Some things in life work like a swiss watch. At least twice per week, I’ll read on my Facebook’s bad news feed, a post which begins with something similar to the following, “we’ll see who my real friends are by whoever reposts this desperate appeal for attention.” The implication is clear. “Are you out there world, do you care about me?” Every time I read one of these posts, my original thought is, “where did we as a society go so horribly wrong, how did we create an entire generation of people so incapable of surviving without this constant need for artificial validation?”
As bizarre as the constant need for outside validation, something most of us used to leave behind with those awkward years associated with adolescence, is the incessant need by some, to assure everyone around that, that they care more than others, about anything which has been identified as worthy of care. In this pathetic world of holier than thou instant gratification, not only can can caring about the cause of the moment be quantified, but such dalliances in platitudinous bona fides for having a bleeding heart actually manage to become a contest of measurable tears produced. I once read that Facebook turned everyone I know into teen age girls, and I thought that extremely witty. I realize now that this was only half of the truth. I now realize that along with that awkward and constant need for self absorbed attention, many on Facebook exhibit the emotional stability that would have seen my children chastised at the age of 8, namely the need to show off how much larger their hearts are than all others who dare tread upon the hallowed ground of pollyannaville.
Don’t blame Facebook, they didn’t create this condition, they merely found a way to make a profit off of it. Facebook identified the need for speed validation in our constantly disconnected and wired in society, and invented the better mouse trap to provide the service which satisfies that need. This coin has two sides, one is the constant need for validation at hyperactive rates. The other side is the need to be the quickest and most passionate in providing that validation for others, even those you might not know all that well. It’s narcissism with a twist. It promotes caring for others, but only in such a way that the real reward is being able to tell others how much more deserving of praise one is than others who pretend to care. Unfortunately, in this world of hyperconnected narcissistic caring, facts and objective thought are tossed out the window. What remains is not pretty, once examined in the slightest.
Many of us have been burned by the emotionally needy lover or friend dealing out conditional affection as if it were a natural healthy state of affairs. The phrase, “if you love me you’ll……,” has never, in the history of human existence on our planet, been followed by anything resembling a good idea. The political version of emotional blackmail is every bit as destructive as the original version, people with Borderline Personality Disorder taking to social media networking sites.
“If you really care about the poor, you’ll support minimum wage, government mandated wealth redistribution schemes, support increased government regulation designed to prevent smaller businesses from gaining traction in the market place. Never mind the fact that Minimum Wage in this country got its auspicious start in the Jim Crow South, was a principle tenet of Apartheid, and is not only not a good idea economically speaking, but in fact one of the most cruel and evil things that can be inflicted upon the very group that those rushing to prove that they care more than others do for the poor. Narcissus points will be granted for those with the best protest signs and snarkiest Facebook posts claiming that they’re on board. Never mind the fact that government mandated wealth redistribution schemes have proven themselves to be no where nearly as impactful as private charity in terms of helping the poor, nor that in most instances have been rife with graft, corruption, inefficient administrative problems, or that they create even larger economic problems and thus greater amounts of poor people in even greater poverty due to the destruction of private capital that would other wise be used to create those jobs which help people escape and avoid poverty in the first place. Narcissus point will be rewarded for any who can eloquently describe the evils perpetrated by any who manage to succeed in building a business which benefits their fellow citizens in any meaningful way. Never mind that increased government regulation not only stifle new entrants into the market place which would help to lower prices and increase quality for consumers, but would also increase competition for labor thus having a positive effect in terms of increasing opportunity and wages for the average worker. Narcissus points will be awarded for any who can outdo their fellow liberal in decrying the evils of the man, who run the world through some sort of kung fu like grip granted by the military industrial complex.
In all of these instances, right and wrong matter not, only how vociferously one’s petty jealousy can be articulated. It’s about attaining the self satisfying feeling of being able to claim the moral high ground, WWND, what would Narcissus Do. We’re seeing it in Ferguson this week as well. Never mind that every aspect thus far of the original reporting has turned out to be untrue, you can show you care more than others by calling for the lynching of every cop in the nation even before any real investigation has been started. He was charging the officer at the time, not fleeing. He was shot in the front, not from behind. He was a thug who’d just committed an armed robbery and not a gentle giant. No worries, you can prove your bleeding heart bona fides by calling for the officer’s execution despite any evidence which reverses the white man’s guilt narrative.
Unfortunately as well, those who pimp out these ideas to the masses of lemmings getting in line to follow the leader off of the economic cliff are never held to account for their consequences. Rachel Carson led the movement of self righteous preening fools to ban DDT, all based on her dubious at best emotionally charged book sans actual evidence, and the result was the premature deaths of 50 Million so far in Africa due to Malaria. Somehow, the bleeding heart bona fides are still being granted to those who continue to scream for the DDT ban, even as real science has debunked the Carson book decades ago. The global warming zealots continue to use their faked, (my favorite to date, as the NOAA has admitted to falsifying half of their raw data to match backdated computer models in order to make temperatures appear higher than they actually were over the last 20 years,) science in order to deny Millions in the Third World the life saving gift of a stable electrical power grid. Those nations with reliable refrigeration after all have life expectancies which are double than those nations without it.
All of these forays into obvious evil have been committed entirely so that an unearned moral high ground could be claimed. “I am holier than thou, because my world is ruled by emotion and not reason.” It’s not that Conservatives or Tea Partiers don’t care about the same things, want old people and puppy dogs to suffer, or wish to see hordes of unarmed poor children shot in the streets. It’s just that we disagree with the implementation of policies that will make these abhorant situations worse, won’t solve anything, fail to even mitigate the circumstances decried as worthy of indignation, and in most cases act as the exact opposite direction to something that actually would work.
Those teens working at McDonald’s for minimum wage will in very short order be earning more, will have learned the skills necessary to take on more responsibility, become more productive, and find ways to be of greater import to our society. When we incentivize McDonald’s to replace them with automated cashiers, we’ve risked losing an entire generation of future wealth creators, and quite possibly our next great mouse trap. The real stakes aren’t just those minimum wage jobs, but what they would have led to. Reread Frederic Bastiat, it’s the broken window fallacy rearing its evil ugly head, fat bloated, and beyond recognition.
Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.
