Thursday, March 14, 2013

Monday, March 4, 2013

Primordial Angst

People complain a lot. And it's never about anything practical. It's always something stupid.

Lawmakers on the Oscars. Instead of, I don't know, poverty, the economy, something actually worthwhile. Everybody blabbing their stupid worthless opinion.

It shouldn't be law or anything, but unfunny people who should not criticize comedians. Organizing events and working on jokes is one of the most stressful things you can do. Anyone who disagrees is free to go to a comedy club and work on an hour's worth of material.

People who emasculate the act of writing most are also the same people who "only spent a year in college" and had issues getting into sports programs due to issues with reading comprehension.

We've been placed in a society of whiny bitching. What is whiny bitching? 

Whiny bitching occurs when a complaint is issued without any sense of constructive criticism. You think the government sucks? Great, so does everybody else. Do you have any solutions? What's that? You don't? Then please, shut up.

The same can be applied to education. Everyone knows how to fix education. If you don't, John Medina wrote a book about it. Does anyone actually apply the steps needed to fix said problem? Nope, but they'll sure complain about it. Fixing education is a lot harder than talking about it.

Over the last couple of months, I have done my best to be someone who walks the walk more so than talks the talk. And I know I will have hecklers at all future sprints and marathons.

On top of all of this malnutritutional criticism is a word that's come up a lot lately. One which, is losing its meaning with repeat usage.

And that word, is entitlement.

Entitlement is a funny word. It's funny because with usage, anything can mean entitlement.

You can pay for something, and if the company doesn't give it to you and you complain, they can consider you entitled. A customer can want something expensive for free, and if you don't want to give it to them, they say that you as an employee and a company are entitled.

A person angry at their sexless marriage can be considered to be entitled. Me analyzing these things can be a sense of entitlement. You see how it is? What was once simple cause and effect has this new layer of ethical egoism over it. 

It's ubiquitous and is now becoming the new thought terminating cliche for any new rising issue.

Nevermind the fact that society has lied about the whole college=high paying job thing.

"College students make a million dollars more than high school graduates over the course of their lifetime"

And they're working on paying a trillion dollars worth of debt too, last time I checked.

I have been reading up on the traits of successful people. It's the little things that are the most interesting. Like, the fact that successful talk about ideas, whereas, unsuccessful people obsess over objects and gossip. Or how successful people concern themselves with the future moreso than the past.

Which I think is awesome. Cause lately, I've seen a lot of people in my surroundings use the past as an excuse. Past struggles with breaking wings as the reason they cannot fly.

People love telling you how hard their life is. Even when it's good. Yet, the measurement of "good" also comes with our surroundings. You can kill yourself if your neighbors make too much. But then again, I don't think you're relaxing in the projects either.

A lot of people want to stick themselves to the past. Not in a nostalgia sense, but in a "the book on me has already been written" sense.

You ever read a book about an artist you admire? You ever notice that they always make it look like destiny? Like they knew what they were doing the entire time? Like George Lucas knew Star Wars was gonna be successful in between heart attacks? Like, the storm they encountered in Tunisia didn't bother them? Like knowing not having reshoots cause of Mark Hamill's accident was a blessing in disguise?

Of course they didn't know.

And most people don't know their future now. 

People love prophecy. Only problem is there's a lot of false prophets.

The bad news about this global economy is that it has short term memory. A woman who, I don't know, sold a 70 million dollar startup is quickly forgotten until she goes to prison for selling drugs.

Then again, the good news about the global economy is that it has short term memory. All those shots a winning athlete misses in the earlier season are soon forgotten. Nothing good came out of past failures. Hell, nothing good came being lazy and pointing to past successes.

When you live in a world where a cloud carries all your past successes, it should be a sign to go out and get new ones.