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I've probably forgotten a variety of lessons my parents and others tried to teach me when I was young. But I haven't forgotten everything. The most important thing my mother taught me was that we should count our blessings. She never used that exact phrase, as I recall, but that was the sentiment. My brother and I complained, as kids do, but my mom always counseled us to put things in perspective, and she was very correct to do so. I probably think about that lesson at least once a week.
I was reminded of it again when I read this article at National Review*. Bernie Sanders, as usual, is whining about how shabbily the American worker is treated in our (mostly) capitalist system, and is calling for a change in the federal law that considers a 40-hour work week to be standard, with overtime kicking in after that. The ancient socialist senator from Vermont -- who was once kicked out of a commune due to his laziness -- wants that number changed to 32 hours a week, without a decrease in weekly earnings.
The part of the article that reminds me of my mother's advice is when the authors take us for a stroll down memory lane of what life was life was like for the common people before the Industrial Revolution. I won't quote the examples they gave, you can go read the whole article, but I do want to expand on those examples. It wasn't so many generations ago that many kids went around barefoot in the summer because shoes were too costly for many families to keep their kids in shoes all year long. Even the wealthy didn't have shoes that were made specifically for their right and left feet before the 19th century. Not so very long ago, plowing a field was done behind a mule or an ox, and washing clothes was done by hand, beside a creek, using soap that you had to make yourself. Metal ore and coal were brought out of the ground by miners who often did not live to old age because the occupation was so dangerous. And in much of the world lacking free enterprise, things haven't moved far beyond these examples.
Even the American working at a car wash today, driving a 25 year old car, and living in a trailer house -- someone who we would think of as poor today -- lives a luxurious life compared to the doctors and lawyers of 200 years ago. Queen Victoria of England would have been astonished by the choices we have when we go to a modern supermarket. Who among us would want to trade places with even the richest pharaohs of ancient Egypt?
So the advice from my mother still stands. Appreciate the good things in your life. Stop whining because someone else has more than you. Odds are you have a better life, with more opportunities, than 99% of the humans who have ever lived and died. And go read that article at NR.
*Yes, yes, I know. All true conservatives are supposed to hold those globalist, elitist, America-hating cocktail sippers who write for National Review in contempt.
Discussion (58)
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I was worried you were inveighing against Colonel Sanders. I recently saw a billboard advertising his family bucket on a Google Street View camera in Omsk, Russia. I want to say it cost 199 rubles, but I don't recall.
Re: the tired old coot from Vermont, I'm willing to entertain the notion that there's all kinds of things wrong with our modern capitalist system, but I don't think that simply paying people more for less work will solve any of them.
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Well said, Randy. Thank you.
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Not me, Hank. I actually visited the grave of Colonel Sanders on my way to the Nashville Ricochet meetup, many years ago.
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I've been thinking about the psychological consequences of affluence and what it means politically. And I keep remembering a dark and sobering thing Jordan Peterson said several years ago. I just transcribed it a few hours ago:
Questioner #1: So you’re saying that all along, women and men have had the same opportunities. Always.
Jordan Peterson: No, I’m basically saying that all along hardy anyone had any opportunities. I mean, if you look at the history of the world, things really started to shift in about 1895, but before 1895 the typical person in the West lived on less than a dollar a day in today’s money, which is about two-thirds the UN cut-off for abject poverty by today’s standards. And so what happened through most of the history of the world is that men and women struggled mightily together, sometimes at each others’ throats but mostly cooperatively, to keep the wolf from the door and the tyrant at bay. Life was very, very, very, very difficult. And the fact that we survived at all meant that fundamentally we cooperated despite the fact that we’re rife with stupidity, ignorance, and malevolence.
***
My comment is that we have elementally the same minds cognitively and psychologically that we've had for several thousand years, but we have a very changed world, and we don't know how to address it, or thrive within it.
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I thought this was about "sandals" and this was a screed against Birkenstocks. (Not that I'd oppose that.)
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