How to Hate Yourself

It's easy, think yourself helpless, ineffectual, little more able to tend to yourself than when you emerged from the womb. 

At least that's the only way I can understand the sight of young, university-educated, in every other way attractive people who seem to think the only way they can advance themselves personally and professionally is to yell, scream or otherwise act out against a supposedly repressive authority. Who believe that subsuming their precious identities in movements or communities instead of developing minds and attitudes all their own. Who seem to feel that their lives are helpless and hopeless, in the midst of unprecedented prosperity and freedom from adversity.

Well perhaps they're right, they are lacking in resources against a world that, in their view, seems to be spiraling out of control. Perhaps they are utterly unable to find a way ahead for themselves and will forever be restricted to marginal, passive lives. Certainly that possibility is real.

Or perhaps as Henry Ford once observed: "You think you can, or you think you can't. Either way, you're right."