WelcomeDelayed versus immediate gratification
"Why am I dying to live if I am only living to die?" (Cat Seveene, aka: Yuself)
Delayed gratificationDelayed versus immediate gratification is another superficial oversimplification like altruistic versus selfish which, well, what does it do to whom and for whom?
For me, the balance sheet of whose chidrearing was apparently far more in the red than more people, it was not a choice between delayed gratificaiton and immediate graatification, but the prospect of no gratification.
Counterfactual speculations are just that. But my hypothesis is that had I been childreared with gentleness, playfulness and respect, I would have not have been a "pig". Immediate gratification would have meant enjoying simple pleasures like in the picture of infant Jesus being presented with a small crystal ball to explore here). That would not have hurt anybody. It would not have cost a lot of money. It would, however have required adults who wanted to spend their time cultivating their minds and exploring how to share this with a small child. NIMBY.
$ure there are things that need saving up for. But no amount of delayed gratification would change a loaf of cellophane wrapped presliced Wonder Bread in the sky into a fresh out of the oven loaf of artisan bread with which to break the morning's fast not just to masticate for breakfast. (And nobody is so poor that they cannot pleaseure themself.)
As an adolescent when I started learning about the birds and the bees, I saw the writing on the wall: that I wasn't going to get any. Not delayed gratification, but no gratification. It would not have been beyond my parents' financial means for me to be in an environment with girls of my age and intellectual level who were being in their turn raised to play nicely not be little pricks(irony intended). NIMBY.
Or school itself. I hypothesize I wanted to learn. Wht did I get? Tests and exams on material I would forget as soon as I either got the answers right or got them wrong on the teachers' tests. Nobody offered me anything to look forward not just ahead to. Selfish? I now hypothesie that, say, in the 11th grade (why was I graded?) I could have been tasked with teaching 7th graders. I was grossly socially dysfunctional. Spending my days hwlping younger kids learn would have addrssed that in a way tht would not just "normalized" me. Would this have been selfish? You bet: I think I would have enjoyed it, with my attention on how to help those younger persons learn, not on protecting myself from failing on the next test they shoved down my little throat. But also "altruistic" in the constructive sense of helping others, well isn't that obvious? Not "altruism" in the sense of me suffering for others, but neither "selfishi=ness" in the sense of me taking thing swasy from others. Win-win. NIMBY.
$ave for a rainy day. In 7 fat years, eat modestly and put some away for 7 lean years. Enjoy life today as a process which also builds for tomorrow. This probalby would not work for "the wretched of the earth" but I was not one of them. And had I been educated not instructed, maybe I could have found work in adult life helping them doing something I enjoyed too. There is a book about the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas with the telling title: "Is it righteoud to be?"
I have a fantasy about a world that will probably never be: Nobody gets anything where the result is not that they also do more good for others than if they had not got it. You don't get to breathe unless you breathing helps other persons more than you not breathing. That would be an ethical world. It's not that way, is it? Give to charity? The government spends billions of dollars killing people. Isn't it ovious that we all give generously on to the IRS on Form-1040? On the other hand, the Society for the Promotion of Coelacanths (SPCC) probably should expect to be funded by private voluntary donations.
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They might have bought me off had they offered me a deal:
"We enjoy making young persons' lives miserable except that we look the other way for varsity football players, of which you, Bradford, are obviously not one.
But if you will let us oppress you until you are 21 years of age, and sign up to work in the Ministry of Oppression, developing new immiserations for other young persons, we will provide you a soul/sex mate and a sinecure to be able to engage in leisured study in the humanities for the rest of your life. We will make it worth your while to cooperate with us.
In exchange for delaying gratification we will guarantee you lasting satisfaction. Your signature here, and we will return to you two notarized copies of our sealed contract with you."
I had no "class loyalty" to anybody, Why not cut a deal? It might be interesting to produce propaganda for Dr. Joseph Goebbels typo: Mrs. Nancy Reagan. I wouldn't have to believe it. "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride." (Jay Unger)
