The Pulpit of Self-Defeat

Restless and inadequate to the task is how an entire generation lives out the days that remember the promise of individual freedoms and look forward to a future of protracted servitude to a system that they don't understand.
As a majority most of us have given over our rights to intercede on each other's behalf and then fail at creating tangible opportunities for ourselves. Well educated and morally inexact, faith in anything seems pointless and yet it is that faithlessness which undermines personal victories. Everyone wants recognition for their individual achievements but without the risks attached to carving out that individualism in a world where the risk of losing freedoms is very real.
Who's going to hitch their wagon to yours if you don't know where you are going?

Like in art, the secret affinities, the personal victories and the passion for living come from a reductionist view. Life is not lived wholly, revealed in its final form in one awe inspiring tug that pulls the sheet off a magician's box, it is applied, it is gilt, flake by flake and with great dexterity until the task is finished and then comes the satisfaction born out of the application, delicately and purposefully, of one leaf at a time, each one representing the whole, multiplied throughout life. Every step along the way is as important as the arrival, the end of the journey.

All of this is hardly new, but despite the truth of it the malaise increases and the frustration that accompanies it wears down the practitioner. The consumerism that overtook the western world in the early part of this century hasn't made life easier, it has reduced us to infantile and helpless prey. Without the protection of society at large, many of us would be the first run down by predators we previously triumphed over. It doesn't make sense to champion natural selection when you're overweight, have bad eyesight and haven't lifted anything heavier than a newspaper in ten years.

Here's a mundane example. I was watching a popular renovation hero come to the rescue of a middle aged couple and the gentleman who had been wronged complained that he had no idea how to tell if someone was doing the job right. He said, "Why isn't someone doing something about it?" There was a time in our not too distant past when if you wanted a house, you built it yourself. I read a statistic not very long ago that claimed fifty percent of households will be renovated in some way this year. Given our penchant for buying it rather than doing it, being a contractor is a very lucrative business right now.

The lesson applies across the board, however, not only in trades and skilled labour. We view ourselves as commodities and sell to the highest bidder. If no one can use you, you'll likely sit on the shelf for a long while gathering dust. That is if you insist on being a commodity. Do what you want and do it well. Being non-committal in anything, as any child can tell you while he pleads and pleads and then has a temper tantrum just to get a cookie, will end in, not only failure, but in self-defeat. The second has much darker consequences. Believe me, I know.