Why is everything so complicated all the time?

There are two generalized viewpoints you find out there in our society and they both tend to be espoused in the most simplistic and condescendingly appalled tone of voice one can imagine.   

Point of view one is a populist, self-reliant, embellished and unrealistic expression, usually espoused by people who have either never had to do the things themselves they are talking about or have a wildly exaggerated outlook on life and their abilities within it. 

The second point, known as the socialist perspective, often highlights perceived cruelty and inhumanity associated with anti-humanistic and anti-American values of generosity. 

They are both equally too deterministic and rigid in their perceptions of the country in which they are being talked about, and they are both used as clubs to clubber (figuratively) the opponents of debaters as they attempt to sink ever lower in the barrel of negativity in an attempt to make more and more gotcha points in order to win an argument.  I’d like to say that in the past it used to be, that arguments were more civil and understanding and conducted in a manner that was befitting of Americans who basically equally loved their country, they just disagreed with some finer points on how to reach the essentially same goals of freedom, independence and financial stability.  But that nostalgic remembrance is shattered when we look back on the often bloody and violently confrontational history of just the past 50 years as the nation tried to grapple with the civil rights era, the AIDS epidemic and the not so subtle and underlying rejection of gay people from general society, to the recent riots, growing out of the financial insecurities of the protestors as they took to the streets to demonstrate against financial crimes in 2008-2012.  So instead of saying, “remember when we could disagree and then go our separate ways and remain friends” which never actually happened on a mass scale in our nation’s history, I’m going to acknowledge the fact that we, as Americans, we don’t know how to talk to each other, if we have different points of view, without wanting to bulldoze the other person’s opinions down  in a violent confrontation, where naturally we emerge as winners and our opponents are forever destroyed questioning their life choices and embracing a new self-assigned divinity we have given ourselves.   But who does this kind of arguing serve?  Who emerges as the loser in the situation?  Is there a loser?  Why, yes there is.  As with the vast majority of topics we argue about, the loser always tends to be the truth.  This is because we tend to want to win arguments so badly, that we barely listen to the other person as they do the same to us, and focus instead on developing points that will finally shut them up and make them see the errors of their ways.  We have a superiority complex about arguing and in that context, we seek out the most simplistic and often misleading points to drive our opinions home as if we were Attila the Hun rushing the gates of the Vatican.  We don’t have time to make factual, well thought out arguments and research based points because those are boring and lengthy and require the other person to listen and evaluate and for us to do the same because even before the whole thing begins in earnest, we already decided the other person is an idiot who need to just shut up and go away.  Our elected leaders, with a very few exceptions, have mastered this kind of hit them on the head with a Billy club mannerism and have long ago abandoned and notion of wanting to espouse any kind of generalist truths in favor of soundbites that make them sound amazing and everyone else look like a moron. 

And this is why the two points of view I started this article with are so prevalent today.  One, is of a perceived American tough, frontiersman survivalist who can do anything in the world.  Drop him off in the middle of Alaska with a Bowie knife, wearing a pair of bikini bottoms, a level of ignorance the size of the universe and an ego the size of Texas, and they will supposedly show up in Florida a week later wearing a brand new Armani suit, a 50,000 dollar gold watch and have a mansion in Colorado due purely to their ingenuity and their incredible level of hard work that is unique to them and them only.  Everyone else is a lazy bum, except this one group of American frontiersmen. 

In the second point of view, the entire world is inter connected and everyone needs to hold hands and sing kumbaya and feed each other and share all the wealth and equally support one another and acknowledge all perceived wrongs and spend an entire year apologizing to each other and self-flagellate in an attempt to undo all the wrongs committed by an entire species of human beings who have lived on this planet going back 200,000 years. 

Both points of view are complete horse$&^%.  There is no way in the world, that a person today, can single handedly achieve any measure of success in life either personally or professionally by “pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps” because that entire notion is pure garbage.  For starters, if you want to be successful, you need something to compare yourself to in order to measure your success.  That alone requires you to interact with another person or company.  Second, you need a societal structure to operate within so you can have predictability within to operate your endeavor.  You need a stable structure so you can have a reasonable expectation that you can be safe from violence, crime, your building will have adequate fire protection, that everyone is supposed to play based on the same rules, that your banking institution is going to process your deposits in a timely manner and the property records recorded on your behalf will be accurate.  You also need an educated workforce who will have the general knowledge on how to handle your transactions, a motivated consumer base who will buy your products for a reasonable price, distributors who can use existing structures and public highways to bring your products to you on and on and on and on.

All these things require strong and stable governmental institutions to run smoothly.  They require societal cooperative agreements that most of us can agree on.  The notion of someone pulling themselves out of poverty by the so called “bootstrap” method displays an incredible lack of awareness of the real world and a level of arrogance that leads nowhere but to bankruptcy court. 

Nothing in life is black and white when it comes to these issues and there are no easy, bite seized answers that fit neatly into a 20 second soundbite or a “gotcha”.  In fact, most of the time when someone who is arrogant enough to try to provide a flippant and dismissive answer to a difficult question, in order to be seen as some linguistic savant, tries to be dismissive and arrogant, they end up looking like a total idiot.

We are at a crossroads in our nation’s history.  Do we allow rational thought to win out or do we allow a level of ignorance and arrogance to dominate our nation going forward?  It is up to us to decide.