Addicted to Speed

It occurred to me as I was swimming the other day.  I looked over into the lane beside me as someone blew past, clearly putting all they had into the lap they were swimming.  I was swimming along at my leisurely pace, just enjoying the fact that I wasn't at work.  The people around me that day all had their Speedo caps and low-drag suits, more in a fist fight with the water than swimming.  And that's when it hit me:  America is obsessed with speed.

Maybe not so much speed as competition.  In America, everything is taken to extremes.  Whatever you can do, you should do it faster, faster, faster.  You should run faster.  You should chase promotions, even in jobs for which you show no interest.  Get that promotion, it will make your life better.  You should play games only to win.  A whole nation full of people who transfer their own shattered dreams to the next generation,  hoping to transform their pathetic, work-dominated, stressful lives vicariously through their false hopes for their children.

Of course this all plays directly into the hands of the rich and powerful.  They can pit you against each other in a performance battle and shower whoever is willing to sacrifice the greatest portion of their life to their work wins.

"Winner takes all."  We've all heard it.  But is it true?  What do they take?   If you're talking sports, the winners are only getting a shiny medal from some higher authority, whether it be a trophy in little league or a massive salary from a professional sports team.  They're just marionettes dancing for the camera.  Convincing the people watching them that they are so great that you should buy the crap the TV is peddling to you.

It inundates our society.  Those who make more money are automatically assumed to be better people.  A whole television industry devoted to promulgating this lie.  Putting kids who can't spell but can throw a football at the top of a pedestal, making their lives so easy that people completely ignore the intellectual degradation of our society in favor of forcing their kids to play sports they hate with kids they hate more.  Feeding them a false standard that is to its very core meaningless, and then wondering why we have so many mass shootings.

The only thing I learned in graduate school was that foreign students were willing to work night and day for $19k/year, and that I wouldn't even get out of bed for $19k a year.   The only thing that has changed since then is that I will barely get out of bed for $120k per year.  In fact, for so paltry a sum, my employer should be thanking their gods that I bother to come in at all.