A Facebook friend recently exclaimed that he hated the rich, specifically the Royal Bank of Canada; I asked him why he hated Capitalism, to which he responded "Because Capitalism is a scale of 0-10. RBC is an 8 1/2, I'm a 2"
At first I laughed; my gut response was to remind him that on Capitalism's scale, he's really more of a zero. Halfway through my witty response, however, I paused at a thought: this is an exponentially increasing trend in the Western world. Rather than devoting our time and energy in aspiration of great things, we expend ourselves rapidly switching between self-loathing and detesting anyone who (seemingly) has more than us.
If I hadn't been accessing social media via my phone, or my phone was so archaic as to have a discrete keyboard, I would certainly have broken the 'backspace' key in my haste to retool my response. Rather than insult my friend's stature- or engage in unjustified loathing- I chose to make the following comment: "Consider this, though: every successful business started out on the ground floor. By hating the rich you're reducing your potential."
There's a thought. In my own experience, students were regularly told "you can be whatever you want, if you just put your mind to it!" I, personally, was never told HOW. That's the kicker. The very same teachers and parents who told us to put our minds to becoming whatever we wanted rarely actually showed how determination and hard work were the driving forces; they would turn around and complain about the taxes they were paying, rather than give thanks for all the services those taxes provided. The media regularly has negatively spun stories about how the "rich get richer" on the backs of the "little people," rather than talking about how they started at the ground floor and worked their way up.
The mindset of my generation, several generations back, and most likely several to come is dangerously skewed; a sense of entitlement, a "work less, not smarter or harder" mantra, and a culture of disposal rather than repair will very likely be the death of Capitalism, Democracy, and even the West as we know it.
As Rome has fallen, so too shall we.
