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Why Pandering (Parental and Political) Doesn’t Work
In the old school of thinking, you would rather die than be spoiled or spoil others, since the state of being spoiled resulted in being close to starvation or death. Today spoiling (now called pandering) and being spoiled (now called entitlement) are commonplace. We are so well off, that the panderers and entitled blend into society, yet all of this is an enormous time bomb.
When I was growing up, my father bought a dairy so we city kids would learn hard work and not be “spoiled”. You can’t know the fear of spoiling we endured…I remember one of his rants when I was about 4 years old, him saying “You four boys are A BUNCH OF GIMME GIMME BOYS!!! YOU SAY GIMME THIS AND GIMME THAT! YOU DON’T APPRECIATE WHERE THINGS COME FROM!!!” and I remember crying and screaming “I’m not a gimme gimme boy Dad!” (I have to believe now the speech was directed at my older brothers, although after, I swept my little piece of concrete walk as though my life depended on it). When my father moved his parents out West, they were kindly but when the subject of work came up, the torches of Puritan fire flamed out of their eyes. If you weren’t feeling good, Grandma would say “Not feeling good? Oh that’s too bad, well GO OUT AND CLEAN THE CHICKEN HOUSE, AND YOU’LL FEEL BETTER!”. That’s it, no therapy, no feeling sorry for yourself, the farm and chores were all there was! Though my two…
