More Dimensions of Mythology

(This is a continuation of a series of postings beginning on July 8.  It would be best to start reading at that point.)

Last time I gave examples of how the personal mythology can lead us astray within the dimension of economic understanding.  Now, we move on to discipline.

Discipline is the dessert dimension.  It focuses on delaying gratification and doing the hard work necessary to reap rewards.  So what if I don’t study, the test isn’t until next week.  So what if I spend all my money as I earn it, retirement is a long way off.  So what if I smoke cigarettes, I can always quit before it gets too serious.  So what if I have a drinking problem, I’ll sober up in time for work.  So what if I don’t finish high school, it’s boring and there are more exciting ways to spend my time.  And so it goes.  The consequences are remote, and people think they can afford to not take them seriously.

There is some mythology at work here, some story people are telling themselves to justify the action, to make themselves the heroes of their life stories.  It’s not cool to diet or save up for a large expenditure or practice moderation or, in some cases, abstain.  That’s hard work, and besides it’s not cool to worry about the future.  Live for today!

These bad habits don’t happen in isolation.  When millions of people buy more house than they can afford, the economy crashes.  When two-thirds of the population is overweight or obese, it has ramifications in health costs for us all.  When people reach retirement age with no savings, they look to the government, that is the rest of the taxpayers, to bail them out.  When people haven’t acquired the skills and education to get more than a minimum wage job, they expect us to help them raise their families, through artificially high pay or government support.  All these supportive actions that count in some mythologies as compassion are, in many cases, crutches for people with self-inflicted wounds.  But those who take this tough-love view are condemned as uncaring.

Responsibility follows discipline because when people fail in discipline, a natural response is to try to blame someone else.  To remain the hero of their personal mythology, they can’t admit weakness or failure, so they claim victimhood.  "It wasn’t something I did; it just happened to me."  This stance makes it easy for others, who also want to be the heroes of their own story, to step in, riding to the rescue with funds, programs, legal defense or new laws. 

Government agencies, private advocates and various programs are a natural spin-off of these pleas for help.  But what many don’t understand is that when we don’t take responsibility, we give up some freedom.  These programs and agencies don’t go away.  They have a mission.  In many cases the irresponsibility of a few results in restrictions on everyone.  When someone is careless and then claims to be a victim, passing on the (financial) liability, it affects all of society.  Every school, club, and organization in the country cannot function today without insurance and hold-harmless agreements signed in advance.  The number and sheer silliness of some product warning labels are not just a source of amusement, but a serious symptom of society gone wrong.

Some consumer protection is needed and the FTC does a good job of catching and prosecuting companies for false advertisements, but we as consumers have a responsibility to research and make reasonable decisions about our own spending and our lives in general.

This whole idea of research and reasonable decisions leads to critical thinking, which is where I’ll pick it up next time.

Discipline, Debt and Cell Phones

Can most of our problems in America really be attributed to behavioral failures in only five key dimensions?  Consider the dimension of discipline.  To be successful in life, we must understand that we can’t have everything we want right now.

Years ago credit cards were rare.  The first were issued by department stores, hotel chains and gas stations, but the type of cards that are popular today weren’t invented until 1958.  Even so, Americans who grew up in the depression era, had developed frugal habits and were hesitant to accumulate debt except for very large purchases such as houses and cars.  More recently that mindset has changed as people were encouraged to buy now and pay later.  Sliding a plastic card has less psychological impact than pulling cash out of your wallet.  It’s much easier to over-spend, especially on those nice-to-have items, to the point where “[a]bout 24 percent of Americans have more credit card debt than emergency savings” and “people’s ability to save up for a rainy day and keep a handle on credit card debt… hasn’t improved...”

This inability to save is a symptom of poor discipline.  "As people acquire more money, they almost immediately start purchasing things that they've felt they've always wanted rather than thinking about what percentages that they should put away and the [favorable] consequences of changing their spending habits."

The same behavior patterns related to discipline affect cell phone abuse/addiction.  Within 20 years of their introduction, Americans seem not to be able to live without a phone in their pocket.  Loud conversations intended for others and ringing noises in the middle of meetings, movies, and church services interrupt our daily lives.  Talkers and texters behind the wheel pose a danger to themselves and to others.  I don’t recall in the 1980s seeing people lined up at telephone booths because they couldn’t wait to talk to a friend or relative.  Reading while driving was considered outrageous and very dangerous, not a common occurrence.  Now that it’s so easy, people can’t seem to resist.  When the behavioral model is applied, the similarity between cell phones and credit cards is striking and the solutions are the same.

Discipline is about delayed gratification.  Whether the issue is overeating, lack of exercise, smoking, gambling, texting while driving, or overspending, stronger behavior in one area will carry over to the others.  Discipline applies to all these problems and more, just as problematic behavior in the other dimensions explain many of the consequences we now complain about and often look to others to fix.

Discipline - Gratification Delay and Attention Span

Behavior does have consequences.  One reason everyone does not behave correctly all the time is that consequences are often delayed, sometimes far into the future.  This delay weakens the temporal link between cause and effect, reducing the direct threat and allowing us to “slide.”

The dimension of Discipline is all about this delay.  Solid decisions, for example saving money or sticking to a diet, lead to future security, health and happiness.  Doing the opposite leads to immediate good feelings but to future regrets.  Do we really have an obesity epidemic, or do we have a widespread pattern of poor habits in the dimension of Discipline?  Not long ago people saved for a car, a vacation or a down payment on a house.  To be in debt was considered a problem, even a disgrace.  Would there have been a Great Recession had people not been lured by the slick advertising?  It sounded too good to be true, and it was.  Don’t blame the banks; don’t blame the government.  So many were unwilling to delay gratification of living “the American dream” until they could actually afford it, that the system became overloaded.

In 1972 at Stanford University they conducted the famous marshmallow experiment, placing pre-school children in a room with one marshmallow and the promise of a second marshmallow only if they could wait until the researcher returned – in approximately 20 minutes.  About one-third of the children could delay gratification and win the second treat.  Follow-up studies showed that these same children went on to do better in school, get higher SAT scores and were more likely to succeed in life.  Are adults today doing any better than those four-year-olds?  Consider that today approximately the same percentage of adults are not overweight.

Closely related to this is the issue of attention span and how we seem incapable of amusing ourselves, relying on technology to provide the solution whether by streaming video, portable audio, or media sound bites.  Is our attention span slowly approaching that 140-character or less threshold?  How does this combination of short attention span and inability to delay gratification contribute to our choice of leaders?  When we find that our money in Washington continues to be spent on promises of unsustainable benefits by people who garner votes based on superficial qualifications (appearance, speaking ability and clever sound bytes), it gets back to individual problems in the dimension of Discipline.