I got an email from someone recently in which she said “I hope you’re doing well.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I hadn’t actually been asked a question.
“Hope you are doing well” sounds great, sounds like something a thoughtful friend would say, but actually it’s almost worse than not saying anything at all. I mean, it kind of relieves the well-wisher of any responsibility to do anything if the answer is less than optimal. Without having actually asked how I’m doing, she doesn’t have to give a shit or to offer to help me in any way, even if it’s just to listen. But she can go away from this interaction feeling like she’s been a good friend because she’s wished me well, even if it’s in a “Have-a-nice-day” sort of way.
Of course, if I complain about this, I’m needy or greedy or hyper-critical or whatever. You know the drill. “People love as much as they can.” The idea being that even a bad friend is better than no friend.
I think anyone who can be satisfied with this sort of pseudo-caring must be one of the “better than nothing” ilk. Fill in the blank: “Bad _____ is better than no _____.”
Well, I beg to differ. Bad friends are way worse. I’ll take being alone any day of the week over being neglected. Over being around people who actually make me feel lonely, which, when I’m by myself, I almost never feel. I hate this idea that seems to have permeated the culture that we should cater to the least common denominator, even if it’s inside ourselves, be satisfied with less, water down our standards for just about everything because, well, it’s better than nothing.Where on earth did this come from? Some kind of cultural guilt that makes it impossible to push one’s plate away and say “Thanks but no thanks, that’s not good enough. I’m not going to lower my standards, and I’m not interested.”
Another weird interaction recently. A neighbor of mine decided it was okay to just yell & scream at me periodically. She did this a couple of times and I quit talking to her. When she’s not yelling & screaming she’s actually a nice person, but I got out of the habit of letting friends alternate yelling & gift-giving a long time ago. I mean, if I wanted that, I’d still be married. I’d really rather forego the presents if it means not being yelled at. But of course she’s furious now, because I don’t talk to her anymore, in the way only someone whose really unappealing terms have just been rejected can be.
I figured out a long time ago that every relationship, whether it’s lovers or people arguing across the table in the board room, boils down to one thing: The person who needs the least has all the power. In the above situation, the one with the yelling neighbor, I needed less and therefore had the power in that negotiation. I find this to be behind a lot of people’s anger in relationships–and especially at the end of relationships. That loss of face, that moment when they realize they’ve lost a negotiation they didn’t even know they were involved in. People never actually say: “I want to be in a relationship, and here are my terms,” but that’s exactly what’s happening. Yelling lady was saying “Here are my terms: I get to call you my friend, and you put up with me alternating screaming and bringing you flowers.” My ex said the same thing. I said “No” to both, and they’ve never stopped being pissed off.
As for Well-Wisher, the negotiation with her went something like this: I get to call you my friend, and you come see me all the time but I never come to see you.” As absurd as this proposition sounds, I actually did think about it for awhile. In the end I said “No thanks, sounds like a shitty deal.” Now I’m the bad guy because I got offered a car with two wheels & said I’d rather walk.
The balls of these people. Talk about asking high. Everyone is hoping to find that great friend who expects nothing. OH! There, I’ve said it. The “E” word. When did expecting something from friends get such a bad rap? When was everyone supposed to be forgiven everything because whatever they can come up with in the way of friendship is, well, better than nothing?
I continue to have expectations of people who call themselves my friends. That makes me an asshole, I know. But I feel that to do anything else is to cater to the worst that person can be. To start expecting less of people says I think less of them, think they are not capable of much, have lowered the bar. I don’t think that does anyone any favors, least of all the other person. It’s downright insulting, though I continue to be amazed at how many people would rather be insulted in that way than stretch themselves as human beings. I continue to expect the best from people I think highly of. It’s the best way I can express my respect. The moment I tell you that I think what you have to offer is “better than nothing,” it means I’ve given up on you. Accepted that you can’t do any better. Are not worth my time.
I endured watching that Waddell seal being bagged because I told myself it was for some greater good; that something about that milk would prevent the extinction of a species or cure cancer in humans. Imagine my disgust to find out that the research being done was in “human weight loss.” Now, please tell me the “weight loss” being talked about is the unintentional cachexia experienced by people or animals with disease and is not going to form the basis for the next big Phen-fen, from which some pharma company will make billions of dollars catering to a lot of obese humans, all on the back of that harmless seal who was minding her own business and could, as I do, give a scheit about human weight loss. Someone, please.
A wheel stopper came off my MC UG775 (not 773). I replaced it with a non-Panasonic type. It fit, but eventually came off. I have since bought replacements from 2 different retailers. They were both new-in-package Panasonic replacement parts (Panasonic AC74SUSZ00 STOPPER WHEEL) but do not fit. They cannot be pushed, pried, or hammered onto the bar. The first time I thought maybe it was just that shipment, maybe they were defective. But the second ones also do not fit. What is the model # for this replacement? Is the bar a different size? Is there some trick to getting them on?
Thank you.
***
Thank you for contacting Panasonic. Based on the information you have provided, we recommend having a service technician help you with installing the part. You may contact the following authorized service facilities:
A-DISCOUNT VACUUM
619-588-6454
BOBS VACUUM
805-967-2667
We hope this information is useful to you.
(case number: 30267345)
****
Well, no, this is not helpful. For one thing, both the retailers I bought the parts from referred me to you. Bringing my machine to the repair places you mention would mean driving 200 to 400 miles to have someone “instruct” me about how to push a donut onto a dowel, something I already know how to do. The problem is that the stoppers were not machined to fit my vacuum cleaner, and I need help from you, not from another person who is going to refer me to Panasonic.
Thanks, and please try a little harder.
****
Thank you for your response. Please provide us with your contact number and the time we can reach you. A representative will contact you and help you with your concern.
Kindly take note of your case number: 30267345
Upon receiving your response, we will evaluate your case.
This film should be shown to psych students as a hideous example of transference/countertransference and projection. Indeed, some of the responses to this post are great examples of same. My post seems to have pushed a lot of buttons, but I learned long ago to get out of the way of the crossfire between a person and him-/herself, so I’m stepping aside and letting my detractors illustrate exactly what I’m saying better than I ever could.
Susanna was looking for someone to take blame, and she found it in Monika, who was looking for someone to blame her. A match made in heaven. Susanna has the whole world empathizing, sympathizing. Was it horrific? Of course. It was worse than unspeakable. But she has a form of comfort in her victimhood that Monika does not have. And Monika is a victim, too, because–and I can’t overstate this–she didn’t do anything. She doesn’t need forgiveness. She was not a perpetrator. And despite everyone’s insistence to the contrary, she is being treated like one, but she opened the door to this by offering herself up as a sacrificial lamb to Susanna, who got to spit, if not on the perpetrator, on someone who looked just like him. In the scene where Susanna tears her a new one for saying what she had been told as a child, I did not see someone who actually believed it. I saw a person offering up the only, albeit feeble, explanation for her denial. I saw someone who was regressing to the person she was when she was told that stuff–a child–and who was simply offering up an explanation as to why she had taken a lifetime to come to terms with the horror her father was. And she was coming to terms with it, as evidenced by her presence at the monument and in Susanna’s company. But her psyche had protected her by giving her that ridiculous explanation. I think that she unfortunately came away with the undeserved blame she was seeking and went away full of ammunition with which to persecute herself for the rest of her days for something she Did Not Do. A whole lot of reviewers of this movie say they understand that Monika was not the perpetrator, but underneath it all, on a deep level, everyone is treating her that way. In the end, Susanna doesn’t need another person’s compassion–she has the compassion of everyone who has ever, and who will ever, hear this story. Monika has no one’s compassion, so that’s who I’m giving mine to.
[This review was originally posted on Amazon and has generated a certain amount of controversy, which I invite you to read here:
[Response to the responder who was “mortified” that I used the name “Susanna” rather than “Helen”]: I did know that her name wasn’t Susanna. Names aren’t all that important to me. They come from people, not from the godhead. Who a person IS comes from the godhead, and you can be certain I know who each woman is. (As a total aside, it might interest you to know that in American Sign Language, people are often referred to by a sign that indicates some physical characteristic, and this can change from context to context and conversation to conversation. I’m not deaf, but it’s a convention I couldn’t agree with more. So remind yourself never to lose your hearing, because you will spend a lot of your time being mortified.)
It is not short-sighted to focus on the way the meeting between the individuals played out. Obviously the individuals and their respective feelings are metaphors for something larger, and I’m sure the filmmaker would agree. If they weren’t, there would have been no point in making the film, since every piece of art is good only to the extent that it touches something more universal than some individual’s day-to-day. In this case, Monika’s feelings were not just her own but were the feelings of the all the children of every perpetrator since the beginning of time, not just the children of the SS; and Su-Helen’s (happy now?) feelings were those of every victim. So it is very much appropriate to focus on the way that meeting played out, and I couldn’t disagree with you more. As sick as it made me to see Helanna’s thinly veiled malice and Monika’s masochism, I understood both, and the value was in educating the viewing public on how NOT to act and providing insight into the complicated relationship between perpetrator, victim, and witness.
[Response to person who thinks I am “repugnant” and “narrow” for continuing to use the name “Susanna” rather than “Helen”]:The godhead is my own personal shorthand for “the nature of the universe.” the buzzing of electrons, the way of Nature, the beauty of the accident of existence. I use the word “godhead” because it provides a common language between me and my friends who are devout and who, unfortunately IMHO, have been taught to anthropomorphize the above. But it has nothing to do with religion; in particular, it has nothing to do with the white bearded man in the sky who “names” things. Re blind men & vision, that’s exactly how I feel about you, so at least we agree on something.
It doesn’t matter to me who takes names seriously or that they do that or why they do that. They are welcome to do so, but it has nothing to do with me or my opinion of the film. To be tolerant of how other people do things doesn’t mean I have to like those things or do them myself, which seems to be your approach. I find it amazing that you consider yourself so sensitive to other cultures, and so against ethnic cleansing, when in fact you aren’t going to be happy until I think the exact same thing you do and appreciate the exact same things you appreciate. That, Guest on my Thread, is the definition of narrowness. In some ways it’s even worse than flat-out bigotry because you think you are open & tolerant. If you were truly tolerant you would understand that there are people in the world who don’t give a scheit about names, but because of your true (“really” true, not “Samuel-Stone-version-of-true”) openness would simply allow that to be. But no, you have to consider me “repugnant” because I don’t place the same value on names that you do. Amazing, but not surprising.
We all get to have different thoughts and ideas and appreciate the things in the universe in our own ways. My personal take on this film is that these people represent elements of human behavior such as blame, repentance, victimization/victimhood, forgiveness, self-persecution, and I’m allowed to think all of that. So it’s barbaric in some cultures to insult a name. What is your point? I’m not going to change my entire take on this film just because you think I should think names are important, or God named Bozo and Gigantor Whatever and Whoever. All 5 of those creatures are just fictional characters to me (well, maybe not Bozo. He actually did exist). And they get to be, because I’m in charge of what I think about the nature of the universe.
And I will say it again: Monika is carrying out her own persecution, but she has nothing to be sorry for. Unfortunately, she believes she does, and the externalization of that belief is Susanna (and all the people who think Monika deserves Susanna’s hostility, whether Monika will ever meet those people or not), just as the externalization of Susanna’s hatred of her persecutor is Monika. You can think whatever you like about my use of names. We all know who I am talking about, and if you want to know, the reason I continue to use “Susanna” is that I think it’s Susanna, not Helen, who is beaming all that malice at Monika. The person she became after she was persecuted and tortured. The person who, and I’m not saying anyone on the planet would act in any other way, became someone so persecuting of an innocent, but then, we all know about children coming to act out as adults the atrocities of their childhoods. So it’s actually pretty accurate. Not to mention, even from inside the schema of holding names to be of some great importance, I think it gives the perpetrator way too much power to keep tiptoeing around the name he gave her. She will be freed of his hold on her when she can say The name you gave me doesn’t matter, because you did not touch my soul. At that point she will probably be freed of her own malice toward Monika as well. This probably won’t affect Monika, though, who will have to find her own way to free herself of her feelings of blame.
But regardless, the letters are just labels, and I don’t have to change the way I conceptualize or express something just because the person I am conceptualizing about thinks names are important. You are welcome to contribute to this discussion, but you are not welcome to come to this thread and use words like “repugnant” and “narrow” and out of the other side of your mouth consider yourself benevolent and evolved. Now mind your manners when you are on my thread, because it’s the same as being on a chair in my living room. In truth, I think my posts are pushing your buttons on some deep level, because your reaction is pretty extreme. You’re focusing your whole attack on my use of names, but I think it’s something else; that *I* am the externalization of something in you that you feel the need to express all this hostility toward…I know unfairness when I see it, and all I am is the person defending Monika. I am indeed aware of the need to prevent the violence from recurring, but I’ve chosen to focus on the violence against Monika as manifested by people who are unable to distinguish between her and her father, and who help to perpetuate her own violence against herself by doing so.
I think there’s something in there that you should look at. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m pretty sure I’m getting caught in the crossfire between You & Mr. Stone.
Conversation between new-age liberal (EW) and staunch libertarian (DD):
EW: My comments were not meant to be taken personally by anyone who self-identifies as any of the above labels. They are simply my perspective on what those labels generally mean to me as IDEALS, and as such are “short hand” ways of generally describing the WORLD as I observe it, not any specific individuals. You’ll note I did not refer to “conservatives” or “liberals” as people, but to “conservatism” and “liberalism” as thought forms.You can choose to take offense because you disagree with my description of these various ideals, or we can talk about where you are personally and what you believe/feel as compared to what I believe/feel about what they mean.For what it’s worth, I don’t self-identify as ANY label. I’m not registered to any political party, and prefer not to consider myself AS “an” anything. My perspective is that energy is always in motion; we make an error when we confuse the energy a person is emitting as defining who a person IS. People are capable of any number of responses across an infinite spectrum of behaviors and emotions in every moment. It’s unfortunate that so many of us have been conditioned to think, “I AM this, or I AM that,” and – through that process – have lost sight of who they truly are. Anything that is impermanent is not the truth of who you are; it can’t be.
DD: Referring to “thought forms” necessitates people who think them, so I think that’s kind of splitting hairs. I mean, when you say “liberalism *wants* something,” you are saying “liberals want something,” because a philosophy in and of itself cannot “want” anything. And you mention that the “human social body wish(es) to reserve the right to contain and constrain those individuals…” So of course you are talking about people, both the members of the social body (that “wishes” something) and the individuals who need constraint. Re my saying “I resent being lumped in,” that wasn’t the point of my comments, which were mainly to point up the gross generalizations you make regarding “conservatism,” “libertarianism,” and “liberalism” (with or without their respective “conservatives,” “libertarians,” and “liberals”). Like it or not, you were making generalizations (and not altogether positive ones) about the people who practice those belief systems, since talking about a political philosophy without mentioning its practitioners is like talking about sound without mentioning an eardrum and, in terms of politics and of philosophy being translated into worldly action is meaningless. And sounds like backpedaling. You may not self-identify, but from where I sit, all your postings, especially the one I originally responded to, with its “definitions” of those orientations, completely belie this and describe someone who has a distinct political bent, energy-in-motion notwithstanding, and a fairly rigid set of criteria for the three orientations you lay out, and if I objected to anything, it was what appeared to be your unwillingness to entertain the idea that, say, a fiscal conservative can have a progressive social agenda, or that there is such a thing as a fiscal conservative, or that not all conservatives subscribe to ancient religious ideologies, or whatever. There seemed to be little to no allowance for crossover. So I would say that what you are telling me now is quite different from what you have been posting. Yes, it is indeed unfortunate that so many have been conditioned to think “I AM this” or “I AM that”; but the 2-party system in our country demands that many people be forced to compromise half their belief systems in order to support the candidates we are “given” to choose from, not to mention that most people don’t consider particle physics when classifying themselves as one thing or another, the benefits of which in terms of the organization of society must be weighed against self-fulfilling prophecy or locking oneself into a particular reality via the power that naming has to do that. Re your last sentence, I think you may mean that “anything that is *permanent* (i.e., that we perceive as such) is not the truth of who you are,” because everything is impermanent, and I totally agree, but again, it’s not always practical to meditate on beingness within the confines of the process by which we arrive at a president. Personally, I believe that god is a present participle verb and on one level even wish “verb” wasn’t a noun. I vote freely on both sides of the aisle and resent the hell out of the fact that my choices (and the information given to me via the debate process, etc.), are so limited. I think the 2-party system is antiquated and broken and no longer accurately reflects the constituency for which it is intended to speak, but I’m not sure that having 50 candidates would fix that particular problem, since the only real fix would be to elect a president by consensus, & I’m not sure how well that would work in a country this size. I strongly oppose big government, especially government intervention in my (or anyone’s) personal life, and I can’t abide slackers.
EW: I’m not so much interested in discussing the merits of various political positionings as I am in discussing the concepts and values that exist beyond the labels. I used the terms “conservatism, libertarianism and progressivism” to represent three distinct modes of thinking. Whether my descriptors were accurate representations of those who identify with those labels or not is not the question I care to pursue.
So…let’s take a step back and look at what it was I was attempting to convey. Perhaps from that place we can reach some accord, or at least a deeper level of understanding.
My premise is that we humans are both/and creatures. We are unique and discrete manifestations of life, and as such we are each utterly precious and bring into this world something that no other being or life form – EVER – can deliver, because there will only ever be one version of YOU/ME that operates in this specific space/time.
At the same time, we are all embedded in a larger living reality, completely and utterly INTERdependent upon all that exists beyond our sense of ‘self’ for our survival. We are here because the totality of reality came together the way it has for countless eons in order to create the precise conditions that enabled us to exist. Change those conditions in any way and we would not be here in this moment as “us.” Our interdependence within a larger living system means we are not entirely free to do as we would like, no matter how deeply we might crave said freedom, because our actions reverberate through that larger system and create consequences; those consequences alter our experience – and the experiences of all other living things within the system we share.
In that, I find that honoring a person’s right to do as he/she wants in the privacy of his/her home and with his/her body (and fully supporting and nurturing every person when it comes to his/her self-actualization) while agreeing that some social constraints are valid and necessary to preserve and protect both social order and the larger living system upon which we ALL depend and that constitutes our shared reality reflects a compassionate, intelligent way for humanity to self-organize that seems most consistent with the truth of who we are and how we operate in this world. It benefits us all when every person is empowered to bring forth the best they have to offer in service to life, because we ARE life…each one of us. We are not separate from anything else, but are exquisitely differentiated aspects of ONE living reality. Thus, what elevates one of us elevates us all, while what diminishes any one of us diminishes us all.
That is the middle way I was pointing to as the most reasonable means of human self-organization, reflecting both our personal autonomy and our social responsibility to the larger system upon which we depend for our survival. (That system, by the way, is not the government itself; it is the planet with its atmosphere, clean waters and food sources that are our GENUINE resources.)
I find that some folks on one extreme end of the spectrum seem to feel unfettered freedom and no government intrusion into the decisions we make is acceptable; others seem to feel that they don’t want their financial and business decisions controlled but that it’s okay for society to control what people do in their bedrooms and with their own bodies. Still others seem to feel the government has the right to control how people relate to the living world upon which we all depend, but not to control what they do with their own bodies. Still others believe the government has a potent role to play in both. And of course, there are versions of every permutation in between that some people will adhere to.
Again, I was pointing to my own preference – maximum personal freedom with some limited governmental capacity to constrain those who would do harm to our shared planet for short term personal advantage. My labeling of those who seem to want to restrain personal freedom while expanding freedom to damage the planet as manifesting “conservatism” was reflective of the Republican party’s present platform – which does not reflect the views of every Republican. My labeling of the energy toward unfettered personal freedom combined with unfettered regulations around economics and social behavior as “libertarianism” was reflective of what I understand the modern libertarian party claims as its platform. Again, this was not to indicate that any particular person who identifies with that label adheres to the party’s platform. My comments were NOT political so much as socio-spiritual. I just happened (unfortunately, perhaps) to use political metaphors and labels to attempt to explain it in a way that I felt most people would find more accessible.
While I appreciate the invitation to visit your wall and engage in another conversation there, I respectfully decline, as I’m not wanting to take this conversation wider and invite in more opinions and responses from those who aren’t privy to where we are here and now. I feel that would only muddy the waters.
One last thing: your comment “I can’t abide slackers,” made me think.
I have no way of knowing what constitutes a “slacker” in your dictionary. But I do know that my sense of humanity today is that we’re not taking enough time to pause, think deeply and perhaps do nothing at all. This blind attachment to “work, work, work” as if work is more noble than contemplation, relaxation and pure enjoyment of life is killing us all. It’s causing us to decimate planetary resources at an ever escalating rate in order to “make jobs.” While making jobs aids us in making money, what we will be able to spend our money on in the future is an open question if we destroy the natural resources and planetary ecosystems upon which we depend for our very survival.
I do believe our ancestors worked very, very hard – which was noble – in the eras where human energy was the only game in town, and we wanted to settle an entire wild planet with only a few million humans and their energy at our disposal. Today though, with 7 billion of us wandering the planet, and with our current level of industrialization and technology, we don’t need to have all of us working 40 hours a week from adolescence until we die to make the things we need to thrive as a species. In fact, we’ve been making crap just to keep ourselves busy and earning salaries, doing damage to the planet and disrespecting our natural resources in the process.
I suspect it’s time for us to realize that our ancestors worked that hard so we wouldn’t have to…and that the protestant work ethic we’ve embraced for so long as a successful social strategy may be nearing the end of its useful life. As we continue to automate, what seems to be becoming more necessary is that we shift from a muscle culture of hard work to a wisdom culture of deep thinking and exploration of new ideas. In wisdom and experience we can grow limitlessly, whereas our physical growth and expansion – like that of all living things – has a top stop.
DD: I think that you need to be extremely careful when using those labels and when using declarative statements in the way you are choosing to use them. People who read what you, as an educator, write are bound to interpret it as “truth,” when it is simply one person’s fantasy. I also think that “Today though, with 7 billion of us wandering the planet, and with our current level of industrialization and technology, we don’t need to have all of us working 40 hours a week from adolescence until we die to make the things we need to thrive as a species” is a lot of “let them eat cake.” The utopia you envision could not be further from the day-to-day reality many of us experience.
Since you wonder what I perceive a “slacker” to be, here it is: This is part of a conversation I had on Facebook that started off with the person telling me she thought I could afford libertarian views because I was probably in some cushy job somewhere, the implication being that if I were worse off I would probably be a democrat. Here’s my response. “First, actually I have been unemployed most of this year and am really struggling; I just don’t talk about it much. But it is not part of my genetic makeup to blame others for whatever currently ails me or to take any sort of public assistance, & I have spoken to people who justify taking public assistance through blame. Second, you are missing my point entirely, which was about supporting personal liberties, as long as they do not hurt anyone else, but not being on the hook tax-wise for other people’s choices, and that my political outlook and the voting decisions I make are informed not by this particular policy or that particular policy, but by what makes individuals and the nation stronger, and in my opinion, fostering the feeling that one is never responsible for one’s decisions does not do that. This is what I mean by locus of control (and this is a psychological distinction, not a political one, though I’m really starting to think there must be some sort of correlation between internal/external locus of control and conservative/liberal, respectively): those with an internal one are oriented around the idea of self-determinism. For liberals and/or those with an external locus, the buck stops “there.” Things that happen to you happen for reasons outside your control: Good things happen because of “luck” and “fortune,” so bad things, which are due to “bad luck” and “misfortune” should be solved by something outside oneself as well. For me, the buck stops “here.” Good things happen because I make it so. Bad things happen if I don’t think things through or read the fine print. Third: Re holding the view that everyone else should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as my dime isn’t involved: This also means that your rights end where mine begin, period, and it is completely wrong to penalize success and reward best case, complacency; worst case, laziness. Fourth, re competition: The natural world does indeed work this way. Everything in nature points to survival on this level, even on the cellular level; life itself is a combination of “territorial imperative” and the organization of individuals into systems. Society is the same. That “line of thinking” is as ancient as philosophy itself, it wasn’t invented, as you seem to think, or even purported, only by people who have come to own media outlets in the last 30 years or less. In terms of the “bailout” mentality, certainly there are people in every situation who need help: those who are too sick to work, those who meet with violence or catastrophe. That is the role of government and should be the only one: to provide for citizens what they *cannot* (the operative word here) provide for themselves. But the expansion of “programs” fosters and supports an entire faction of the population that takes full and fraudulent advantage of that system–to the exclusion of those who really need it. I have long believed that it is better to speak to the best person someone can be by demanding, through words and actions, that they become that person, by not accepting anything less than utter responsibility, accountability, from each person. It’s the highest compliment you can pay someone to tell them tacitly (or not so tacitly) “You are capable of more,” and it caters to their basest instincts, their lowest version of themselves, to accept sloth & evasion & cheating out of some sort of misguided “kindness” or “generosity.” True kindness is giving an opportunity for a person to become as strong as possible, even when this means they make an extraordinarily expensive mistake, and most especially when it could have been avoided by not living outside one’s means. In terms of being afraid someone will take my job, you have it completely backward. I have no fear that anyone will take my job, nor is my attitude informed by this, nor has it ever been. If I’m in a situation in which someone can do the job better than I, then they deserve my job, and I deserve the cold slap in the face that will likely motivate me to get more training or education or whatever. My biggest fear is that the continued expansion of government and its entitlements will foster a country that is psychologically, motivationally, broken; people so used to having things handed to them that they see no reason not to. There are plenty of people who do see Obama as a symbol of social hope, and that’s great. There are plenty of others who had dollar signs in their eyes and on their minds when they found out all they had to do to get some rich guy’s money so that they could keep watching Springer all day long on the government’s (read: MY) dime was to get out there & vote. My political views have nothing to do with my financial status. In fact, the worse off I have become this year, the more solidly I stand on my own ability and my own independence. I have been wealthy and I have been poor, but I have always been an individualist and prized the individual, without whom there would be no group, and my political views are informed by my philosophy and my world view, not by my paycheck or lack thereof.”
And re your comment “I’m not wanting to take this conversation wider and invite in more opinions and responses from those who aren’t privy to where we are here and now. I feel that would only muddy the waters.” I respectfully respond: Learning another’s point of view, especially one that differs greatly from yours, via dialectic, never muddies any waters. Because of my fervent belief in this concept, I have posted this entire thread so that all my friends, on every part of the political spectrum and on non-political spectra of their own, can read it and come to their own conclusions. I also think it’s rather odd that your disinclination is based on inviting more responses from people who aren’t privy to where we are “here and now,” since 1) all you have to do is provide them with the background, as I have done, and 2) none of your non-labels and non-descriptions and non-categorizations have anything to do with the here and now, as anyone living below the poverty line can tell you, but are in fact oriented around a noble but ultimately nonexistent future.
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