In America and Europe the divorce industry, is the quintessential example of the creation of helplessness through the careful construction of dangerous webs of law and pseudo-science. The divorce industry is a socially constructed quagmire that guarantees generations of helplessness and neediness for legions of social workers.
Until we are willing to pursue — as a nation — our place as that premier economic power rooted in imagining, developing and producing the material goods that create tangible well being, we become continually more dependent on our helplessness to drive our economy. Until we are willing reclaim morality from the therapists, child rearing by families will continue to disappear, replaced by an ever growing industry of family helplessness. Helplessness pays much of the taxes to pave our roads and supply our schools with the literature that continues to reinforce the notion that we are all in need of some sort of therapy. Perhaps we should resist the ease of helplessness and make things as well as learn things that are materially helpful. Perhaps we should love our families and teach our children how to effectively engage the material world. Perhaps we should spend more effort growing economies of helpfulness instead of helplessness. The unemployed need therapy vastly more than the well employed, and perhaps therein is the lesson.
Article comments
1 - Victor Plenty
This effect of ineffective affect affects all social classes. Upper, lower, and middle, we all share in it to varying degrees. Perhaps our societal decline into helplessness will aid us in the age old struggle to redefine the meaning of power itself.
For example, when J.K. Galbraith wrote about power, he defined it as the ability to coerce someone else into doing things they don't want to do. Then he proceeded to discuss at great length the different ways and means of exerting such power, of forcing various sizes of groups to do things they otherwise would not do.
Never did he even seem to consider the possibility of another definition of power. Namely, the ability to work together to achieve things which would be impossible to accomplish alone.
Perhaps we can make these economies of helplessness a transitional stage, letting them lead us away from the destructive power of coercion, and helping us all relearn the constructive power of cooperation.
(On a side note, I must thank you for your post because without it I might never have gotten the chance to write the first sentence of this comment. I hope at least a few people will have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.)