(Having just heard a story about Mike's sister being too lazy to calculate the gas needed for a trip): "Haha, that's funny, I was just going to write a post on laziness, but have put it off because I want it to include research rather than my own opinions." "...so you're procrastinating writing a post on laziness?" "...yes, but for research! ...like those Japanese whaling vessels, I know... haha alright, point taken, I will post whatever I've got immediately after this call." So here it is, with updates coming soon:
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Continuing on a series of more behavioral than political topics, I'd like to talk about laziness, particularly in the US. I feel like an old curmudgeon when I condemn the young people for being lazy, but when it comes to being mentally lazy, there's no generational threshold.Here's a funny video that got me thinking, "Are American's actually stupider than people in other countries, or are we in a habit of mental laziness?" I don't think stupidity happens over night, you have to condition your brain to be lazy for years. How on earth did we accomplish this? A series of cultural trends:
1) Lack of Biological Incentive: Kind of obvious, but the middle-class American lifestyle just doesn't have the same survival requirements that the hunter gatherers or farmers had. Our incredibly efficient society allows us to put our energy into our families, careers, art, hobbies, health, any number of things, but more often than not we're lazy slobs and just do nothing with it.
2) Negligent Parenting: Smart kids with negligent parents have got to be as rare as honest politicians. I don't mean negligent in the sense of not providing food, love and shelter, I mean neglecting to put in the time or effort to provide structure and build character. The kids are intelligent and may become good at what they do, but without parental guidance (or some very strong alternative adult influence) children rarely find their own way to activities that promote critical thinking, awareness and learning. All you good parents with lazy kids, don't worry, it's probably one of these other causes, but do examine what kind of an influence you are having on them.
3) Entertainment: How come educational shows stop being promoted past toddler years? After you've outgrown Sesame Street and Dora, there are really only a handful of shows that are both entertaining and educational for teens and adults. You have to be a tad eccentric to be one of the few people watching the news, Discovery Channel, History Channel, or National Geographics as a teenager, and even those channels are mostly garbage now. National Geographics has become the Armageddon theories channel, history channel is the aliens and Nazis channel, discovery channel lies to me all the time, and the news is, well... the "news." It's a sorry state of being for an activity we pour so many hours into.
On top of that, tying back to my second point, how common is it for parents to need some sort of trade system, where if a child spends x amount of time reading or exercising outdoors they're allowed to play video games for x hours? And that's just the responsible parents. It is HARD to get kids to be productive, and few parents go through the effort.
While I'm griping like Andy Rooney, and the Alvin Greene story is still in the news, I'd like to say, damn you MTV! *shakes fist like an old curmudgeon*. I have hated your "rock the vote" campaign for as long as I've been aware of its existence. "Go out and vote kids, it's cool. Doesn't matter if you know NOTHING, it's important that you exercise your right as an American." WHY do we want your opinion counted if you don't know ANYTHING about what you're voting for!?! "Do you know anything about politics?" "No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night." It really should be disturbing how many more people have a highly informed opinion on Crystal Bowersox vs Lee DeWyze, but have no idea about either Barbara Boxer or Carly Fiorina, yet there will likely be a pretty good voter turn out this election season. I am terrified that Alvin Greene may have legitimately won the Dem primaries in SC, I don't care WHAT the reason. Anyway, I'm straying from the point, I digress.
4) Acceptance without Evidence: Once we're on the right path to actually learning something, how many of us blindly accept whatever we're told, rather than looking for evidence? I've already written a post on this problem, so I won't belabor the point. One related issue that drives me nuts is students who blame poor grades on bad teachers. Most classes come with a book, READ IT! Most things can also be found online, LOOK IT UP! Unless the professor is teaching ground breaking material, the information is out there, FIND IT! Yes, a good teacher can be a great help and inspiration, but seriously, stop with the excuses. Those who want to succeed will succeed.
That's all for now, hopefully more scientific stuff soon to follow, but my first point really sums up my disappointment; we live in a time and society with nearly limitless access to knowledge and opportunity, but so many of us squander it. It wouldn't be that bad if we could keep our laziness to ourselves, but its effects manifest themselves everywhere. Our laziness makes us look like/become ignorant idiots, and our culture celebrates it. Very depressing :\
Honestly, the posts are coming more slowly because the more I write the more research I do, and the more research I do the more depressed I get. This is a truly sad state we're in globally.
~Yasu
7 comments:
Check out Sal Alinsky...."Never let a good crisis go to waste."
Let's see....BIG oil leak accident.....CRISIS!!.....do nothing....pretend to do something.....continue to do nothing! Paint BP as the villian....stop offshore drilling....wipe out 100K more jobs! Stop all offshore drilling....."Hey? I'm not the bad guy! I was just for offshore drilling a few months ago!"
One accident and all Liberal hell breaks loose! If one plane crashed, would we cancel all flights for the next six months? Unreal! The reason the spill looks like CRAP is because of NO response on so many levels. People are crying to do something, BUT you know that 'ol government regulation thing....NO! NO! NO!
Wayne
Oook, zero relevance in this post. Good job.
And yes, certain emergencies do call for such drastic actions. After the 9/11 crash ALL planes in the US were grounded until the cause was determined and flight deemed to be safe. Also, once flights were resumed new safety regulations were IMMEDIATELY put into place. And that is in an industry where stopping brings our country to a grinding halt. Deep sea oil drilling isn't nearly as urgent.
Normal crashes due to flocks of birds, weather, or operator error are not cause for mass shutdown because it does not put into question the safety of flight in general. The fact that the oil companies all have literally the same bogus emergency response protocols, and we do not have technology to stop the type of deep sea leak that we've encountered is certainly cause to put a moratorium on deep sea drilling until safety issues are resolved.
That being said, yes, nobody ever lets a perfectly good crisis go to waste. This isn't a liberal invention. At least in this case the results are relevant. When Bush used 9/11 to justify attacking Iraq the relation to the crisis was more like guilty by association, rather than a direct cause. God, not to mention the shameless advertising campaigns that followed the attacks. American flags waving in every commercial, saying, "we survived, and our way of life shall persevere, now go out and spend like an American!"
Don't be so quick to hop on the political high horse just because the opposition is doing the same thing everybody else does.
And there's no response because BP and all the other oil companies don't know what the eff they're doing in emergency situations. During the spill everybody was like, "well BP is incompetent, bring in some of the other companies." Well, turns out they've all photocopied each others' equally incompetent response plans.
This is exactly where I think you should reconsider your fully anti-government regulation stance. I don't think anybody can argue that the oil industry has been poorly regulated by the MMS, which implies they SHOULD be regulating, and doing a better job of it. Do you really think it's a good idea to have these companies just doing their thing with no regulations? This is what I mean when I say you are BEYOND conservative, and need to read conservative literature to bring yourself back to the sane realm of discussion, because no one is saying what you're arguing.
I must say, though, that Obama's Oil Spill panel was chosen EXTREMELY poorly. 5 public policy goons, ONE engineer (not even the right kind!), and ONE environmental scientist? I don't see how any successful solutions are going to come out of that panel. Major fail on Obama's part and I'm very disappointed about this. I really hope they accept a lot of external suggestions from engineers like that Bob Bea guy mentioned in this article: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=10959837. I think there's incompetence all around on this issue; I don't see why it would be so difficult to form a panel of petroleum engineers to meet with policy experts and a couple of BP execs. to go over this and find a solution.
I agree that is a bit of a failing, but really, engineering is not the government's function in this crisis. They're in charge of oversight while BP was supposed to have the engineering expertise. Recruiting more and better engineers to their oversight committee may have made sense, but really all their proposed solutions were experimental, so at best you're likely to just be able to say, "I told you so" after the fact. Not really an essential government function, but yea, would've been nice to know someone was competent.
More fun in the news today:
Turns out the New Orleans judge who is overturning the moratorium on drilling is a long time investor in oil. Here's that unintended beneficiary vs. conspirator line being drawn again. Which side do you suppose he would fall on? Sounds like a career ending move if I ever heard one.
And to make some "minor" corrections to your initial statement, the moratorium only affects NEW, DEEPWATER, EXPLORATORY drilling. This means it does not affect present drilling operations, ONLY exploratory operations, and ONLY in deepwater. This translates to UP TO 10,000 employees over the course of 3 months, not 100k+.
btw, this is exactly why I request relevant comments ONLY! Looking at these comments you'd think we were in the American TurmOIL post... unless you are just cleverly demonstrating my 4th point on laziness.
...whoops, forgot the first link showing the investments of the judge.
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