This smoke I'm about to deliver is well deserved.... If I'm wrong for this, then... pic.twitter.com/6d7RLkplnR
— Jason Whitlock (@WhitlockJason) July 28, 2021
Jason Whitlock nails the bottom line lesson in the video.
The celebration of Simone Biles quitting is the latest sign that America has been hacked. Everyone is human, we all have a breaking point. I do not condemn or criticize her in any way. What I do condemn is the widespread celebration of quitting as "strength". Compassion is one thing. The glorification of quitting as strength is an entirely different thing, and it's where we are now.
The pace of change in American culture has been extremely rapid. There are many names for what ails us as a nation: Leftism, Feminism, Wokeism, Progressivism, Post-Modernism, Communism, Socialism, Racism, Sexism, etc, etc...
I still maintain that the best word is: Emotionalism.
When Emotionalism becomes the driving force of society, feelings trump facts and feeling trump everything else too, like culture, history, freedom, individual liberty, accountability, competence, excellence, opportunity, truth, integrity, personal responsibility, work ethic, achievement, winning, competency, everything ... becomes subordinate to ... "feelings".
Who's feelings?
Not just your feelings, the feelings of other people might matter more than yours. The feelings do not even have to be real actual feelings. The presumed feelings of a Person A or Group A, can be put forth by a third party, Person B, to you as person C and under the sway of Emotionalism, that itself is enough to create a responsibility in you to modify yourself so as to improve the hypothetical feelings of a third party person or group.
This is insanity. It's also called shitty boundaries, co-dependency, rescuing and enabling in psychology.
There is another older name for "Emotionalism" though too:
Hedonism.
Hedonism means people's behavior is driven primarily and fundamentally by the desire to increase pleasure and to decrease pain, that's it. There is nothing higher than grabbing all the emotional pleasure you can get and minimizing emotional pain. This is where our culture is headed, like a runaway freight train.
This of course sounds great. It's what we all want, but the disastrous effects of hedonism in practical life are well documented by every school of religion, philosophy, and psychology. The entire point of these schools of thought is to counter our natural animal hedonistic unconscious impulses with something that actually works out much better than behaving like a hedonistic animal. Hedonism is the highway to hell. Ask the Romans. Especially when it is combined with self-righteous victimhood and "us" vs. "them". Eventually, "them" deserves whatever they get, because....feelings.
Values and higher principles than fickle petty feelings hoisted up on a pedestal by Emotionalism must rule the day or everything will come crumbling down. This story has been repeated over and over again throughout history for 1000's of years. If you have children, you've lived it yourself on a small scale.
Find God, talk to him. Let him influence you.
Or if that isn't your thing try stoicism or Budhism or Jungian psychology. ANYTHING is better than Emotionalism/Hedonism, but if you walk all those other paths like I did, and you may need to, you'll probably find yourself sitting down for a long-overdue conversation with God eventually.
