An Ode to Discipline
Discipline, duty, efficiency, restraint, hard work, soberness. We wave away such words as puritanical anachronisms, out of touch with newer values: finding your passion, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And the "progress" accelerates:
State-sanctioned lotteries and casinos have burgeoned even though they predominantly hurt the poor, who can least afford to lose. Two-thirds(!) of workers take sick days when not sick. Twelve percent said they took sick days just to watch March Madness! That's so societally accepted that corporations aren't embarrassed to push their recreation product by telling people to take a sick day. For example, the ad below was sponsored by a consortium of Tahoe hotels and casinos, the one below it by the Weather Network.
The cheat-if-you-can ethos is yet one more reason why employers hire as few people and automate as many positions as possible. Worst of all has been the increased use of mind- and body-damaging drugs. And now, a majority of Americans favor legalizing pot while almost no one (I'm an exception) advocates banning tobacco or even alcohol. Alcohol has long devastated humankind but adding wide use of pot, coke, heroin, meth, and party drugs I can't even name, has resulted in enormous additional devastation to health, to families, to workplaces. I have written an essay providing a great deal of evidence that legalizing "mere" pot is a nightmare for America. I challenge you to make a stronger counterargument.
We now have a half-century's experience with Stones/Dylan/Beatles/Grateful Dead-inspired libertinism, the permissive society. If we are honest, can we really say our more hedonistic ethos has been a net good? For example, while of course, some young people have an excellent work ethic, millions of others refuse to take anything other than a great job. They'd rather sit on their parents' sofas and watch video games or soap operas and get high. Their parents and especially their grandparents don't begin to understand such a lack of work ethic and neither can I.
The world would be far better if we all accepted that hard, honest work is not an option but a duty, even if the job is far from ideal. The extent to which a person doesn't work hard is the extent to which s/he is a parasite, yes parasite, with hard workers being their hosts. If it's low-level work, so be it.
Anything is better than being a parasite.
Lest you wonder if I practice what I preach, I, for example, for two years worked the night shift as a New York City cab driver and, to this day, at almost 64 years old, work 60 hours a week, at least half for no pay. For example, this is my 1,244th blog post, all carefully written and edited. I just finished editing it at 12:45 AM.
Yet some people would rather suck at the taxpayer's tit for 99 weeks than accept a not-great job. I think little of such people.
As magnificent as is Beethoven's Ode to Joy, I believe at this stage in society's evolution, we might do better to listen to an Ode to Discipline.
State-sanctioned lotteries and casinos have burgeoned even though they predominantly hurt the poor, who can least afford to lose. Two-thirds(!) of workers take sick days when not sick. Twelve percent said they took sick days just to watch March Madness! That's so societally accepted that corporations aren't embarrassed to push their recreation product by telling people to take a sick day. For example, the ad below was sponsored by a consortium of Tahoe hotels and casinos, the one below it by the Weather Network.
The cheat-if-you-can ethos is yet one more reason why employers hire as few people and automate as many positions as possible. Worst of all has been the increased use of mind- and body-damaging drugs. And now, a majority of Americans favor legalizing pot while almost no one (I'm an exception) advocates banning tobacco or even alcohol. Alcohol has long devastated humankind but adding wide use of pot, coke, heroin, meth, and party drugs I can't even name, has resulted in enormous additional devastation to health, to families, to workplaces. I have written an essay providing a great deal of evidence that legalizing "mere" pot is a nightmare for America. I challenge you to make a stronger counterargument.
We now have a half-century's experience with Stones/Dylan/Beatles/Grateful Dead-inspired libertinism, the permissive society. If we are honest, can we really say our more hedonistic ethos has been a net good? For example, while of course, some young people have an excellent work ethic, millions of others refuse to take anything other than a great job. They'd rather sit on their parents' sofas and watch video games or soap operas and get high. Their parents and especially their grandparents don't begin to understand such a lack of work ethic and neither can I.
The world would be far better if we all accepted that hard, honest work is not an option but a duty, even if the job is far from ideal. The extent to which a person doesn't work hard is the extent to which s/he is a parasite, yes parasite, with hard workers being their hosts. If it's low-level work, so be it.
Anything is better than being a parasite.
Lest you wonder if I practice what I preach, I, for example, for two years worked the night shift as a New York City cab driver and, to this day, at almost 64 years old, work 60 hours a week, at least half for no pay. For example, this is my 1,244th blog post, all carefully written and edited. I just finished editing it at 12:45 AM.
Yet some people would rather suck at the taxpayer's tit for 99 weeks than accept a not-great job. I think little of such people.
As magnificent as is Beethoven's Ode to Joy, I believe at this stage in society's evolution, we might do better to listen to an Ode to Discipline.
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