A Country Boy Can Survive

Because you can’t starve us out
And you can’t makes us run
Cuz we're them old boys raised on shotgun
And we say grace and we say Ma’am
And if you ain’t into that we don’t give a damn
Hank Williams Jr.

I am not a fan of Hank Williams Jr. However, he does perform two songs I really enjoy, The Monday Night Football Song and A Country Boy Can Survive. The second touches on a growing problem with no simple answer. I was raised and trained to become a cog in a complex system, to find and keep a job in a structured corporate or governmental bureaucracy. To some degree, I have succeeded in this role. Now that system is in the midst of a serious crisis. When a failure occurs in a system consisting of simple components, the results tend not too be too significant. As systems and their components become more complex, they become more efficient. However, when a complex component in system fails the results tend to be catastrophic. It is the nature of systems. Fifty years ago, the phone system was based on individual electromechanical switches connected to a single phone. If one of these switches failed, only one phone was affected. Today, switches are embedded in computer software. In the early 1990s one of these switches failed, leaving the entire East Coast without long distance service for a number of hours.

A number of major components in our complex economic system have failed. Today there are approximately 25 million Americans who are unemployed or employed less than full time. Over 43 million Americans are receiving food stamps. That is about 14% of the population. Long term unemployment is at the highest levels since the Great Depression. It has been shown that the longer people are out of the job force, the harder it is for them to return. They are experiencing what psychologists term, “Learned Helplessness.”

“Learned helplessness, as a technical term in animal psychology and related human psychology, means a condition of a human being or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.”
M. E. P. Seligman

The preacher man says it’s the end of time
And the Mississippi River she’s a goin’ dry
The interest is up and the Stock Markets down
And you only get mugged
If you go down town

The whole world is telling you that you just can’t do it. I have listened to too many stories for which there are just no easy answers. Today, an unemployed person with skills and experience for which there is no longer any demand is in serious trouble. We have not been trained or conditioned to be self reliant. We have been trained to become a part of and to depend upon a major corporation or the Government. If we look to such frail institutions for salvation in times of trouble, we will be disappointed every time. It is time to turn back to the simple ideas that work. The system components that will support us in times such as these are friends, family, and faith.

I live back in the woods, you see
A woman and the kids, and the dogs and me
I got a shotgun, rifle, and a 4-wheel drive
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive

It doesn’t end there. We do have a responsibility to keep developing our own skills and support network. The first thing we must do is ask the right questions. Asking, “Why are these things so?” while natural and understandable is not productive. Asking, “What shall I then do?” is the harder but correct question. Whether or not our situation is the result of wickedness in high places or our own mistakes, focusing on anything other than our own responsibility in the present moment is a waste of time.

The answer to the intelligent question usually involves learning (not necessarily book learning), change, and hard work. If what you are doing isn’t working, try something else. Albert Einstein defined insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” He also observed, “It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.” Find and develop the right skill set and you will survive.

“Learned helplessness can also be a motivational problem. Individuals who have failed at tasks in the past conclude erroneously that they are incapable of improving their performance.”
Ramirez, Maldonado, & Martos

In experiments in which dogs were trained to become helpless, it was shown that even when their condition was changed to one in which they were able to escape the electric shocks, they didn’t try. They had learned how to become helpless. However, not all of these animals became helpless. Roughly 1/3 learned how to avoid the electric shocks when given the opportunity. Wikipedia observes, “The corresponding characteristic in humans has been found to correlate highly with optimism: an explanatory style that views the situation as other than personal, pervasive, or permanent.”

You are better than a dog. You can learn to survive!

I can plow a field all day long
I can catch catfish from dusk till dawn
We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too
Ain’t too many things these ole boys can’t do
We grow good ole tomatoes and homemade wine
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive