Wealth inequality has become a huge source of division in America. The have’s are only gaining more while the have-not’s feel like they are in an unwinnable race. The solutions proposed by either sides of the political spectrum seem to lack compromise and forward thought. The calls for a socialist system ignore the importance of hard work and the building of confidence and self-worth that comes from earning your living. The “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” side ignores the fact that due to environmental or genetic factors, that isn’t a possibility for a large percentage of the population. It’s tempting to blame other people’s misfortunes on their own laziness, but once you understand that free-will probably doesn’t exist, that blame gets a lot harder of an argument to make.
I was raised in a financially conservative family that ran a small business. I remember the financial stress put on our family every few months when quarterly tax estimate payments were due. Over their life, my parents became more and more conservative, and understandably so after years of breaking their backs with work and not feeling like there was anything to show from the significant portion of income that they shelled out to the government each year. Being raised in this environment made me lean pretty far on the “bootstrap” side above. I remember thinking Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” was like a bible that laid out the blueprint for how the world should be run – everyone take care of their own needs and the people that deserve to prosper will do so, and the people that deserve to suffer will get their just desserts.
But then I grew up and learned a little more about the world, and completely changed my perspective on what “deserve” means. Do children that grow up with little to no parental guidance, or in an abusive household “deserve” to have a miserable life because they are repeating the same negative patterns that were ingrained from them from birth? That’s another pretty hard argument to make. By learning about sociology, psychology, evolution, etc., I began to realize just how bad of a job we are doing at investing in the success of our children, which will determine the success of our future. Why do we spend so much time bickering about problems of war, immigration, religion, & politics of our current generation, which are all just symptoms of the failures in how we were all raised? Instead of trying to do the impossible of getting 330 million Americans or 7.5 billion humans on the same page, why don’t we start focusing on how we can improve the generations to come by investing in their education and making sure they are the most well-rounded, positive, compassionate & resilient people possible?
Well, we know that in order to make significant impacts in any area of society it takes resources – time, effort & money. Right now, the average American is caught up in a consumerism whirlwind – where parents slave the majority of their waking hours at a job that doesn’t bring them joy and then have to make-up for the lost time with their family by buying their spouse & kids material possessions that will make them happy, even though the happiness it provides is fleeting. This creates a “keeping up with the Jones’s” effect where we are all working longer hours and spending less time connecting with each other so we can buy more stuff that ends up filling up landfills instead of filling the void inside.
I think a big portion of this struggle can be solved with increased mindfulness & compassion for ourselves and others. I won’t go into too much detail since I describe the benefits in other posts, but the basic idea is this: If we are kinder to ourselves, we will be less judgmental of our own failures. If we are less judgmental of our failures, we will give ourselves the freedom to try new things, and be able to pursue the things in life that truly make us happy. The ability to pursue the things that we enjoy, coupled with a reduction in judging ourselves, leads to a reduction in our constant comparison of ourselves against others. When you are happy in your life and not worried about what others have or do around you, that constant craving for more and more stuff goes away. With less of a craving for stuff, we need less money to survive and can spend less time working and more time with the people that matter.
Sounds nice right? But let’s be realistic, we all have responsibilities and we can’t just quit our jobs to pursue our passions – most of us wouldn’t make it a month without being severely strapped for cash to pay our bills or service our loans. So, is this happiness only something that the rich can attain? Right now I would say yes. However, the sad thing is that the drive to earn more and have more is so strong inside our society that it usually takes some kind of mental breakdown before anyone can step out of that endless cycle of always needing more in order to pursue a more genuine happiness. So maybe it’s the children of the rich that get to embark on this journey to find happiness… they have all the money & time in the world, so why not? The problem is, the majority of these kids have been raised with an over-emphasis on material things and an under-emphasis on the really important things, like genuine connection to and compassion for others. It’s not their fault though, their parents were too busy bringing in the bacon to really spend the quality time teaching these important lessons to their children. Maybe then, the children of the lowest classes are actually the lucky one’s because they are already used to a low standard of needs and can take advantage of it to pursue their happiness? Wrong again. They are raised in stressful households with poor nutrition and poor access to opportunity, so their focus is on trying to escape the problems of the world instead of embracing them and gaining meaning.
So, who really is left out of our society that gets to embark on this journey of a more meaningful life? Unfortunately it seems like only a tiny percentage of our population is able to muscle their way to do this. It looks like we have this huge problem of wealth inequality, and the kicker is that hardly no one, even the wealthy, are able to enjoy their situation.
Gaining Ground Blog 