Whiner Fever

When you laugh, the world laughs with you; when you cry, you cry alone.

From anglonautes.com

There’s been a growing trend in the world, a trend that has been magnifying through the generations.  People whine about the smallest of issues.  When my grandfather interacts with his peers, they talk in a very civil manner.  They discuss daily happenings, make some jokes, and have a pleasant time.  Whenever they come to the topic of problems, they acknowledge the large ones, but try to keep to smaller problems that they can fix.  And they honestly brainstorm solutions.  Contrast this with my father’s generation, which is a bit less mannered, but makes more jokes than the previous generation.  They love to discuss world problems, yet don’t even look for anything that they can do to improve the situation.  Even if someone tells them what they could do, they give a sad sigh and then put the thought out of their minds.  For my generation, half of the small talk is about how we hate something or how we got shifted. 

When I compare the conditions in which these three generations lived, I start to see why this could be.  Technology has progressed in amazing leaps and bounds this past century.  The daily difficulties of living well have been replaced with automatic transmission cars, computers, and cell phones.  These devices relieve the burden of surviving, yet the easier we have it, the more we complain.  In fact, I found a good example of this whining culture in this Youtube video.  It seems that the less you have to do to physically survive, the weaker your mental strength becomes.

Louis CK on Conan

When people whine about their problems, they expect one of two things: outrage at the offender, or sympathy.  What the listener really feels is outrage if he’s in the same situation, or irritation for having to hear the person whine.  Most people are polite enough to hide their irritation, but they still find it annoying. 

Why?  Is it because people are becoming so uncivil that they can’t spare time to listen to their peers?  Sure, that could be a small part, but I think it’s something else.  The majority of our problems are miniscule- at least the ones that we complain to others about.  No one wants to converse with someone who makes them depressed.  And when you hear enough of someone’s problems, you become apathetic.  In fact, it is the complainer who is uncivil.  He’s not making their conversation pleasant for his partner.

Does this mean that talking about your problems with your acquaintances is uncivil?  No.  If you truly are trying to brainstorm a solution, or seeking the help of someone, then it’s a different manner.  You are trying to fix an issue, rather than just venting your discomfort.  When this becomes a habit, you have engaged in a tremendous amount of backbiting, which can come back to haunt you, and it makes you seem like an incompetent fool who can’t do anything himself.  Sometimes, the person you are confiding in, as a third party, will make you realize you are an incredibly trivial person, and you would feel ashamed whenever thinking about it.

In P.M. Forni’s book, Choosing Civility, there is a chapter entitle “Happiness and the Mind”.  In it, Forni references multiple philosophers, religious leaders, and an emperor who assert that “our happiness does not spring from the events of our lives but rather from how we choose to respond to those events” (15).  We feel entitled to our privileges, that we feel robbed when we are denied, even temporarily.  We need to focus, instead, on how we interpret events to change how we feel about them (16).  Something as small and normal as a traffic rush should be looked at creatively to see what we can do or enjoy in that time.  The truth is that we can create our own happiness.  However, people resist accepting this, because they don’t want to be responsible, to not blame others.  It is hard, yes, but hard things train someone to become strong.  And, if we have good relations with people who make us happy, we don’t have to work as hard (17).  People do not enjoy the company of whiners, however, so if we want to be happy, we must first work to become strong.

Whining is not the same as alerting people to a problem.  It is where we do not seek a solution, and it especially has to do with our small problems.  It makes a society weak, grumpy, and disrespectful.  In this era, when we focus so much on academic strength for happiness, we need to complement our lives with emotional strength.  Only then will our lives hold meaning.

A Wonderful Blog

Bettina Melio: From artofmanliness.com

To anyone who reads this blog, or will read it in the future: if any of you enjoy martial arts, I would recommend The Way of Least Resistance.  This is a martial arts (mostly karate) blog by an Australian litigator who has much experience in cases of real fights.  He also studies a variety of martial arts- karate, xingyi, bagua, taiji, arnis, kobudo, etc- and has recently been accepted into the intimate circle of one of the most famous Chinese martial arts masters, Chen Yun-Ching.

From jeet-kune-do.com

This man not only looks at martial arts from the view of how real fights work, but also uses physics discussions, and the historical development of techniques and martial arts to explain his view.  He is a martial artist I greatly respect, even more than Bruce Lee, and his blog has won three awards in the past few months.  If you are interested, please visit his page, and try starting with a blog post that interests you.  I personally started with his views on the difference between boxing and karate.

Enjoy!