I’m listening to an OK but not great book, called something like “Can you learn to be more lucky?”. My rule on things like this is I finish all books I start, because you never know what small detail you might pick up which might make a difference. This is the same reason I like going to even the smallest, worst funded and built museums: you just never know. My brain is building patterns continually, and it will pick up, I think, sometimes on things most people miss.
In any event, in some respects she is building the case for the prosecution socially of microaggressions, and for the concept of privilege. For my part, I have never denied that, for example, the child of a two parent home, and particularly a prosperous two parent home, is intrinsically luckier than the child of a single parent home on the other side of the proverbial tracks. My point is simply that the goal is to build up the latter, not denigrate the former. We want everyone high, not low.
Be all that as it may, she made the interesting observation/twist on the marshmallow experiment, that it depends not just on self control, but on how much the child TRUSTS the experimenter, and this, in turn, is highly correlated with the childs life experience. Children from poorer homes are significantly more likely to take the one marshmallow now. They get what they can get, when they can get it. Big dreams and long term plans are not a part of their daily experience. A marshmallow in hand is worth two in the bush.
And our communal life as a whole is a giant marshmallow experiment. Are you willing to play by “the rules”, to get educated, and work hard for a long time, in exchange for a long term reward, such as a nice retirement? Does your answer not depend in large measure on how much you trust the system?
When you look at, say, Neil Cassady and Jack Kerouac, their answer was that we are most likely all going to die in a nuclear war, and that no, the rewards of conformity to a system which requires one to suppress all natural instincts for fun, for adventure, for change, for sex sex sex, is NOT worth the sacrifice. If this life, this marshmallow, is all we get, then why not devote what small time we have to short term pleasures?
As Weezer put it:
Cuz I can’t work a job like any other slobPunchin’ in and punchin’ out and suckin’ up to Bob
Marryin’ a beeyotch, havin’ seven keeyods
Givin’ up and growin’ old and hopin’ there’s a God.
A sane, well organized society provides those two marshmallows reliably. Perhaps it consists in part in punishment for NOT waiting. But it also consists in pointing out that there is a place for the person who waits, a place they belong, where they will be valued and loved and recognized.
To put it mildly, our society in general does a poor job of this. Do your job faithfully for thirty years, and you get a pen. The pension is gone, and you will be forgotten within three weeks. You have your spouse, but they are a poor consolation in a desolate world. The kids are gone, most likely, and you ARE left wondering if there is a God, if you are typical American. You may go to church–you have may gone all your life–but you know it’s hard to know for sure.
I read on the news at the gym yesterday that Russell Wilson got $140 million for I think it was 6 years, maybe 4. $65 million signing bonus.
Can you imagine if just ten percent of that money was invested in working to document that the afterlife exists? This is a vitally important question, and methods exist, but it simply isn’t a priority.
Why is this world–specifically the people in it–so fucking stupid?
I suppose I can answer that question, by appealing to psychology and sociology, but in a deeper, more metaphysical sense, I can’t.