By Selwyn Duke
Boys who lived in the ancient Greek city state of Sparta certainly did not have lives of wine and roses. They were plucked away from their families at the age of seven and sent to live in military training camps, where they were used and abused as they were molded into warriors in the fires of brutality and privation. They subsisted on what you could call one of the recessive gene manifestations of the culinary arts -- "blood soup," which was a little pork floating around in a lot of blood and probably some water. As bad as this was, they didn't even get enough of it and had to endure perpetual hunger, and the only way they could achieve satiation was by stealing food. In fact, so ascetic was the Spartan lifestyle that the name itself has been assigned a place in our lexicon as a synonym for austere.
The truth of the matter though, is that the lifestyle of those ancients was much more in accordance with the norms of human history than is the opulent, luxuriant one we now take for granted. Yes, for most of human history people not only couldn't enjoy things like air travel, automobiles, stereos, computers, televisions and household appliances, but most lacked even what we consider to be basics, such as toilet paper and soap. In fact, missionaries who visited Papua New Guinea in the 1950's tell us that washing was so foreign to many of the inhabitants that you could smell them 100 feet away; medical care was so unknown that little pricks would sometimes turn into ulcerated sores, and some had fungal skin conditions that enveloped their whole bodies simply as a result of poor hygiene. We worry about the possibility that the wrong diet may shorten our lifespan, which for the average American has reached a high of 77 years. Many people who preceded us had to worry about having no diet at all and possibly starving to death, and as for lifespan, even in the relatively prosperous Roman Empire the average was only 22. We worry about eating too much while they had to worry about not getting enough. This is no doubt why even those feared Spartan warriors only grew to be about 5' 5" and 120-130 pounds. We worry about the stress of an upcoming test, wedding or job interview -- they had to worry about the possibility that barbarians might pillage their town and slaughter their families -- that's stress. We worry that if we don't play our cards right we won't have that nice house and car -- they had to worry that if they weren't blessed with rain the crops wouldn't come in and they'd die of starvation. We focus on exercise and health and fine tuning the human machine so we can enjoy the golden years of retirement -- they didn't know the meaning of the word as they worked their fingers to the bone during what were usually brief and often violent existences.
This is why there is something that strikes me when I hear about lawsuits like the one that was just filed against MacDonald's on behalf of some youngsters in New York, on the basis that the chain peddles food that is dangerous to children's health. It's not that it's another example of people refusing to take responsibility for their own lives, no although that does occur to me. Nor is it the fact that we are breeding covetous, gold digging people who prey on society aided and abetted by shyster lawyers who would sell their mother's soul for a big score. Nor is it the fact that we have appointed judges who are so feckless and stupid that they're willing to waste taxpayer money adjudicating cases that they should throw out of court faster than MacDonald's serves up saturated fat. All these things are factors, and each one provides enough grist for the mill so that I could devote a complete essay to it -- but it's not what strikes me. The factor I'm talking about can be summed up in one word: ingratitude.
We have become a very ungrateful people -- we count our curses and not our blessings. If you would have served those poor Spartan boys any kind of MacDonald's meal they would have thought they had died and gone to Heaven. But, we're not happy to simply have such food available 24/7, we think that its purveyors also have a duty to see to it that we don't get fat. We're not happy to simply have a very special drink called coffee, we also think that we need to be compensated financially when it's served hot and we're dumb enough to spill it on ourselves. We're not happy to simply have sidewalks to walk on, we also want to sue someone when the pavement is a bit slippery and we fall down on them. We're not happy to simply have institutions of higher learning at our disposal, we also feel that others should finance our education, and we'll often protest vociferously when people won't pony up the cash. We're not satisfied with the fact that someone took the time and invested the money to create a business from which we can derive an income, we also very often want the government to force our employer to conform to our idea of fair compensation. We're not simply happy to have taverns to cavort in, but we also feel that their owners should pay damages when their patrons choose to drink too much and cause accidents. And the examples go on and on and on.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "C'mon Duke, a few people do these things, but most of us go about our business and take responsibility for our lives -- don't hang this on everyone." Sorry -- I don't buy it. I say this because ultimately the majority decides what ideas, conventions, policies and practices will prevail in any society, and the atmosphere that allows for these despicable lawsuits is simply a by-product of the spirit of entitlement that most Americans have embraced. Way too many of us cheered and said "go get 'em, boy" when the government targeted the tobacco companies and gun manufacturers, thereby becoming the enablers of those who claimed those entities owed them. And way too many of us have judgement that is so corrupted that we confuse charity with birthrights, and just compensation with legalized theft.
One area in which we Americans are most definitely without peer is litigiousness, and what it costs us in time, heartache and money impacts on our overall happiness. Ironically though, the feeling of entitlement that leads to the ingratitude that is part of what inspires us to be lawsuit crazy also impacts on our happiness. This is because when we feel we are being denied something we deserve, something we have coming to us, we tend to be unhappy. When however, we receive something that is a bonus, that is just icing on the cake, we are often elated. It follows then that the more things we think we deserve the less happy we'll be, because there will be more instances where we will be denied that which we think we have coming to us. It also follows that the less we think we deserve the happier we'll be, because we'll see more of what we get as a bonus. This is why it's important to count our blessings and not our curses -- it is a prerequisite for contentment and a healthy mind and society. And this is why we would do well to cultivate in ourselves the attitude expressed by the great philosopher G.K. Chesterton when he said, "You say grace before having a meal, alright -- but I say grace before I dip the quill into the ink..." If we learned to cherish the little things that if taken away we would view as big things we surely would be happier -- and we would engage in legalized theft and visit unhappiness on others a good spot less.
