Why people give up
Believing herculean strength and immense resources are required to make a difference, makes failure inevitable You may think it’s fun watching superman or incredible hulk movies, but there is an underlying message in these illusions, mortals are helpless.
For sure, there are some great movies about ordinary people achieving remarkable things by not giving up. However, they are never as fun as the latest action hero movie.
The consistent theme that runs through all these big-budget ear-deafening car-crunching plot-numbing flicks is some unremarkable guy who by chance gets zapped into having incredible powers who then, when faced with a great moral dilemma, does the right thing.
Sure…..
Living up to your obligations is no less difficult for Presidents as it is for wimps, and no amount of super human resources will change that. I am always amazed at the amazement people exhibit when they hear of high officials making immoral choices. Why wouldn’t they? They made bad choices before and they will do it again.
People don’t make better decisions when the stakes are higher.
It’s not only the voters who get caught in this lie, it’s often the very people seeking higher office, they think it will be easier to do the right thing.
It seems to me, that in politics, all the hero’s died well before their time. Other than the founding fathers, all leaders have turned out to be just as mortal as you and I, unless they died before they could prove it. That doesn’t mean we don’t have great presidents, or phenomenal public servants. It’s just no one thinks they are super human. They are just normal, blood-flowing through their veins people who consistently try to do the right thing, day by tough day.
In fact, I meet great people like this all the time on Capitol Hill, they aren’t super human, they are just super. But they don’t make headlines, because the work of making the world a better place is not headline material.
Thinking if I had a little more power, which is no different than saying, "If I had a little more money," then I would be a much nicer or better person is a delusion. Good people, by definition make the right choice when it’s not easy. The reason why there are people in power who make bad decisions is because they are consistent. They made bad decisions when they didn’t have such ability.
This quote, as true as it is, is not as remarkable as the person who said it and lived it, though I don’t know who that was: "Giving up is the final solution to a temporary problem." Anonymous Holocaust Survivor