Rants!

These essays highlighted a few emotions that I thought were worth thinking about, and ambition is the first one. It concerns me that there are a lot of people who feel like they must focus on their careers to the detriment of their families. Ambition leads to the feeling that there are opportunities that have to be taken advantage of now, while the things that are always there, like family, can be ignored. This is true for a little while. But at what point is it time to stop trying to ensure a certain future and to start appreciating the now. It reminds me a little bit of coming to CMU. How many people are here for their future, and how many are here because its where they wanted to spend four years of their life?

Next, fairness and self-righteousness come to mind. I really hate the you-hurt-me-so-to-be-fair-I'm-going-to-hurt-you attitude. Its not an intentional thing, but that doesn't mean there's an excuse for it to get out of hand. In the essay where the writer talks about how talking about the problem solved it for a little while, I kept thinking, well why not keep talking about it? Suppose you want or need another person to sacrifice or change something. How is attacking them and making them defensive going to accomplish this? It also doesn't make the attacker feel any better. Ever. One of the greatest temptations in the world is the desire for the tit-for-tat, petty revenges.

Daddy Dearest angered me the most of any of the essays. Here's a father whose finally taking initiative and knows what's going on in his daughter's life. Except he doesn't know what's going on in his wife's life. I think that being in a relationship means that it is never just about the individual. Every decision needs to be made with an awareness of how it affects the other. So realize that by trying to steal your daughter from your wife, you are trying to damage their relationship. And how is that going to be at all beneficial to you?

On an unrelated note, has anyone seen the McCain commercials where they criticize Obama for wanting to spread the wealth? Its basically a bunch of people getting interviewed and saying, "I don't want my hard earned money getting turned into government spending." I think this is the kind of individualism that Warner criticizes in the Perfect Madness. Go it alone, work hard for yourself, screw everyone else. I wonder what would happen if these people read Rachel in the World, or Life As We Know It. Yes, the government is inefficient in its spending, but it does provide a lot of great and necessary programs. Above a certain income level, I just don't see why people need more money. If we quantified happiness, and hypothesized that there is a 1% (overestimate) increase in comfort when one's salary goes from 1 million to 2 million dollars, is this really better than a 10% (underestimate) increase in comfort which could be achieved by giving $10,000 to 200 people, potentially bumping them out of poverty? But hey, the million dollar family worked for it. They earned it. Never mind what advantages they started life out with, or what breaks they got along the way, its theirs! Man. Politics.