Posted by
Michael Kleen on Friday, August 01, 2008 5:32:47 PM
In a recent political cartoon for the Detroit Free Press entitled “Traveling Across America,” artist Mike Thompson juxtaposed two women: a pioneer from 1857 and a businesswoman from 2007. The pioneer declares, “the trip is grueling and filled with hardship.” The businesswoman replies, “I hear ya! My flight was packed and 20 minutes late!”
In 1905, Art Young was far more critical of his contemporaries when he illustrated a cartoon for Life magazine entitled “World of Creepers.” It depicts a sea of men in sport coats crawling along the ground under a dark cloud. The word “fear” hovers just above the horizon.
These two political cartoons express concern that we are (or were) becoming a culture of complainers, snivelers, and grovelers; mere shadows of our immigrant and frontier ancestors who attempted to prosper despite enduring constant hardships.
Regardless of the individual veracity of comparisons between our contemporaries and the pioneers, cemeteries and mortuary records bear witness to the austerity of frontier life. Death at the hands of disease, accident, and homicide were very real and ever-present, if a settler even lived past the age of five. The fact that these individuals and families often prospered without helmets, Paxil, or inversion therapy probably seems unbelievable to a hypersensitive people who run to their lawyers whenever someone calls them a bad name.
Hara Estroff Marano, in his essay “A Nation of Wimps” printed by Psychology Today (Nov/Dec 2004), argues that not only are we becoming increasingly incapable of coping with even the simplest traumas, such as scoring lower than a ‘B’ on a test, but that the pampering of our children is the main culprit behind that trend. “Parents themselves have created many of the stresses and anxieties children are suffering from,” he argues, “without giving them tools to manage them.” By preventing exposure to danger or challenge and then demanding more and more out of them, we are raising children who are anxious, depressed, and unable to deal with life.
The answer to our low tolerance for pain and misfortune is simple. Any long distance runner will tell you that you cannot run 8 miles without first being accustomed to 6. You cannot run 6 miles without first being accustomed to 4, and so on. Likewise, we simply cannot handle the harshest challenges of life, either mentally or physically, if we are coddled and prevented from becoming accustomed to the small challenges.
In a harsh world we can either become tolerant by not shying away from pain and disappointment, or we can shelter ourselves and be unable to cope when those challenges rear their ugly head. Friedrich Nietzsche recognized which was the genuine hazard: “for us life is more dangerous,” he lamented, “we are made of glass--woe unto us if we merely bump ourselves! And all is lost if we fall!”
------------------------------
www.blackoakmedia.org