Occam's Chainsaw

Pop-culture produces a lot of poisonously meaningless language, but occasionally a word or concept emerges that has some enduring utility.

“Enabling” is a nice example.

The concept has been used to describe the behavior of family members and partners of alchoholics and addicts, who repeatedly clean up their messes, bail them out, cover and lie for them to protect them from the worst consequences of their behavior. Of course, doing all that ALSO tends to temporarily protect the enabler from the external consequences of the addict's misbehavior. But the enabler justifies and defends it as a demonstration of love, commitment, and a desire to help.

You see endless examples of parents over-extending themselves to drive their kids to sports clinics, sports events, music, dance, horse-back riding lessons. But that’s not the indulgence I’m concerned about — those activities at least have the potential to teach some self-discipline. We all have known people in our lives that are utterly selfish, insubordinate, surly, unwilling to exert themselves, reluctant to help but always ready to ask for favors; always looking out for nobody but themselves.

I have seen from very close up, a number of people raised in middle class — NOT wealthy families — who by their twenties had never cleaned a toilet, paid for a tank of gas, washed dried or folded a load of laundry, or prepared a meal for another person. I have seen an intelligent fifteen-year-old kid so indulged by the adults in his household, that he didn't know to remove the cardboard disc from the frozen pizza when he put it in the oven. That might have required the effort of actually reading the directions.

If you've known such people, you know it is almost universally true of them in addition, that they are bitter, resentful, and convinced that they are constantly being held back, abused, and cheated somehow. That is the supreme irony, that they cannot even enjoy the indulgence and privilege everyone else sees them receiving.

This blog is another attempt to sort through some of the things that to my puny mind, have contributed to the present situation. I'm not so much trying to persuade anyone else to my point of view, as to use the distilling process of writing to find out just what my view is. There are fundamental orientations and filtering processes at work — the personal biases and pre-judgments I have, just like other humans. But I'm trying to force them into the light, by straining factoids and opinions and reports from a bunch of contrarian sources. This will be just another series of meanders in a flowing journey. I have faith it is carrying us to a place where in the fullness of time the river will widen out to a broad vista.

Mark Twain was always proud of his experience as a Mississippi riverboat pilot. In his days the river was a wild, untamed thing that changed daily, so that the channels and obstructions negotiated going upstream told nothing about what to expect on the return downstream. But a pilot learned quickly to read signs that were subtle enough to be meaningless to novices. There were standing waves that spoke eloquently of hidden rocks and snags; eddies that could turn the boat and expose it to overwhelming currents; ripples that hinted at shallows and sandbars that could leave a boat stranded and helpless.

There is no map of the future, but there is wisdom to help us steer.