A Society That Can't Handle Failure

In the last 3 weeks, dozens of Americans have been slain by distraught murder/suicide killers. Women have been killed. The elderly and children. Police have been gunned down.

At the heart of each one of these killings is a person who is so tormented that they have decided to strike out in anger over their own failures in life. It is not good enough for them to simply kill themselves. They must take others, usually strangers, with them to the grave.

The frequency of these horrendous crimes is increasing and I believe that today's society is at the core of this problem. We have literally created a me-too and give-me mindset in America. Success and failure are measured by what we have or possess and not necessarily by what we have accomplished. Things, like iPhones, cars, and big homes are the "bling" that says we are successful. Increasingly, we expect the government to take care of us. That's why the savings rate in this country is so low. No one, ourselves or our government, saves anything for a rainy day. We just spend. Well now, the rainy days are here.

With the economy faltering, all that bling is being taken away from those who are on the economic fringe. People are losing their jobs and those jobs which were essential to them having and maintain all those possessions.

Increasingly, people can't accept failure because our society attempts to give them things that they haven't worked for or are even entitled to. The housing collapse is a perfect example. Past government actions have intentionally allowed too many unqualified buyers to obtain homes with risky mortgages. Now these people are facing failure and, as a consequence, some might lash out at society.

In our schools, there are attempts to abandon testing or any grading system because it might make those less-capable students feel badly. Some universities have dropped SAT's as a measure of a prospective student's entry into that college. Union wage scales, too, stifle exceptional individualism in both performance and creativity. Just upping the minimum wage can be a crutch, for some, to just live the status quo and to believe that the government will always take care of them.

This country was originally built on the basis of individual drive and initiative. I see that spirit being diluted by the homogenization of our society. You can call it liberalism or you can call it socialism. But anyway you shake it, it is taking its toll on the human spirit. The increasing rates of murder/suicides are the symptom.

People learn from the many failures in life. Each failure strengthens the human spirit to be a better person. By not allowing small failures to occur in our lives, such as in school, we become unable to cope when a big failure hits us; like the loss of our job or our home. The frequency of these murder/suicides is increasing because failures are increasing. What we have seen in the last 3 weeks is probably just a start of more to come as people fail to cope with the current and massive changes in their lives. And, that's just my opinion.