Wednesday, June 16, 2010

On Static Thinking

"Static Thinking" is a phrase I coined for myself to sum up an explanation for my own personal financial woes. I have come to realize however that this phrase can be applied to more areas than just finance. Today I'll apply it to helping the poor, but first a few things in description.
  • Static Thinking is thinking within a snapshot in time; it is static. It doesn't consider history, cause, ramifications of past choices or consequence. It is the kind of thinking that will cause a person to burn down his barn to get rid of the rats not considering the fact that tomorrow he or the rats either one will have a barn.
  • Static thinking sees what is and assumes that it's fixed in time. Not only were rich people never poor or poor people never rich, but poor people will never become rich or rich people poor. Never ever in a million years will that change. They are fixed.
Connecting The Dots of Static Thinking and Helping The Poor

Sue is poor. She is an unaborted single mother with 3 unaborted children from 2 different unaborted dads neither of whom live with her in her government-provided apartment. Her plight however is not a static one. You see, the idea of a good family home in her world was outdated. June Cleaver and Ossie Harriet as role models had become relics of a bygone era, worthy only of disdain and ridicule. They were replaced by the sensuality of MTV, do what you will, and the materialistic world of feminism. 

Sue was educated in a government school where the concept of God was banned and replaced by the meaninglessness of evolution. The intellectuals thought this best for her. Her neighborhood is crime-ridden. The government - confounded by its self-imposed restraints brought on by its Marxist mindset, and by the resulting sub-society living according to the standards taught to it by the educational institutions - gave up on trying to control anything but the most violent of criminals in her neighborhood.

Sue is unemployed. Businesses that may have employed her, or her husband had she thought it necessary to have one, having themselves given up on trying to do business in an area where the criminal is the protected one, moved to safer havens, even to other countries where they could escape runaway risk of lawsuits and bureaucratic red tape. 

Sue's neighborhood is drug-ridden. More government indoctrination passing itself off as "education" as it turns out, was helpless in helping those who live there escape a meaningless and hopeless existence It requires more. Unfortunately, drugs are the easiest, and perhaps the only accessible escape. So they abound.

Sue's neighborhood is marked by blight. Having been trained that "others" will take care of her, she feels no responsibility for making her neighborhood look nice and desirable. Her peers deface buildings in the same way they deface their own bodies with graffiti and piercings. Besides, to fight the blight would be a hopeless endeavor. She would wake each day to find that the graffiti and trash had reappeared. The liberal intellectuals and "theologians", and the weak-minded people who listen to them, look at Sue's plight and see only what their materialistic worldviews allow them to see: a lack of material. Or to put a finer point on it, more cash. So demands that more material be taken from someone else to assuage her situation, and their guilt, are made in the name of "compassion". THIS... is static thinking. Related Post

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think one problem is increasing dependence on a secular government creates amoral citizens.

Danny Wright said...

and amoral citizens increasingly depend on government.

christian soldier said...

thank you for the h/t -post below--

as to this great post--Detroit is a example of how government reliance leads to complete destruction of family and neighborhoods..'welfare' started there 50 + years ago and - what was once a grand area (city) has turned into a dump!!
C-CS

Nancy said...

The "revelation" that breaks the paradigm...

ALL things are possible with God (no exceptions...no excuses)! I know this...but having it break through my everyday paradigm is a struggle that will take a lifetime...

Still working on breaking the static barrier!

Joe said...

Static thinking creates a viscious cycle that cannot be broken without a paradigm change. That means changing the static to the dynamic.

Z said...

"You see, the idea of a good family home in her world was outdated. June Cleaver and Ossie Harriet as role models had become relics of a bygone era, worthy only of disdain and ridicule"

I honestly could weep.

check out Star Parker for a wonderful example of UNstatic thinking :-)

Jon said...

Hey, just wanted to let you know that I've been insanely busy these past few months--no time to blog whatsoever--but I do have you on my Google Reader feed, so I can at least keep up with your thoughts. That being said, this post was excellent. I really appreciate your thoughts on political topics. Keep up the good work! (Maybe I will have time again to write some day...)

Fredd said...

Sounds like Sue lives in Detroit.

And she probably doesn't think her situation is anything different from anyone else's. The stuff she sees on TV, of rich folks living in mansions and driving Ferraris, she doesn't think that those people exist, that they are just Hollywood fairy tales.

But Sue and her ilk are a minority of this country (still), and hope for them dims with each passing day that liberals are still calling the shots in their neighborhoods, and telling them to fill out forms to be eligible for some of 'Obama's stash.'

El Cerdo Ignatius said...

Great post, Dan. I think I may have used the term "static view" on your blog before, to describe a certain train of economic thought prevalent in left-wing circles.

On a daily basis, I deal with clients who are stuck on static thinking, and those in similar socio-economic situations who haven't been so caught up. The difference is that those clients who are not static thinkers are usually not clients of mine for very long. They move up and move on, and their time in the program I manage is relatively short.

Others stay stuck for life. Your example named "Sue" represents many people I know, and it's breathtakingly depressing.

Danny Wright said...

I just went back and read my post. I thought that I alluded to "static view" with you in mind. Turns out that I didn't write it, but I sure thought it. It sounds like your job is probably a daily lesson in patience.