Are You Successful?

I worked with the cutting edge of technology most of my life. I lived in the Ozarks, Oklahoma, Newport News, Columbus (Georgia), Killeen (Texas), Dothan (Alabama), Las Vegas, San Diego, Nashua (New Hampshire), DC, Iraq, Kuwait, St Petersburg (Florida), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Israel, Germany, Bath (UK), London, ad nauseam. In the military and for major contractors like Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and more. High tech is everywhere. In the military I USED high tech. As a civilian I roamed the world talking to Soldiers/Marines (from Privates to Generals) looking to define things they wanted that we might develop and provide. (TALK ABOUT FUN!)

 

I am not saying tech is not everywhere. That is the purpose of technology to make people's lives easier. My point is where is that tech being develop? Where are the business decision being made to create that technology and distribute it. Remote working allows me to work outside of the city but the businesses will always be headquarter in the big cities. You live in the Ozarks, how many international business build their HQ in the Ozarks? I could not even begin to count the number of international firms that have offices in our city.

 

I don't live in the Ozarks now any more than I live in Iraq now... I DID... as a Company Commander at Fort Leonard Wood, MO (my first assignment as an Army Officer 1976-1979). I lived in NY from birth until I graduated from college, a lot longer than I lived in Missouri for three years. Defense, which is loaded with cutting edge technology, has very few ties to megacities. Army Aviation and Missiles are managed (funding, logistics, plans, analysis, etc) in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. Most of the battlefield lasers (rangefinders, designators, etc) are developed in the tech corridor between Orlando and St Petersburg, FL. Helicopter R&D from the old McDonnell Douglas (which was swallowed by Boeing) is largely done in Mesa, AZ. NASA's manned vehicle equipment is developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The new helicopter to replace the venerable Blackhawk was developed and will be built here in Texas by Bell. F-22's were developed and built in Georgia. F-35's are built here in Texas too. The Army's leading software development center is here in Texas too. Most defense contractors are not headquartered in big cities. Ok, Boeing is but LockMart, TI, Colt, etc. are not.

I apologize for zeroing in on Defense, but I spent my life in it, in and out of uniform and that's my specific area of expertise.

 

Well the military has the advantage of being government and funded by taxpayers rather than the free market like the majority of us. They can pay ridiculous amounts for things and to have things done because they do have a profit motivation. Unless you want all companies to be controlled by government that is not how the rest of the world works.

 

I beg to differ. The defense industry is competitively cutthroat. I have personally delivered multimillion dollar proposals to the government, spending the last few moments before delivering it sitting in a waiting room with competitors, hugging the volumes tightly so that no one would ever see but the government. The competition is fierce. I have helped author many such proposals, coming up with money saving strategies in any way we could. From use of "unevaluated options" to using commercially available parts, to moving to locations where prevailing wages are lower and more. (That's why Lockheed moved to Georgia.) The government is very frugal in the defense arena. Industry used to invest and be willing to lose money on the R&D end in order to win the contract and make it up on the production side. So the government changed its rules and now the products of R&D including the documentation ("tech data package") belong to the government, which then goes out with a totally new competition for production. Production houses that are not burdened with the R&D effort can just "build to print" and clobber folks like Boeing and Lockheed. The defense industry is not as you describe.

 

So janitors are the most successful people by that definition, lol. That quote... I guess there's a grain of truth at least. Hard work despite not feeling like it does matter.

Well the science of nutrition isn't exactly an ancient thing, so I'm not sure what they thought eat well even meant. Thousands of years ago? Not starving. I don't really see the value of prayer or meditation.

A predictable consequence of capitalistic consumer culture combined with bodies made to survive feast and famine.

Exercise was incidental in old times. They weren't going to the gym - they moved a lot because they had to and there wasn't much to do that wasn't active.

Wow I can't see the value of prayer or meditation at all, let alone it being the most important thing. Guessing there's a study somewhere with benefit I guess. Those other things don't see inherently destructive or evil in themselves, they can just be overdone. Something pleasurable becomes too consuming and edges out other responsibilities.

Well, success can have different definitions. The janitor is not necessarily less successful than the doctor if he does his job with integrity, is a good father to kids, and enjoys their life while the doctor doesn't do those things. Meaning (i.e. doing a job or other activities that you find important and fulfilling), enjoyment, and self-care must be balanced, to me. Some people are workaholics, and that's fine if that works for them. But I'd rather not be "successful" if it means more 80 hour weeks.

What? Where?

Said every old fart ever... except maybe during wartime.

Different generations, different tech, different skill sets. I am sure old people were appalled when the younguns stopped knowing how to ride a horse or hunt for food. Though yeah, those things are pretty simple and should be picked up easily. Can I imagine a 24 year old who never had to inflate their own tires, assuming they even use a car? yes.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of his liberal arts education helping him to write the Declaration of Independence. I think you are missing my point that one purpose of education is to teach people how to think. In the past the people who had a liberal arts education neither contemplated their navel nor strummed guitars. Rather they were the intellectual giants that founded this country and comprised the early ruling class. Certainly the American Constitution and government framework are a great accomplishment.

 

I am a complete, utter failure.

 

I could not agree with you more. "Back in the day" folks used studying the classics to think great thoughts and author great documents like the Declaration of Independence. Today they study such things to avoid responsibility and avoid finding a job. I happen to be an engineer and find my world filled with logic and "how to think". I am/was also a career Soldier so I had to think on my feet, dealing with surprises, opposing an enemy that was doing the most surprising and innovative things to kill us.
If you think that people "who had a liberal arts education neither contemplated their navel nor strummed guitars. Rather they were the intellectual giants that founded this country and comprised the early ruling class."... then its very obvious that you have never been to Malibu or Venice, California.
"Certainly the American Constitution and government framework are a great accomplishment." SPOT ON!

Have you ever considered Enlisting in the Army?

 

I tried to join up once like 30 years ago but I needed to have references from three people who knew me for more than three years and I didn’t even have one person like that.

 

I'm not even 45 years old yet so I don't think I quite qualify as an old fart yet.

Every man ought to know how to do certain things like unclog a toilet or change a tire or put air in a tire.

 

Wow. No friends for thirty years> Have you trained to blow up buildings?

 

I don't know that gender matters for it, but it may be prudent for anybody who operates a car. Not everybody even drives, so for them the knowledge isn't useful.

 

I'm orry you never knew your parent. My condolences.

 

~ My 9 abandoned stray cats that I took in think I am successful .

~ Absolutely. Some are quite successful at being a bum. Many are politicians.

 

Notice I said "in the past." Today the liberal arts education is mostly useless. However, the most useless degree of modern times IMHO is a graduate degree in information systems management. The degree of choice in many government agencies for selecting government IT managers. Useless for actually learning anything about IT that is. Useful on the other hand for a getting a GS-14 or higher.

 

Hey I told you I was a failure.

 

We have a sign posted that says $3 minimum charge for any service. That's what I call the grown man fee. And if they pull up to get air or they obviously have been driving.

If it's a woman or an elderly person or a handicapped person, I don't try to charge that.

But it does get old because I'll be doing my job somewhere else and someone will just expect me to stop what I'm doing and give them air.

Once in awhile I get a tip which is great, but most of the time they can't even be bothered to say please and thank you. And how I was raised please and thank you goes a long way. I don't expect to be tipped but I do expect for someone to at least be courteous if not rude and demanding

They will typically come up and say 'hey I need air". .... I can be across the parking lot doing something else and they will come and get me . ... The best ones are the ones that just yell at me across the property... Bet your ass they get the grown man fee

Yeah, well I need people to stop being so damn rude and demanding. And most of them are not even there to make a purchase.

 

And you would be surprised how many people come in to buy alcohol or tobacco and I asked them for their ID.

If you appear to be 30 years old or less and I have not seen your ID then I want to see it.... Because I'm not trying to get booked into jail or lose my job for selling alcohol or tobacco to a minor.

And so many people get a damn attitude about it and don't have their ID but yet I can see on the security camera that they drove their ass there!

Out of my 8-hour shift I only have to work probably about 5.

If I'm not doing anything else but sitting here playing on my cell phone I'm sitting in front of the cameras watching all 13 of them.... At least periodically.

Hey... I work from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. so you got to do something to fill the time. It's actually expected that you'll be sitting there on your cell phone for a while. You can only clean a small store so much. But I'm not complaining because I love my job and working for a family owned business and I'm actually paid very well for what I do.

 

That's already a success.
You work in gas station, I imagine?
It's good that you have 3 spare our you can spend on PF.com.

 

The happiest person I know is one of my sisters. She is not wealthy or famous or notable. She is happy. What could be more successful than that?

 

Sadly, I'm not seeing it.

Courage, optimism, hard work and sacrifice, along with the value for individual freedom, independence and responsibility, are virtues that are vanishing in my country (USA). In their stead have arisen what you have attributed to the "old world" - lethargy, malice, corruption and I would add - worst of all - nihilism.

You speak of our physical health, which is a genuine concern, but what truly concerns me is our spiritual health.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn saw the same thing when he traveled through the West after being expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, and his thoughts are compiled in a book titled Warning to the West. Here are a few observations that he made that are pertinent to my remarks and concerns:

I am not a critic of the West...I am a critic of the weakness of the West. I am a critic of a fact which we can't comprehend: how one can lose one's spiritual strength, one's willpower, and possessing freedom, not value it, not be willing to make sacrifices for it.
(p.106)

Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions...One of the riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find the strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit and then in body; while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose their taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery. Or again: why is it that societies that have been benumbed for half a century by lies they have been forced to swallow find within themselves a certain lucidity of heart and soul which enables them to see things in their true perspective and to perceive the real meaning of events; whereas societies with access to every kind of information suddenly plunge into lethargy, into a kind of mass blindness, a kind of self-deception.

...until I came to the West myself and spent two years looking around, I could never have imagined the extreme degree to which the West actually desired to blind itself...the extreme degree to which the West had already become a world without a will...
(pp.125-126)

It is with a strange feeling that those of us from the Soviet Union look upon the West of today. It is though we were neither neighbors on the same planet nor contemporaries. And yet we contemplate the West from what will be your future, or we look back seventy years to see our past suddenly repeating itself today. And what we see is always the same as it was then: adults deferring to the opinions of children, the younger generation carried away by shallow, worthless ideas; professors scared of being unfashionable; journalists refusing to take responsibility for the words they squander so easily; universal sympathy for revolutionary extremists; people with serious objections unable or unwilling to voice them; the majority passively obsessed with a feeling of doom; feeble governments; societies whose defensive reactions have become paralyzed; spiritual confusion leading to political upheaval. What will happen as a result of all this lies ahead of us. But the time is near, and from bitter memory we can easily predict what these events will be.
(pp.129-130)

Through my lengthy reading of the past I have been astonished time and time again at the obstacles our ancestors have overcome, and I see the qualities they possessed in fewer and fewer people today. In many respects, like other nations, empires and civilizations in the past, we have become a victim of our success, and that is how we have ended up with the generation that FatBack aptly described as spoiled, lazy and wallowing in an unearned and overinflated sense of entitlement. Many have come to believe, and worse yet were led to believe, that the world owes them something, and one of those things is success.

What I see in the United States (and to an extent the West in general) is a people adrift. We have become unmoored from who and what we were as a people, and it's because we have lost sight of who and what we are as a people. Is it any wonder there is so much dysfunction, anxiety and nihilism? Of course not. We are blind. We don't know where we've been, where we are and where we are going. We are grounded in nothing.

The blindness Solzhenitsyn spoke about came from somewhere. It didn't just magically appear out of the ether...

 

Well I do work from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.

Now there are things I have to get done at certain times but there's always a few minutes here and there. Believe it or not though I can find some stuff to work on.

When I am not bitching about everything that doesn't get done by other shifts....

Fixing to have to get a shower and eat dinner and take my ass to bed cuz this is my Monday morning come 10:00 p.m.

 

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

I suppose that societies are much like individuals in that we have many peaks and values in our journeys. Obviously at a low ebb, I am quite optimistic about our country's future. The key is getting through the transition period which is now upon us. There is much corruption to root-out and a great deal of institutional re-imagining to be done, but all the fundamentals favor our country for many decades to come...the BIG three being geography, demographics, and technology.

It seems to be human nature to see things in the extreme, but the old saying still holds true, things are never as good or bad as they seem. I am quite confident that a new generation of Americans will be up for the task of cleaning up our mess and moving briskly forward. And [to be fair] there's still a great deal of good stuff [and good people] going on, as well.

Keep the faith!

 

You'd never know it from my post, but I'm generally the eternal optimist and I haven't given up faith in our youth, which is why I find your OP encouraging. If younger Americans are failing themselves and our country, it's because their parents and elders have failed them. If, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed, "the younger generation is carried away by shallow, worthless ideas", then we have to ask ourselves who filled them with those shallow, worthless ideas and encouraged them to be carried away by them? If they are a generation adrift that is unmoored from from who and what they are, we have to ask ourselves who failed to teach and encourage them to learn who and what they are? Finally, each and every one of their elders is going to have to look in the mirror and ask themselves 1) do I genuinely care? and if so 2) what am I going to do about it?

Our institutions, government and politics can't fix what is broken in this country, and what's broken is our people. This has to be fixed at the human, personal and individual level. Young people need direction, support and encouragement, and if they're not getting any or enough of that from the people around them then others need to step up and fill the void. Young people need to learn and be reminded of the things that truly matter, the things you mentioned in your OP - courage, optimism, hard work, and sacrifice - and that their freedom and prosperity is the product of the courage, optimism, hard work, and sacrifice of their ancestors throughout the ages. They need to learn about the challenges they faced and how they either surmounted or failed to overcome those obstacles, so that they will be prepared to face and overcome them themselves instead of repeating the mistakes of a past that they know nothing about. If we want young people to succeed, then it's our responsibility to put them in a position to succeed.