“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
G. Michael Hopf
Do you think it is true?
One of my colleagues mentioned this infamous quote as part of a group conversation over coffee, where we were talking about how we tend to overcomplicate the world and a lot of the public discourse is only possible, because times are too good.
Idle hands do the devil's work.
Idle lips are his mouthpiece.
Humans are problem solvers by nature, making us creative forces. All of us. But, while we are all the problem solving spectrum, we aren't all equipped to solve the same kinds of problems and when we do not have a problem to use as a focal point of our creativity, we will create a problem instead, so that we can begin the process of solving it.
Because we don't all have the same skills, we are well suited to working on a whole range of problems and collaborating in order to solve pieces of large and complicated problems also. However, some challenges have a higher barrier of entry in order to be an effective problem solver and some have such a low bar, anyone can take part. For example, relatively, there are only a small fraction of people on earth who are able to solve the problem of how to populate Mars. However, essentially everyone can weigh in on the problem of how to improve society, because it is incredibly ambiguous and at a scale where most individuals can't do much at a practical level that will be meaningfully impactful on the problem itself.
Yet, even at this level, we end up wanting to make more problems, by changing the definitions to increase ambiguity and open up for no practical solution. For instance, when I was a child, there was no discussion about which public toilet a person should use - it was clear, because there was clarity on the definition of man and woman - with nothing in between. That has obviously changed.
When I was a kid, people were starving in Ethiopia due to famine. Forty years later, people are still starving in Ethiopia from famine.
It isn't good times for everyone.
Idle hands are no longer doing the devil's work for most people, because idle hands are instead scrolling through social media feeds, tapping likes, sharing and commenting on the words coming from what would otherwise be idle lips, but are now the Devil's mouthpieces. The social platforms have given a voice to the people, any people, and most of those people are not the ones who are solving the challenging problems, but they want to be included, to release their creative energy. And, since they can't create a solution, they create problems, or amplify the created problems of others.
Communities used to come together to build a church to worship a religious god. Now they come together to raise a problem, with all the fervor of the most religious groups in history, rallying around an imaginary cause, raising it up to be their momentary god.
Until they get bored and move on to the next god of the moment.
Yet, with all their energy, nothing is actually getting built and nothing is getting solved, because what they are putting their attention into, is largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of daily living for the majority of people. If anything, the approach it has taken has created more division in the world, with segregation being supported by the same groups that only a few decades ago, were fighting for inclusion. A constant splitting of groups into ever-finer slices, setting up differentiation and, more problems to "solve".
I don't think we have had "good times" in many respects, but what I do believe is we have an increasing number of ways to avoid dealing with the actual problems we face as a society. We can continuously choose the lowest hanging fruit in terms of problem to talk about, but even if we were to solve it, it wouldn't make an impact on the challenges of consequence. How many different gendered toilet signs do we need to create before we are able to solve starvation from famine in Ethiopia?
How many selfies are required to end racism?
We have attention deficit disorder, but the disorder isn't due to us not being able to pay attention, it is in what we are paying attention to. We have become hypersensitive to the inconsequential and cosmetic issues, while the important problems we face are left to fester, growing larger, deeper and becoming more problematic. We argue about the cause of climate change endlessly, while not actually dealing with climate change and working out how we as a species that is very sensitive to our environment, are going to survive it. We have failing economies locally and globally, but instead of building a robust economy, we vote for leaders based on popularity and single issues of contention - the momentary god.
The hard times of the past might have made us strong, but now they just make us more avoidant. We seek out entertainment to distract us from having to deal with problems, so that not only do the problems get larger, but we get increasingly weaker, reducing our ability to create good times. It is a race to the bottom and when we hit that bottom, we are not resilient enough to use it as a foundation to build on, we instead demand to be saved from our problems, most of which are of our own making.
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
When people repeat this quote, they tend to focus on particular parts of it, with the good times, hard times, strong men and weak men taking the focus. But, what is actually important in my opinion, is the most socistent part of the phrase;
Strong Men, Weak Men. Good Times, Hard Times.
We create our world.
While we fill our moments with problematic gods, solutions pass us by.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
