I live my whole life under the concept of "if I fail... there is NO net to catch me". Sometimes I think that if everyone lived their lives that way we would all tend to make better choices...
Me too Armor, but I suspect that we, and others on this board, are the exceptions.
One trap that many successful people fall into (myself included) is the belief that we enjoy a successful and happy life entirely as a consequence of our own merit. We are intelligent, have worked hard and made wise decisions. Therefore, we are richly deserving of all we have.
However comforting this thought is, it does not bear up to close scrutiny. The fact that I live healthy, happy and comfortable today is due to the intelligence, work and sacrifice of thousands of men and women (both known and unknown) who have gone before me.
For example, nearly 231 years ago, a ragtag band of mostly teenagers, led by a Virginia planter named Washington, huddled in the forests of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They were the remnants of a defeated and fleeing Continental Army. Thousands of their comrades had given up hope and gone home. Yet they persevered. Drawing on their very last reserves of hope and strength, they crossed the Delaware River and attacked the Hessians in Trenton, thereby keeping the American Revolution alive and ensuring that I would one day be able to live in the freest and best country in the world. 168 years later, men braver than I have ever been or will ever be stormed the beaches of Normandy to defend that freedom against Hitler's evil. Their sacrifice made our world possible.
Similarly, I did not die of a childhood disease because men and women far more intelligent than me devoted their lives to finding vaccines against and cures for those diseases. Others, all of whom were more talented and hard working than me, discovered electricity, invented refrigeration, the automobile, the airplane, the computer and the internet. All the wonders of modern technology that enable me to work, travel and play were developed by someone else.
Incredibly clever Renaissance Italian bankers developed methods of banking that benefit me to this day. As a direct result of their efforts, I can write a check, use credit, and deposit money in one place and take it out in another. The concept of the mutual fund, which has benefitted me greatly, was developed by yet another genius.
In short, most of what I have today was made possible by the efforts of people who were smarter, harder working, more dedicated, and braver than me. My own contribution pales by comparison
In the Bible, one of Jesus' parables concerns certain workers in a vineyard (even if you are not Christian, please bear with me -- this is not about religion at all). It goes like this (Matthew 20:1-16):
For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right." So they went. He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'
'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.
He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'
When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.' The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'
But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'
So the last will be first, and the first will be last."
This parable is most often used to show that God loves us all equally, the church ladies who attend every Sunday no more and no less than the tattooed motorcycle guy riding by outside.
But the most interesting thing about the parable is this -- when most people first hear or read it (including me), they are outraged by the landowner's conduct. That is because everyone sees themselves as the early morning workers, who have worked hard all day. No one identifies himself or herself with one of those eleventh hour people, who got the same treatment for so much less work.
Similarly, when people read that libertarian stalwart,
Atlas Shrugged, they always identify with John Galt and the "individuals of the mind". They are never one of the "looters and moochers".
I respectfully suggest that none of us was born into a state of nature such that we can claim credit for everything we have today. Each of us stands on the shoulders of countless others who have gone before, and each of us is dependent, whether we admit it or not, on the efforts of many, many others who live among us today. As John Donne once wrote
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece
of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by
the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's
death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for
thee.
This, then, is the pernicious heart of libertarianism -- the belief that all we have and all we are can be attributed to our own intelligence and our own efforts. Such thinking at best leads us an inflated sense of self that devalues the lives and contributions of others. In its most virulent form, it can also make us heartless and cold.
Personally, I hope for better.
