The biggest obstacle to success in life is us - and the people willing to help us be that obstacle!
I was lurking on Reddit the other day and someone posted an inquiry as to what has fundamentally changed in the USA in the last 50 years that no one seems to have noticed. People put up all sorts of good suggestions and I was tempted to reply, "Gambling!" but kept my mouth shut instead.
I noted before how gambling has taken over America since I was a kid. Back in the 1960's you couldn't gamble anywhere, legally, except in Las Vegas. No Indian casinos, no gambling boats, no lottery tickets, no sports gambling. I recounted before, as a pizza delivery driver, one of my jobs was to stuff unmarked fat envelopes into a mail slot and was told not to ask questions. They were sports betting slips - illegal at the time.
Sure, gambling went on - illegally - but it was kept in check by the local "bunko" squads and raids were conducted periodically. I could have been arrested, of course - for that and a lot of other things. Today, we are "free" to gamble ourselves to death (and many literally do) as everyone in the US lives within a 30-minute drive of some sort of casino or another. There is a gambling boat at the end of our causeway - a ten minute drive from my house. The local gas station sells a plethora of lottery tickets - the "numbers racket" of today, run by the government, which is the new Mafia.
It struck me that the "system" promotes self-destruction. Once you start down the gambling road, you end up poor and destitute,, as the house always wins. It is a poverty tax on the stupid and those who flunked courses in probability (or never took one). But we are "free" to ruin ourselves these days, and the very wealthy make sure we have lots of outlets for self-destruction.
But it is a choice - to gamble or not. Some people claim to be addicted and maybe that is so. But maybe the powers-that-be want you to think you cannot control this compulsion. Or maybe it is chemicals in the brain that make us gamble - as one experiment-gone-wrong seemed to prove.
There are other ways to destroy yourself, of course. Drugs and alcohol (redundant, as alcohol is indeed a drug!) can prevent you from reaching your full potential. And when you fail at life, drugs and alcohol are there to nurse you along and let you feel that even trying is a waste of time.
But it goes beyond that. Major corporations push fast-food and fast-casual chains that sell horrific foods, high in fats and sugars. You gain weight and they sell you a diet drug that, if it does not kill you directly, keeps you dependent on it for life. Then there is type-2 diabetes, which is the perfect illness from the point-of-view of the medical industry as it makes you dependent on the pharmaceutical industry and the plethora of dialysis centers springing up all over America. More sweet tea? Drink up!
If that doesn't work, they'll attack your mind directly, convincing you that your childhood was scarred by trauma as your parents were "narcissists" and you have PTSD as a result and are now a "victim." There is a support group with folding chairs and a coffee urn waiting for you! No trigger words, now!
The list goes on and on - various means to beat you down and make you feel like a passive victim in life rather than an active participant. They want to keep you fearful and scared so you buy an extended warranty for your car or vote for the "law and order" candidate who will keep those brown people from stealing the Amazon packages off your front porch.
This is not to say there aren't real victims in the world - there are. But it seems victimhood is a new form of status - inverse status. And the only real result is that it keeps you down, depressed, and passive. I noted before that depressed people make excellent consumers as they will drown their sorrows in a flood of expensive coffee drinks and online shopping. Treat yourself - you deserve it! After all, your Mom was mean to you!
Another Reddit post from a self-described "financial advisor" who works for a "non-profit" argued that the major causes of poverty in America were the the high cost of housing, education, and medical care, and there is no way around it, so "go ahead and get that Starbucks and sign up for that streaming service!" Because controlling your discretionary spending (the only expense you can control) is pointless.
Instead of buying one $5 coffee drink a day, investing that money comes up to nearly $200,000 after 30 years, if invested at 7% which isn't hard to do in a 401(k) plan (and cuts your taxable income to boot!) - as the above chart shows. You can generate your own chart - change the interest rate, the amount saved or whatever - the result is the same. It adds up to a surprising amount of money. Compound interest is a bitch - when you are borrowing. It is your friend when you choose to save. And 401(k) plans are insulated from bankruptcy, too!
It isn't hard, even for the poorest person, to eliminate an unnecessary $5 expense, if you try. What is even more appalling is people who choose not to save, but are in the middle or higher income brackets, but choose instead to spend money on a series of leased SUVs or monthly subscription services. It is a choice, too, not a mandate.
But again, depression and victimhood make it easy to wallow in self-pity. So why not call Door-Dash or Uber Eats and send out for a pizza? It is only like $40 and you'll never get ahead anyway in life so why bother?
Oddly enough, this same mentality took hold in Japan in the 1990s. Young people were convinced they would never own their own home or get married and have kids, so instead they lived with their parents and spent their disposable income on clothes, accessories, electronic gadgets, cars, and of course, clubbing and partying. The aging Japan we see today is the result.
Oddly enough, one of the fundamental principle of Scientology addresses this same concept - dressed up, of course, in the psudo-science of that religion. They test you with a galvanometer and tell you that you have "Engrams" from your upbringing (or whatever) and for a fee, they will help you "go clear" of them. It is like shooting fish in barrel, as most people have some sort of trauma - real, imagined, or amplified - in their lives, and as a result are receptive to these suggestions. It is why many followers feel helped by that religion - and who knows, maybe they are?
But I think you can "clear" your "engrams" without handing over your hard-earned-cash to a religion. Just realizing that nearly everyone has some sort of trauma or hardship in life is a start on the road to wellville. If you can stop perceiving yourself as a victim and start seeing yourself as self-actualizing, you can do great things in life. And it can start with simple things - like making your own coffee in the morning (and not with a Keurig!) for 50 cents instead of five bucks.
"But what about people with real trauma? Real hardships?" Well, when you meet people like that, they often do not perceive themselves as victims, and in fact, reset being characterized as such. When Mark worked at the lighthouse museum, a lady came in with her kids, wanting to climb the lighthouse. She was in a wheelchair, and was a double amputee (or was born with no legs). She asked for four tickets and Mark, seeing only three kids, asked who the fourth was.
"Me!" she answered. Mark told her there was no elevator and she replied, "Oh, I don't need one!" and she produced a pair of flip-flops, leapt out of the chair and did a handstand on the floor, "walking" around the gift shop - much to the embarrassment of her teenage kids who were used to Mom showing off.. And she went all the way up - 129 steps in all, and all the way back down. It is a trip that winds me, to be sure.
The point is, here was a woman who was a bona fide victim of circumstance, but wasn't willing to see it bring her down. She did not perceive herself as a victim and would no doubt fight you to prove the point. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans (I think) see themselves as put-upon, due in many cases, to their own actions.
And sadly, there is a whole industry - a plethora of industries - ready to cater to your low-self-esteem. "Give up!" they say. "Spend it all now! Why bother saving! You'll never retire! You'll never get ahead! Buy a coffee drink! Go to Disney! Put it all on the credit card and never pay it off! Everyone has debt! This is perfectly normal!"
In a way, it is. To keep us all yoked to the plow, they dangle these trinkets in front of us - small pleasures and electronic gadgets and shiny automobiles. We work so we can spend, and we spend so we have to work - harder and harder and never getting ahead. And so it seems and it seems we have no other choice.
Or do we? Yes, it is harder today than in the past, not because housing is expensive or the threat of medical bankruptcy looms or student loan debt is "inevitable" but because we have so many new ways to destroy ourselves that are all perfectly legal. And yes, maybe it is pointless to outlaw self-destruction. We tried that with prohibition - it didn't work. We tried outlawing gambling - that just drove it underground. The "war on drugs" resulted in mass incarceration of millions (mostly minorities) without really putting a dent in drug use. Today we are "freer" than ever (not according to the Proud Boys, of course!) to do what we want to do - even to the point of self-destruction.
We are free to make bad choices. We are free to pay too much for a car and finance it on a ten-year loan. We are free to pay too much for a house and sign a mortgage with onerous terms. We are free to buy quack cures on the television without the FDA stepping in to say "No!" And yes, this means the least sophisticated among us are often victims of these scams. Maybe we should protect people from themselves - but I am not sure we are going back to that "nanny state" of the 1950s or 1960s anytime soon (the "good old days" the far-right pines for, but obviously wouldn't like in reality).
Maybe we can't save people from themselves. But a whole host of middle-class people - people with smarts and educations - can see that gambling on sports or using restaurants as a kitchen is not a sound practice. Sadly, the Greek chorus of the Internet screams otherwise - which is why I get suspicious when people on Reddit (or anywhere online) say things like, "Go ahead, get a Starbucks, it won't affect your bottom line at all!" I mean, that sort of propaganda isn't benefiting the ruling class, right?
That right there is the problem. The Internet and the Smart Phone are a powerful propaganda machine. People compulsively look at their phones for hours each day, programming their minds with bad ideas - ideas that are promulgated by the powers-that-be. They want you to consume, spend, and feel like a helpless victim. They can get you to vote how they want based on your victimhood. Vote Republican! They'll throw out the immigrants and make everyone a crypto-billionaire! Vote Democratic! They'll give you guaranteed annual income and robots will do all your work for you!
But God forbid, you should think and act for yourself, because that would mean you were taking charge of your life - instead of letting it be just a bunch of crap that happens to you.
FWIW>
