Too old to be a better person, why not be a better parent

I

think I presented a rather questionable proposition. As much as I might (or might not) illustrate that being a better person for others is not the answer unless everyone is trying to be better I am a highly preachy and dogmatic about being better parents. One could argue that every parent makes his or her life about great parenting but then it is also where mostly everything goes wrong. A young human is more open to change than an older one and if you could leave imprints of great change, inspire in them kindness just the same as ambition and enduring search for purpose, then you have a future you can be proud of.

As I am writing I am overwhelmed by how difficult a task that is. I cannot show you someone who has been successful at parenting unless you are ready to set the markers of success a little lower than usual. I find myself terrified at the idea of parenting. I look at myself and I see every reason to be terrified. To create and nurture another highly sentient being that carries genetic coding that he cannot escape - there is only one viable solution and that is to do what everyone does. Bring the success markers down and do as much as you can. Claim that you did your best and rest.

The last part of that apparent single viable solution, I see that more now than I ever did. We are finding things to be more difficult. We are in a race to protect our egos. We are declining in our ability to work more and take ownership. We are getting more and more excellent at claiming we do though, at selling less for the price for way more. This is encouraged as skillful too. Work ethic is such a celebrated term today but in reality, work ethic has also started to become a commodity that does not matter if it does not look great from the outside. Have we somehow come to this agreement that we will all collectively settle down for less because good things and best things are impossible. Have we agreed to worship the second best and lesser quality of everything as the best? Why are we so addicted to language in superlative form while action is often a mere tease of what greatness it could be.

We have seen a need to quantify and fragment everything as a means of enabling faster learning among diverse types of learners. This method also seem to have become a part of work culture where fragmentation seemed to help identify and distribute work as appropriate. The objective was to obviously take the load off the workhorses and have it shared for maximum productivity. But this then translated into people taking less ownership instead and focusing merely on tasks they are assigned which they would give up on if it relies on completing something the other person do not.

This is one reason I do not understand certain types of use of intelligence. In a group of both unskilled and skilled laborers the norm that makes logical sense is the skilled survive, provide and are properly incentivized. But that is not the norm. The notion chased is that both categories of people are paid exactly the same even if the results are different. The objective becomes protecting feelings, protecting relationships, egos, protection from protest and movements that seem to one too many these days. The objective of an individual or a group is not to be better or best at a given task or not even to go out and find something they are good at so they can stop doing this thing they are not good at.

In an organization, the people who starts it off with absolutely great passion are then seen to compromise because it is about motion suddenly not about the mission, the goal they have, because they feel this is all that you can get. They cannot afford to stop and the greatest threat we are all seemingly afraid of is to face that sudden lack of forward movement (or any movement).

I am not against the fight for equality. But it has to be equality. We live in a world where we cannot stop comparing ourselves and the things we own and the things we accomplish. The sad part is this comparison is severely futile. It is not making us achieve more than who we compare ourselves to. Maybe to bring clarity, I must point out, equality in circumstances available and influential.

How do I explain this? I want to be rich. I don’t want to be rich like somebody though. I just want it how I want it. I just want what I want with everything. What seems attractive, I must let it only be an inspiration. Someone with less than me in skills and more in accomplishments should only make my journey easier. Obviously not so simple because circumstances, resources, team, adversaries, health, mindset and a million other things matter. So the shortcut is probably to gather such noisy attention from people who are willing to latch onto the cause of equality and use it to propel myself to where I want to be than just grinding it out.

You have no clue how much I piss people off with this talk. They ask me if I am saying people should just be happy with what they have. Am I saying discrimination is okay?

No, that is not what this is about. Unjust means and practices - I am in the front line to fight it. You do what you I do better than me, then you should get and earn better than me. You are the hope there, the inspiration there. If I cannot do it at the level you do, I have to diversify. I have to learn something you cannot. I have to do something you cannot and monetize it. I cannot just say, you and me, we do the same thing, so we must get paid the same.

We want to quantify the whole thing make it tangible but we do not want to do it a way that is fair or just, just whatever serves us in the moment, correct?

We are living in such fear of what our peers could do to us. We need us. We take advantage of the fact that we need us.

Maybe the issue is wealth, resources that have become limited. We fix this problem however by again making it about work and incentives. Then we realize again that it is not working because so many of us are barely surviving.

It’s just a cycle. The pattern needs breaking and humanity is never going to stop and fall into the right or perfect pattern. We just compensate, compromise and then fight about it until we find another way to compromise or compensate. We are driven and we understand in terms of sides that face each other, not co exist.

If the universe is just expanding, if everything in it is just going away from each other as opposed to towards each other, our human race does just the same. We are pulling away, we want to be so different from each other and yet to notice that difference we need each other.

There is nowhere to go, no escape.

But the little we could do involves changing ourselves, parenting another generation to change and influence change as they must. We must parent the world using any method we can to show that the sense of self cannot overpower the need to be kind. We must parent the world in its efforts to create resources, to share wealth and to grow together as opposed to being at each other’s cross hair.

We must tone down the lesson we teach everyone on how wealth, power and social status is the determining factors to how successful you are.

Listen, I got to take a minute there and tell you that I remember, at this moment I am broke and boy could I use any penny I can earn! I am just saying… what am I saying… ah fuck this… I do not really know.

Let us get back at our craft and be at it. Let’s just do what we must when we must. Leave humanity to live and die. I do not see what else nature intended.