Future Orientation

Commentary by Dr. Gerhard Falk

        

Land of Opportunity

The United States allows almost anyone to become successful as long as the candidate subscribes to gaining success in the future and does not succumb to alcohol, drugs, gambling, adultery, and sloth. We cannot succeed if we drop out of school, get drunk, and exhibit no self-control. To illustrate how we can all achieve a good life, I shall illustrate how we can gain outstanding attainments without being another Einstein. Anyone willing to control himself and stay sober can rise from abject poverty to considerable income and achievement.

Those of us who can postpone gratification via every stimulant we encounter may be called future oriented. Future orientation is a vital attitude in order to gain success. The contrary, i.e. present orientation, is destructive and promises failure and a lack of achievement.

Present orientation can be illustrated by observing even grade school children.  Such children come late to school, are absent a good deal, do not make much of an effort to learn, and exhibit violence toward other children. Grade school teachers have often identified young children as future juvenile delinquents by the attitudes and conduct.   In addition, it has repeatedly been demonstrated that present orientation is found in several generations whose poor school performance and subsequent behavior has been destructive for generations.  Here we have the student who leaves school at age sixteen with the consent of his mother and father. Tired of school and all its restrictions and demands, the sixteen year old boy leaves school behind and finds a construction job that pays a salary. That money allows Mr. Sixteen to buy a car, and some good looking clothes and cigars. Equipped with these assets, Mr. Sixteen acquires a girlfriend who also dropped out of school at sixteen. The girl finds a job putting cans on the shelves of supermarkets. When she becomes pregnant at seventeen, her boyfriend leaves her because he cannot tolerate being responsible for a wife and child. Moreover, they are not married. Now a baby is born to an unmarried mother who has to live on public assistance and is rejected by her parents. She cannot go back to school because she cannot afford a babysitter. With few skills needed to gain employment, she is doomed to poverty.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sixteen becomes older and older while working in construction. At ag e 40 he is no longer able to do physical labor each day. He has so much pain while working that he has to accept public assistance. Convinced that good luck is the only means of achieving  higher income, the middle aged school dropout now buys numerous lottery tickets, as he believes that luck is the only means of escaping poverty. He has long forgotten his erstwhile girlfriend, as he now lives with another woman. They argue a lot because there is little money available for rent and food and gasoline and clothes and entertainment, etc. Poverty leads to anger and the belief that there is no way out of deprivation. Therefore the man in the family leaves his wife and children, who now no longer have a father to support them financially and emotionally. All these failures are repeated in every generation, so that it is possible to show that all the present oriented generations snce the 1930s have been poor and subject to alcohol, drugs, lack of education, and a guarantee that the next generation will again be poor and alcoholic.

There are among us a good number of Americans who understand that their success depends on planning for the future. They do not use drugs and do not drink more than one beer at any time. They do not gamble. They do not get involved in adultery. Instead of all that, they graduate from high school.

Here is an example of future orientation. A sixteen year old girl is told by her immigrant parents that they cannot pay tuition for any college education. Recent immigrants, the parents both work but earn too little to pay for more than the support of three children.

This leads Miss Sixteen to take a job in a defense factory during the Second World War, making anchor shackles for the navy.  She worked the night shift from 6 p.m. to two a.m. Monday through Friday. She gets all her high school assignments done on the weekend and after high school   graduation has saved enough money to pay for her  tuition at a state college.

During the summer vacation, she worked as a statistician and then returned to college for the second year of higher education. That summer she met a 22 year old Jewish holocaust survivor who was attening college at the expense of the US taxpayer because her boyfriend was a veteran of the Second World War. He too worked hard, earning very high grades and finally becoming a professor. At their retirement the couple had raised three children, six grandchildren and ten great-grandchidren. They never drove drunk, did not gamble, did not engage in adultery, and used no drugs, but saved their money and lived well in their old age. Sober conduct, a refusal to become impoverished by beer, top shelf whiskey, gambling casinos, violent behavior, and all the other aspects of present orientation which ruin so many lives made these and so many reasonable Americans participants in the American dream.

Shalom u'vracha.

Home ] Up ]