After 40 years and counting I have noticed something that was hard to put my finger on. I find more and more that the people I interact with on a daily basis have a mode of 'I'm going to do as little as possible to help, or even push work I should be doing back onto you'. This has changed over the approximately 14 years I have practiced law, and if you sit down and think on it, since my earliest days in school and before.
I began to notice that as the grades went by, there was less and less rigor in education. My most memorable school experiences were when teachers challenged me and pushed me to my limit. I think on that and realize that the biggest years for that were Grade 1, Grade 5 and then Grade 10. In Grade 1 I had the most wonderful teacher and she pushed my reading to the point where I kept growing and growing tremendously through the year. In Grade 5 our teacher gave us lots of homework and demanded excellent work, as a result, my work went from sloppy to polished. In Grade 10, I was in a new math curriculum and unfortunately our teacher became ill, as a result we had to play catchup which was demanding and resulted in comprehensive learning.
But as a spectrum, from 1989, when I started grade 1, to 2006, when I graduated undergraduate, you could feel the 'participation ribbon' culture set in. Most of my university courses you could pass if you had a pulse.
In a way I feel I was molded by the spirit of the age as well. In undergrad, channeling econ 201, I felt that a B+ was the optimal mark, that putting in the extra effort for an A was getting into the realm of marginal diminishing returns. For the most part I avoided classes that were rigorous or had labs. In fairness I was involved with cross country and track, which provided their own intense rigors, but the point remains. I look back and think, would I have been better suited to engineering? I had the high school classes, and I enjoyed calculus, however I enjoyed history more. If someone had pushed me and said you have to take this hard science course and do well, you have to come out of school with a high paying degree, how would my life be different. Would I have recoiled? Would I have flourished? We'll never know. In any event, I ran track, and spent hours between classes prowling the stacks in the library, following my own fancy. It's not a regret, and I treasure that path in its' own way, but we are here to examine things honestly.
I once looked at my Opa's report cards from the four room Chipman school in the 1930's. There were no computers in the class, no calculators. And yet they did the same calculus we did in Grade 12. They did homework by lamplight on the farm after chores, pre electrification, and did the same material we did with computers and graphing calculators. Everything they did had substance, because they couldn't afford anything that wasn't. They couldn't afford alcohol, there was no cash on the prairies. Would you harness the horses and go to Church in minus 40 just to make an appearance, or did you have faith of substance?
You could say it's 'back in my day' bias, or that I'm growing into a level of bitterness to match my middle age, and I would say, those are possible factors (which I account for), but do not accurately explain the living, dynamic reality that we work with every day.
To set the scene, think about how our whole society functions. Our government borrows billions, and spends billions more than it raises through revenue (mostly personal income tax). As recent scandals have demonstrated, they seem to have no idea how much of this money is spent, where it goes to, and what if anything is to be provided in return. That's the charitable interpretation, you could read in outright corruption if you tilt your head slightly. You give the best hours and decades of your life and the tax you pay is up in smoke. We demand lots of ourselves in our work, why doesn't our government demand the same from the tax we pay to them?
Think about how people spend their leisure time. More delivery drivers out there than ever, even delivering junk food from from 7/11. Hollywood makes total crap, and people eat it up. We don't demand anything from Hollywood, they make another Marvel movie and move on to the next. Watching watching watching. Nothing of substance or meaning. Food with no substance, art with no substance, work with no substance, homes with no substance, life with no substance, faith (such as it may be) with no substance.
Think of what billionaires do with their money. Sit on it indefinitely, perhaps. Huge vacation homes and yachts. Imagine a billionaire today liquidating his fortune to join a Crusade. That literally happened in the Crusades, you forget, or more likely, you never knew. Because people didn't have much other than faith, and the faith had substance and made rigorous demands on them. Imagine voluntarily surrendering everything you have, taking on a project of uncertain success, with no earthly reward and death likely, would you?
This is how we get to where we are where people don't care about their work. Why would they? Does anybody really care about anything? They look around, and everybody is phoning it in., doing the least possible. The government conjures money from thin air, their paycheques somehow arrive, if they get through another day to their newish condo and netflix, mission accomplished. GDP per capita shrinks every year as we have more and more non entities wandering through life, eating up oxygen, food, and technological gains, and doing not much else.
Look around. How was your last trip to the passport office? How was your last visit to the bank? How was your last trip to the mall? How was your last subway sandwich?
How do you want to go through life? Do you want to be part of the growing proportion who do the bare minimum? Who exist to cause problems and parasitize the diminishing few who want to do something of meaning? To get in the way of building and the essence of life itself? To merely exist and just pass the time on earth, make no impact and feel nothing. To kill your soul in a sea of meaningless spectacle.
Or are you one of those few who can see through the false idols. My friend, you must know you will be ground into nothing by this modern machine. The money you manage to make will be taken from you and treated with contempt. Increasing masses of problem creators will get in your way. You will need a strong faith but what is it? God? Ad astra?
This essay isn't meant to bring you down, oddly it's the opposite. Your life's work, should you choose to accept it, is cut out for you. The field of actual accomplishment has been abandoned, it is yours to capture. Your enemy has never been stronger and more duplicitous, so much the better, your achievement will stand in starker contrast for this.
The choice is put to you know and will be with every second and every day. Do I slump or stand with good posture? Do I wear sweatpants to the store or put on respectable pants? It is a war of the spirit, of the soul. Have you forgotten that innermost part of you, among the distractions, the buzzing phone, the next episode of the water coolers favourite dreck. It's easy to do. This is a battle I fight every day, and I don't always win. You have to find that soul, that inner voice in you amongst all this. That itself is a choice, the choice to do hard work and look within, not to be distracted, not to evade and ignore the deepest, most important part of you.
When you do you will demand more from yourself. You will demand more from the disinterested voice on the other end of the phone. You will demand more from your government. You will demand more from your city. You will demand more from your art, you will make art yourself, art of meaning. You will demand more from life.
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