by Donald B. Ardell - February 21, 2010
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so
placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about
their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their
sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is
dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one
kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not
one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass. Song of Myself,
31." 1892
Most people find much to applaud about REAL wellness
principles, even those who are not living in a manner recognizable as
"healthy" or consistent with a big concern for quality of life. This
is not surprising, as nearly everyone at least appreciates (if not lives in a
manner consistent with) certain upwardly mobile, socially supported wellness
values. These include respect for personal responsibility (in theory,
applied to others), reliance on one's own resources and a disdain for the usual
and customary obstacles to personal effectiveness (sloth, recklessness,
negativity, dependency, blame, excuses and the like), most of which they indulge
generously.
It's a wonder, when you think about it, that politicians do
not brag about how dedicated they are to REAL wellness, as well as the flag,
children, soldiers, guns, God, motherhood and apple pie.
Don't you agree that most functional people would find the
notion of self-responsibility attractive and admirable, something to value in
others and at least try to manage themselves? If you agree, then you might be
alarmed or at least concerned about a rather anti-wellness trend in America
today, namely, the growing popularity--and even political correctness, of
whining!
I view whining as frequent complaining, explaining and/or
believing that you are not getting yours, oftentimes "because of
them." That's just my definition; Webster's 9th New Collegiate version of
whine is "to utter a high-pitched plaintive or distressed cry." You
get the idea.
Whining does not change anything. Worse, whining
impedes change, since it implies that progress is not possible because of them
(e.g., gays, government, elitists, lesbians, Washington insiders, Democrats,
secularists, sexists, racists, homophobes, extraterrestrials, men, mad
dogs, etc.). An wellness alternative to whining is to identify a specific
problem unambiguously, examine a range of options about its cause and repair
and, after a bit of pondering, choosing a course of interpretation and action
(assuming the problem is at all within your ability to influence).
Of course, the profession most responsible for this trend
and for rendering whining profitable as well as socially acceptable is the
legal profession. However, I readily acknowledge blaming lawyers is just
my way of whining! This almost proves that everybody, even
self-responsibility pontificators like me, can succumb to the lure of whining
(also defined as “to complain or protest in a childish fashion”), now and then.
Whining seems to be endemic in the land of the free and the brave.
Politicians promise pressure groups that help elect them special favors
to make amends for the awful things that society once did or still does to
them. Social commentator Fred Gorman suggests politicians, mostly
lawyers, are the "pimps of blame," entrepreneurs who make a
living getting people to make each other responsible for problems that they
suffer. Alas, many people seem
eager to embrace these explanations, thus playing the blame game and seeking to
sue somebody else for their difficulties. What would Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck,
Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly talk about if they could not whine?
One of the worst symptoms of institutionalized, legalized
whining is the bizarre trend in the area of corporate political
correctness/sexual harassment policy. Did the early promoters of fair
employment practices, concerned about male piggery of a physical nature against
persons in a dependency situation with limited assertiveness skills, social
options or personal resources, wish to create a system of institutionalized
whining? It's so bad that lawyers are now called in when someone decides
to be “offended.” Any remark, such as an oafish or even brilliant attempt
at humor that someone considers off-color, inappropriate, a “boundary crosser”
or otherwise sufficient to cause one to feel uncomfortable, becomes is a basis
for legal action. What chilling effect does this have on equal opportunity for
all, if a policy or law favors but one class or gender? Does this trend
not imply that all members of a class (e.g., females) are fragile, delicate,
brittle and without the capacity to deal with jerks? The system has
become a major inhibitor, a whine generator and a weapon for malcontents - and
both genders suffer the loss of free expression as a result.
There are giveaway symptoms of rampant whining. I’ll
identify a few, followed by a wellness strategy for ameliorating the whining
problem. You should go into “whine alert” mode when the following are noticed:
· Problems are attributed to the evil misdeeds of
one villainous group or another.
· Demands are made for government solutions to
social problems.
· Victims refuse to accept any responsibility for
the consequences of their actions.
· There is a reluctance by the complainer to deal
with her problems, preferably with direct communication of an unmistakable
nature or, if that does not work, to deliver a swift kick to the derriere of an
offending party.
· A proliferation of special interest groups
asserting victimhood.
· Complaints overly dramatized, as in cries that
justice has been outraged, compensation should be paid and punitive damages
added for good measure.
Increasingly, as corporations transition from wellness
programming focused on health risk appraisals, smoking cessation, physical
fitness assessments and the like, more can be done to help people learn how to
think straight! One of the most undernourished elements in the wellness
movement is education of the workforce to the benefits of more responsibility
and less whining. The most underrated, ill treated disease of our time?
Victimitis, the belief that someone else is responsible for your plight.
Ashleigh Brilliant captured the nature of the problem in
PotShot # 3823: "Life is too important to be taken as a joke but too
ridiculous to be taken seriously."
Don Ardell is the Well Infidel. He favors evidence
over faith, reason over revelation and meaning and purpose over spirituality.
His enthusiasm for reason, exuberance and liberty are reflected in his
books (14), newsletter (521 editions of a weekly report) and lectures across
North America and a dozen other countries.