Who Died and Put You in Charge?

It seems to me that there are a lot of people in positions of authority that should not be there. It seems to me that many of these positions of authority are self appointed, given by birthright or bought with tons of money. None of those things (being rich, being born in a certain family, being self important) are good leadership skills or qualifications for a position of authority. It would seem to me that most of the time, especially within the USA, it is the blind leading the blind. As our bosses, teachers, police etc are no more qualified to do their jobs than anyone else.

People need to be well trained, but they are not. People need to be well organized, but they are not. And this is because we don’t have good leadership. People have not worked hard to be where they are today, they have had their livelihoods handed to them in one way or another. There are too many people on welfare, too many people who rely on their parents for financial support and generally too many people who don’t know how the world works. And when I say “how the world works,” I mean all of the things in our world both natural and man made are a mystery to the average person. For instance, if your car broke down would you know how to fix it?

Probably not, but then you could look up a YouTube tutorial or find the directions on google. But then what if the internet stopped working? What if the power went out? There are a thousand examples that come to mind and though some people may know how some things work. There was once a time when everyone knew how almost everything worked. Granted there was less technology and therefore less gadgets to know the inner workings of, but people had to know it to live. Everything has been made way too easy and that ease has resulted in a lot of entitlement and a decrease in work ethic.

So many people believe they deserve some kind of special treatment, but do not have a reasonable answer as to why they should be treated special. They have no specific skills or knowledge to speak of and yet they think they are entitled to certain privileges or to be treated a certain way. They want to have their cake and eat it as well. Though, it occurs to me, that if everyone is special then nobody is special.

If you have ever heard the colloquialisms “there is too many chiefs and not enough Indians” or “we have too many chefs in the kitchen.” This is the type of situation that we are currently dealing with in our society. Everybody considers themself an expert and everybody considers themself a victim of society. Life simply doesn’t work that way, life wasn’t designed to be “fair.” Life is not conducive to the amount entitlement that has been instilled in the attitude of modern society. The baby boomers blame the millennials and generation X, but the baby boomers were the ones who raised us. The baby boomers wanted everyone to be “happy” and gave us all participation trophies and told their kids that they were special even though nobody is special. Now the millennials are considered the worst generation in history and it is because we were raised to be lazy, ignorant and entitled.

Hard work and delayed gratification were forgotten. We are addicted to social media because it provides us with instant dopamine. We have UBER to drive us, postmates to go grocery shopping for us, door dash for our food, Amazon to deliver anything that isn’t groceries and we have an app for everything. We are pseudo Kings and Queens of our do nothing universe. Our Narcissistic little fantasy that we live through the Internet is fake and often unfulfilling in the long run. And these are the people who are running the world and who are poised to run the world. These are the people that are to be counted on to solve the world’s greatest problems and lead humanity onward into the future. And these people, this generation of which I am a part, is very ill prepared to take on such responsibilities.

So who should be in charge then? The people who are in charge are not getting the job down and will soon be out the door with any luck. But then whom does that leave behind as far as leaders, innovators and the like. This is the type of thing that needs to be figured out and figured out soon. As a generation, millennials must decide whether the way we were raised and the way we are judged will control how we are remembered. Our generation can be great, but someone has to be allowed to be in charge. And the majority of us may have to sacrifice some of that validation and attention from our peers in order that our world continue to function properly. Being special should be earned and not given away and thus those who are truly special will shine and maybe we can save ourselves. Maybe we can be just as competent as any generation of humans to ever live, but it will take work and sacrifice, we must be willing to earn our future. We must or it is a future we will not be afforded.