Supposedly we have another snow storm and frigid night time temperature heading towards the Small-Hold this afternoon. I been hauling firewood from the reserve pile to the burning racks by wheel barrow on and off all day because my truck is still in the shop, and hasn't even been moved yet BTW which is starting to piss me off a bit, and my Mother's truck is hooked up to the stock trailer and all set for yearling loading tomorrow morning.
I could unhook my Mom's truck I guess but I just decided the exercise would do me some good. By the looks of the radar image the snow should start hitting us about 3PM or so but they keep playing it down now so I am really not expecting much. They are also saying 60's for highs by the weekend.
Since I have already started cutting for next year's supply I decided to go ahead and begin using up my reserve stack of firewood. Mostly because like an idiot I put one of my bean trellis behind the stack and blocked it in. Don't ask me why I just wasn't thinking about it when I started refilling my reserve area this Summer.
Recently I was in a discussion with a couple of online commenters about underlying social issues and moral decay within the Western world and the US in particular. As usual many were blaming the lack of faith in Christianity or Feminism or Liberalism or the Multi-Cult/White guilt. The usual gambit. Yet one comment struck me and lead me in a different direction even though I don't think the person who made the comment meant for it to.
The problem isn't all these failed ideologies, either together or individually, the problem is we no longer allow them to fail.
The more I thought about it the more sense it made. Our government doesn't allow any of the traditional failures to actually fail any more. In fact it goes so far as to take from one ideology that doesn't fail to prop up the ones that should fail.
Certainly I am not telling anyone something they did not know but sometimes it is hard to see the forest for the trees. We allow individuals to accept promises that cannot be realistically kept because we back those promises. We subsidize those who hate us and feed those who would be marginalized due to their beliefs. From top to bottom we do not allow anyone to actually fail and in turn that means that no one, no idea, no opinion etc. is ever actually proven to be wrong.
No matter how stupid the experiment, no matter how single minded or how much the consequences cost nothing is ever allowed to truly fail and therefore no one learns and nothing rises as the dominant opinion. The right to fail is as important to human development as the right to succeed.
This very flaw trickles down into all aspects of our lives and affects either side of the political spectrum as well. It allows hypocrisy to run rampant and weakens ties between groups.
The more I think about it the deeper the rabbit hole goes. Perhaps that is one appealing aspect of a post collapse world. The right to fail will once again be a part of our lives.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
PP - Outstanding! the right to fail! and it starts in our schools! all kids get a smiley face just for participating! that's pure BS right there! i remember a time when showing up didn't automatically mean you passed the course! i remember when there were tests that were actually graded and if you didn't do the assignment - you GASP - failed! same thing for Sunday School, Brownies and Girl Guides! and universities turning out "graduates" who can barely read and write - arghghghgh! you hit the nail on the head with this one!
ReplyDeletemuch love buddy! (and didn't even call you wiener. not once.) your friend,
kymber
Kymber - Ya I remember grades and actually doing work in school. Had they limited this ideology to school we may have been ok but these days they extend it to cities and states too.
DeleteI think the right to fail has never gone away...it's just that the government subsidizes the failures so there seem to be no consequences to failure. Whether it is corporate failure, group failure, or individual failure the government steps in to subsidize it so that there appears to be no downside. But if you look at the national debt and include promises not yet included in the debt it is clear to see that there are consequences. But will anyone care until it finally collapses and takes everyone with it?
ReplyDeleteIndy - Good points. Failure can still happen they have only hitched the entire wagon to it now I guess. In order for the stuff that should fail to do so we are all going to have to sink I guess.
DeleteAs I said good point!!!
The school system put up a big banner in front of their building that said "Failure is not an option" I wanted to add ", It is a Fact" to the banner but the wife suggested that I leave it alone. That banner goes to the root of what you are saying, Failure is not allowed, how could anyone utter such nonsense. It goes against Darwin and just about all we know from religion and cultures to rule out failure. Everyone wins, everyone gets a trophy if you play soccer, no one is offended, it is a win win as they say.
ReplyDeletePeople say "Failure is not an option" but I think they often do not mean in the sense of the original saying. It is almost a motivational thing at this point rather than a commitment to success.
DeleteIt also adds to the fact that everyone always thinks they are right. No matter which way they swing they still get a check, they still live and no need to do without. The daddy state really takes care of everyone these days.
DeleteWell, "true" Christianity does support the right to fail. It the portion of "sow the wind and reap the whirlwind". You reap what you sow.
ReplyDeleteanother verse is:
"A Prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it". Proverbs 22:3 again the action vs consequence idea
But given today's modern watered down views/practices on Christianity, I can easily see why you phrased it like you did, and I agree with you.
Matt - What it does is it makes sure no one has to truly prove themselves. They are allowed to follow say whatever form of Christianity (or any other religion) in whatever form they wish because there is nothing that shows what they want to believe is not the truth. Any heretical ideology is actually given merit because it doesn't fail.
DeleteI am wording it badly but I think you get the idea of what I am saying.
Agree wholeheartldy
Deleteyou and IndyJones have got a great start on the root cause for most of our misery.
ReplyDeleteLiberals not only subsidize failure, they punish success!
Higher taxes on more successful people!
Punish success- are you likely to see more success? No.
Reward failure are you likely to see more failure - Yes.
All of liberalism consists of punishing success and rewarding failure: 3rd generation welfare families are the first example.,
mark - and in turn by doing so the give the failures legitimacy too. Thereby confusing all the others.
DeleteI just saw that some areas want to ban sled riding. If you crash, you learn not to do that again. Failure teaches resolve, perseverance, many good traits.
ReplyDeleteThis world is doomed
LW - And repeated failure takes away your credibility too. Since we never seem to discredit no one feels they are wrong but always right which in turn causes more strife.
DeleteVery well said, Preppy. If we ever meet, the first round's on me.
ReplyDeleteRP - LOL I am a cheap date. I only drink iced tea :)
DeleteBoy ain't that the truth! Those big banks should have been allowed to fail & the little ones that were honest would have grown to take their place. I also have little sympathy for the homeowners who bought knowingly outside of their means planning on flipping into something bigger. Let them take the loss too.
ReplyDeleteMV - and yet those same home owners will be out using the fact they "Paid for their own house" as a measure of their success too. By not allowing people to fail the government gives them credibility.
DeleteVery insightful! The nanny state has done this.
ReplyDeleteJanet - Yes it has. The insidiousness of the thing is what frightens me.
DeleteWhen I was driving home yesterday some radio program that had a bit on the constitution said that the Founders valued equality of opportunity while our current society values equality of results. I think this is a part of it too - it is not just that people or movements should not fail but that people should not be all that successful either - after all, if you succeed, someone else fails.
ReplyDeleteI have failed - failed terribly, failed miserably in business and hobbies and relationships. But I always learned something out of those failures, even if it was to stop doing something because it was not successful.
Interestingly (personal opinion) I would think that the right to fail generally makes for more conservative societies, because the risk of failure is such that one just does not casually do something if the risk is high.
You are a keen observer of trends Preppy.
TB - Thanks!!!
DeleteThey do still allow some individual failures of course but by supporting ideologies and other large groups they have created an atmosphere contrary to the natural order of things I think.
Yes switching from equal opportunity to social engineering the outcomes was an early addition to make this problem larger than it should have ever gotten.
My take on it is slightly different, but not completely out of line with what you are saying. My view is a little closer to what Niven and Pournelle I think were trying to get at in Lucifer's Hammer.
ReplyDeleteA society that is growing 3% compounding (and the compounding part is important) for over 100 years can afford all sorts of add on "benefits" and beliefs. You can do all sorts of interesting things with the excess wealth that you generate. You can call a lot of those ideas parasitical, or useless, or extraneous, depending on your views and the nature of the "add on" activities.
The problem is that when a society starts bumping into resistance to forward progress, all the different folks that have been feeding off societal surpluses get fighting over the dwindling excess. Although these hangers on can get blamed for the decline, as Gibbon to some degree blamed the Christians for the fall of Rome, to my mind they are more the catalyst, and a roadblock, than the cause.
They are the catalyst in that their infighting can cause speed up the breakdown of an already troubled society.(Peter Turchin would call it elite overproduction. Where the groups who previously were (at least in some aspects) rent seekers, fight over the dwindling pie. Note that rent seekers, historically were the wealthy nobility, not the poor, but the poor do occasionally factor in when they are part of a (generally urban) political process: the Roman mob for instance, or today's Snap Card crowd.
I would point out that, while I do think the socialist distribution folks are running out of other peoples money. The idea that we can simply cut taxes, and get rid of government, and all will be better, also puts very strong faith in the idea that the United States, instead of very different circumstances today, and the general math challenge of perpetual compounding growth, can grow forever if the government, free loaders, etc. would just go away.
It would be the side that I normally would feel more sympathy for, except that as a group they tend to fight just as hard for their transfer payments, and hidden subsidies as anyone else. I don't see any real sign that the right is willing to except a new reality where our huge private debt is collapsed and their is no more access to home loans or credit cards, and deflated wages drop (in real terms) to dollars a day, rather than dollars per hour. We would be poor, and being poor sucks.
Russ - I don't disagree at all. I was kinda looking at this development as in addition to the other problems you mentioned though. I think as TB stated above we are about the first society to ever embrace this equal outcome mumbo jumbo and it set's us into a different position.
DeleteAgain I am phrasing it badly too. I should have waited longer after feeding time to collect my thoughts better before replying to comments :(