PLOM Disease

Zig Ziglar called it the PLOM disease, Poor Little Old Me. Some people spend an entire lifetime mired is self pity, their endeavors and pursuits never approaching full potential because of the focus on something in their lives that troubles them. To be sure, we all have good reason to feel this way. I doubt there is a human who couldn't spend at least two hours telling me about the bad things that have happened to them in life. Since this is a universal feeling, albeit in different degrees and stemming from a wide range of causes, where do we go from here?

That is the central question. I do not intend to belittle anyone's situation, or trivialize their past. My point is that everyone can tap into this feeling, no one is spared. I know there are horrific circumstances that I, thankfully, am ignorant of. But to suggest that because there is some injustice that exists, and therefore some people cannot ever be expected to be responsible for themselves is fallacy. It is also condescending when you really get down to it.

Let me give an example. A few weeks ago, my wife and I were out to dinner. We were having a conversation with a friend who had joined us. I was explaining the basic underpinnings of my political persuasions, stating that I think everyone must decide, at some point in their lives, whether to react to life, or respond. We all have things against which we can react: poverty, bad parents, unfair bosses, etc. With each of those situations, we can also choose to respond.

My friend interpreted this as cold, uncaring, and unsympathetic. Why, there are people who grow up without a loving family, without a support network. How could I, one who is fortunate in that area, even suggest that those people had an equal chance at life? You see, the trouble comes in looking at someone else's life from a distance, and prepackaging them into a box that says, "No challenges here. Since this person's life is very different than yours, they have never encountered hardship, or had to make that very difficult choice between reacting and responding."

She assumed that since I had a loving wife, that I could never had struggled with self-image, or self esteem, or wondered whether I could ever make something of myself. In the larger picture, this misunderstanding plays out in social programs or gov't quotas designed to somehow equalize outcomes for different groups. They end up coddling many people who simply choose to react in life, making excuses for their behavior.

This is how we end up looking at income quintiles and demanding that some people, because of some injustice (real or perceived), have a right to the earnings of others. Some Americans ought to bankroll others, because the recipients have undergone hardship that the gov't strong-armed financiers of these programs don't understand. You can call it what you want, I call it politically ginned-up rabble rousing to buy votes.

In the same way that my friend refused to entertain the idea that I had faced many challenges in my life, simply because she sees me now sitting next to my wife, millions of Americans buy into the idea that they are owed something. There are other Americans who have screwed them, life is a zero-sum game, and those people have alot. Therefore, they must have taken it from you, and some politician is going to get even for you.

This is the rationale (and I use that word very, very loosely) for "windfall" profit taxes on Exxon, a grotesque "progressive" income tax system, welfare, Medicaide, and the like. This feeling has been present throughout human history, but a group of men wrote the Constitution of the United States of America to guard against it. Over time, we have been lulled to sleep and failed to stop numerous encroachments on these protections. This is how great nations fall.