A delicious juicy steak at a grand restaurant with a glass of expensive wine and beautiful cutlery delicately rimmed with gold. This is what I dream of on those days when I have not had the time to take a bite out of a single edible thing other than chew on my pen in class. It is when I can feel the pangs of hunger dig deep into the pit of my stomach. But when I finally get the chance to bite into my first meal at the end of a productive day, I think of it as a reward and even though it is most likely a homemade sandwich, it gives me such joy with every bite and somehow brightens my day. I don’t feel like this with every meal. Only when I have had to undergo the rotten taste of such hunger is when I feel the absolute bliss of having food to eat.
As society progresses, social perfectionists are attempting to eliminate binary oppositions deeply embedded in our world. To understand the absolute feeling of each opposition, one must either experience or be fully aware of the sensation of its binary counter-part.
Mr. Goodwin brings to light an issue that could drastically change the world in the years to come. The compassionate social perfectionists may mean well, but the fact of the matter is that the attempt to create a world without failure and have everyone know a win is always within their reach is what has severely injured the global economy today. The American Dream was built on the principles of hard work and perseverance. But as compassion overcame rationality, housing became more readily available to every citizen, so no one had to live without a roof over their heads. The capitalist nature of society created a system of competing for a bigger and better roof than your neighbor but the financial institutions, deemed ‘too big to fail’, only facilitated the distorted dream of homeownership further by easing the ability to obtain housing loans and credit through the birth of low-doc and no-doc loans and other securities. With the lowered standards of borrowing, the demand for housing went up, which further led to the price of housing to rise and defaults to lower as people put their houses on collateral. This lowered the perceived risk of borrowing and creditors were more willing to lend. Essentially, citizens lost the freedom to fail in this cycle as financing continued to become easier, housing demand and prices increased and the whole cycle repeated itself viciously until it inevitably exploded into a million people losing their jobs, becoming homeless and feeling helpless and confused by the sudden reappearance of failure in their lives.
Every capitalist society functions on the two binary oppositions of success and failure. The fact of life is that the rapture of success includes the satisfaction of seeing your competitor lose. If the freedom to fail is done away with, the fundamental joy of winning will change. Perseverance and meritocracy will no longer remain and the there will be nothing new left to celebrate. If a juicy steak in a fancy restaurant is what I want and I get it, whether or not I work for it, makes it a little less delicious each time, a little less filling.
It is important to remember in hard economic times like these to let the fear of failure live, but not let it inhibit you to stop taking risks and discovering. Keep the energetic dream of discovery and innovation alive. We must use our fear of failure to feed our ambition and give us more victories to celebrate as we strive even harder to be our best.
