reality means work, focus, resilience, and perpetual repeats of a grinding cycle with no assurance of success.  Belief is not enough.  Achievement requires action.