{"id":18089,"date":"2016-02-22T16:20:43","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T21:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18089"},"modified":"2016-02-22T16:20:43","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T21:20:43","slug":"the-system-has-failed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18089","title":{"rendered":"The System Has Failed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The System Has Failed<\/a><\/h3>\n

No wonder we’re devolving into a society of a few privileged haves and a vast populace of marginalized have-nots.<\/i><\/p>\n

American culture contextualizes failure in individualistic terms: the system didn’t fail–you failed.<\/b>\u00a0Never mind the system is set up to fail many (if not most) participants: the cultural narrative is that failure to succeed, failure to get ahead, and failure to fit in all boils down to personal failure: failure to follow the rules, work harder, please your boss, transition to a new career, extricate yourself from dysfunctional situations, and so on.<\/p>\n

This narrative of individual failure and redemption is the foundation of thousands of self-help books, seminars, motivational speeches and the ever-present gung-ho rah-rah<\/b>: you can beat any odds if you work hard enough, get out there and meet the right people, sell yourself, etc. etc.<\/p>\n

Pop culture is a schizoid mix of this “dress\/socialize\/study for success” celebration of individual initiative and an equally zealous embrace of victimhood and self-pity:<\/b>\u00a0I made all these ridiculously poor choices because my family was dysfunctional or I was led astray.<\/p>\n

No wonder our culture is psychotic.<\/b>\u00a0The way to get sympathy (and rationalize poor choices) is to make yourself out as even more of a victim than the rest of the self-justifying crowd.<\/p>\n

But the ideal turn-around to self-pity and victimhood is the personal redemption via hard work, discipline, better choices, going back to school, etc.<\/p>\n

These inspirational narratives at the heart of American culture serve a useful purpose, but they ignore the other half of the story: our institutions have failed us:<\/b>\u00a0they have failed not just the failures but the successful as well. They have failed the nation and every one of its citizens, but this systemic failure is verboten: speaking of systemic failure invites ridicule as a loser who blames the system instead of themselves.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The System Has Failed No wonder we’re devolving into a society of a few privileged haves and a vast populace of marginalized have-nots. American culture contextualizes failure in individualistic terms: the system didn’t fail–you failed.\u00a0Never mind the system is set up to fail many (if not most) participants: the cultural narrative is that failure to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[127,4924,10095],"class_list":["post-18089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-oftwominds","tag-systemic-failure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18090,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18089\/revisions\/18090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}