When we have lost our MORAL COMPASS

WHEN WE HAVE LOST OUR MORAL COMPASS

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© October 24, 2019

CHARLES WRITES

When the focus is on income inequality in red state territory, Trumpsters will invariably bring up the ethic of hard work, as if it’s the only thing, missing. The trouble with believing that the edict of hard work is the answer to all problems is that it leads to the ethos of always blaming the poor for being poor, which is a reliable tool of the greed-driven rich who depend on the blame game as a reliable distraction. This ideological short-circuit helps explain why we as taxpayers subsidize some of the nation’s largest employer’s employees with food stamps. Blaming the poor for being poor lets the system riggers off the hook.

The top echelons of the super rich have always been able to rely on the resentment of the poor to shower contempt on those who are even poorer. The systemic reasons for economic inequality are given a pass in favor of the scorn for the notion than someone is going to gain something undeserved. In effect, its analogues to accusing goldfish of swimming in circles and failing to explore, while being oblivious to the shape of their bowl.

Charles


MY RESPONSE

Charles,

As always, what you say is true.

But just as we have the rich we have always had the poor.

In America, I would suggest a good number of the poor have chosen that status, retreating into gangs, drugs, into procreating without thinking of the consequences, becoming true believers, or blaming everyone but themselves for hanging out with the wrong people and/or always taking the easy/wrong way out.

Look it up! The distribution of wealth since the beginning of time has favored the enterprising. I was once in the company of men who worked 100 hours a week. They had no life outside of work, many of their wives were alcoholics, their children spoiled brats, while those who worked for them admired and feared them, a perfect recipe for dysfunction.

The Roman Catholic Church is 1.4 billion strong with better than 40 percent of its faithful located in South America where poverty and socialism is the ubiquitous dance. That should tell us something. The fact that it doesn't provides a sense of the dilemma.

I've had little sympathy much less empathy for philanthropists. Rather than give the poor bread and fish, I prefer to show them how to bake and fish. My parents were poor, but proud, and my mother showed me the way out of this state through study. They were Democrats but not socialists. They worked; they didn't expect something for nothing.

My mother was the strong one. I have always found women stronger than men. BB says I'm quite hard on men. "It is because you are quite hard on yourself." She may be right.

Over time, I've come up with little declarative ideas that find their way into my writing:

We are not happy campers. People on the poverty line somehow have cell phones, are often inclined to be overweight if not obese, have a high incidence of being involved in crime, absent from school or work, if they have a job, into drugs or some other kind of mischief while the good among them, grandmothers in particular, make excuses for them taking in their children and raising the next generation.

We are not happy campers when we have good jobs and most of the considered luxuries of life yet we eat, drink and party too much, afraid we are going to miss out on something or not be included, afraid of getting old so that the plastic surgery and pharmacy and medical specialist industry, the personal trainer and psychotherapy industry, the graduate education industry, the luxury automobile and boat industry, the real estate industry of gated communities, high rise luxury suites and landscaping and/or furniture industries are ensured of booming as never before. Yet, we have lost our moral compass and thus our way.

One thing of which I am certain is that the more you do for others that they best do for themselves invariably weakens their resolve and diminishes them as persons. The same holds true of ourselves.

Be always well,

Jim