THE COMPLACENCE-COMPLAINING DICHOTOMY

These are indeed strange times in the U.S.A.. The country seems quite prosperous, though most of that visible prosperity is dependent on consumer credit. I recently heard a claim that 50% of Americans cannot come up with more than $400 in cash at any given moment. Yet most of that 50% still drive a car, drink alcohol and eat out occasionally.

I come from a working-class background which definitely shapes my views. I certainly haven't been complacent about my views, but I acknowledge a bias. My parents were children during the Great Depression. They had gone without. A lot. They had placed cardboard in their shoes when the soles developed holes. They had lived on watery soup and stale bread at times. And, at the same time, they did very hard physical labor. My father carried oil drums off tankers in high school. My mother started cleaning houses at 10 years of age. But they were not complainers. Nor were they complacent until they became very old.

I was raised under a strict household ban on complaining. A whine could get you anything from a sharp reprimand to a mild slap on the back of the head. The most dreaded behavior modifier against complaints was being subjected to Great Depression monologues. For me, these simply confirmed my belief that life would always be a vale of tears. If my childhood was the Eden it was purported to be, I didn't hold out much hope that it would get any better.

Complacence was also ranked as a cardinal sin by my parents. It was generically rated as snobbery or laziness. My mother and father were both dynamos. My father often had extra police duty, and he never stopped doing home maintenance on his time off. My mother worked a job, and she was always cleaning, cooking and baking in her off time. My father lived to be 83. My mother lived to be 91. Hard work certainly did not prevent them from having long and relatively healthy lives.

Today's Americans are getting statistically fatter and observably lazier. Yet, today's Americans are more contentious and disgruntled than ever. Whether they support Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, today's Americans are grumpy and dissatisfied with just about everything, except Dunkin Donuts, an evil poisonous empire which should rank #1 on their hatred lists. And what do most Americans do about their dissatisfaction, other than complain. The answer is simple: Nothing much.

I offer a simple example. I live in a decent small city on the East Coast. The population is well educated and relatively affluent. It is a place which seems to take environmentalism and progressive ideas seriously. When I moved here several months ago, I noticed that someone had irresponsibly left an older portable CRT TV on the sidewalk up the street. The trash men left it. A fee must be paid to dispose of CRT TV's, which must be delivered by the owner to a recycle station.

I usually use the city's phone app to report these things. Just send a picture of the offense. So easy. This time I decided to see how invested my neighbors and the hordes of commuting drivers and pedestrians on my street really are in their environment. The TV sat there, and sat there. Week after week. It accumulated dust, and even a few early snowflakes. Eventually it was swept away, I imagine, by the city's sidewalk plow.

I wondered how many of the people who walked around that TV every day complain about the environment or voted for a progressive candidate who touted his intentions to improve the environment. Or, how many thought, "Not my problem."

But these same people make the most remote issues their problem to complain about uselessly. They complain about Donald Trump's idiotic tweets as though they are personally offended by them. They complain about air pollution and buy huge trucks and SUV's. They complain about poor food quality but buy poorly produced food every week. And so on. Meanwhile, they grow fatter and less mobile than their phones, which are always in a state of use and motion.

A person recently stated flatly at lunch, "I don't believe an individual can make any difference in this world." I was stunned and intrigued. Yet my attempt to find the source of this pessimism was greeted with howls of protest that I was being "demeaning" by asking questions about it. I was being told by this self-claimed victim's behavior that I was wrong to inquire, to be curious, to challenge. 

This sums up for me the dichotomy of our time. The majority seem to indulge in harsh complaint and criticism in social media about those outside their deeply complacent circle. They ostracize those who refuse to conform with un-friending and blocking. Yet all of these complacent circles are basically the same. Just their lists of implicit dogmatic positions vary. This "no judgment" culture is rife with scapegoating and witch hunts waged by those who shout against judgment and victimization most loudly.

Study of history offers examples of affluent societies which became infected with self-satisfaction and whining indolence. They do not remain affluent or peaceful for long. Those inspired by hunger and destitution are neither self-satisfied nor indolent. They subscribe to personal or institutional ideas which will get them things. There are billions of these people in the world right now. And they are looking at The West as the place to get what they need and want. Historically, these are the ultimate winners at great expense to the self-indulgent and lazy.