A Feeling Of Inadequacy On Christmas

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

- Those dying generations - at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

W.B.Yeats

I know a young person who is worried whether they will measure up to the demands of their job.

In fact, I know a lot of people who are worried about such hypotheticals: will I measure up to the demands of my job? will I measure up to the demands of my family?
A lot us us wake up in the night watches and face stark fear in the face, perhaps because sleep lets down our defense mechanisms, and as we sail to Byzantium of dreams, we find it is No Country For Old Men (and Women), or for that matter, perhaps for young men and women, too.

We often read of celebrities who we think have got life by the tail, and have a wonderful life. Yet we find in interviews that they are beset by fears and self-doubts.
Just like we are.

The emotional state of feeling inadequate leads to our marginalization; it is a natural selection of the cards we deal in a game where we always fold, because we think the game is "too rich for our blood".

It is illogical.
Recognize it as such.

This Inadequacy Emotion  is the modern day remnant of the Flight Instinct.
When faced with a situation of potential danger, an entity may fight, and perhaps die, or it may flee, and live to fight some other day. The Flight Instinct preserves the entity by causing it to flee, maintains its existence and gene pool, and indeed live on to another day.

We may construct a hypothetical scenario like the above which illustrates why the Flight Instinct may indeed be naturally selected over the Instinct to Fight (or to Approach, or to indulge in Uncautious Curiousity).

The Instinct of Flight may lead to a preponderance of cautious individuals.
The Instinct to Fight may become predominant in other situations, particularly situations where the probability of our surviving a fight are rather good. For example, if we have tools and weapons, our chances of fighting and winning are quite a bit better than if we had to fight with hands and teeth.
Or if we have money;
Or if we have power to compel.

Our feeling of Inadequacy is nothing but the instinct to flee, surviving into the modern world, putting on the new clothes of our modern age, transforming itself into a new form of the very same emotion of old-time fear of the unknown.

Inadequacy can always be quantified. It can be measured.
If I cannot run more than 2 miles this morning at a rate of 6.25 mph, there is no hazy area in my sweaty awareness of it: it is very clear with every gasp.

If we are inadequate, there is no doubt: we are in the midst of battle and we fully and clearly know what's going on.

Very many scripts and many images are available in our society to assist people to marginalize themselves, to give themselves over to vices and weaknesses which tend to destroy, rather than to enrich.
How many cities were able to say no to casinos?
Not many.
Opening the door to weakness and vice has become the new "rational" and "normal" in our lives. By officially cutting the symbolic ribbon and opening the new way into new palaces of vice, whether they be casinos, or pornography, or viciousness and violence, or even the unthinking slaughter of innocent lives by improperly used guns...
If we officially do such, it is clear that as a society we are officially are giving our stamp of approval to marginalizing great numbers of people, that we are giving our OK to establishing a great divide between those who have and those who have-not....

Do not let ourselves be marginalized by old fear in new dress.
Be strong, be honorable, and be virtuous.

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