Unlike many other countries, the freedom and the opportunities to acquire skills and to work is still available in America. This is why people have always flocked to America from all over the world.
According to tradition, healthy Americans are supposed to work and be self-sufficient. Yet, there has been a decline of industriousness in the number of able-bodied men in the work force (see “The New American Divide” by Charles Murray, The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 21-22 2012). Although Mr. Murray is correct in his assessment of the situation, he does not get to the root of the problem. The question, why many people today do not take advantage of the opportunities that are available to learn and work, is never asked. This is because knowledge of the importance of work in regulating social life from a biological point of view is outside the frame of general thinking. What is not understood is that work is a biological function that in an increasing number of Americans is in danger of being completely destroyed. The poverty that exists in America today is the result of the destruction in people’s biological work function. The problem of poverty in America is not the result of economic factors such as class differences which, in general, are actually the result and not the cause of the poverty.
The degradation in the work function in Americans is the direct result of two forces: 1) The breakdown of the authoritarian social order which led to the disintegration of the authoritarian family and 2) The introduction of illegal drugs into American society. In the authoritarian era prior to 1960, many men with a poor work function were obliged to work compulsively because of social pressure placed on them. With the anti-authoritarian transformation of society, the traditional roles of males in the family as husband, father and breadwinner was lost. There was no longer such external expectation placed on them to function in those roles.
The current administration’s promoting all kinds of welfare programs is obviously a self-serving tactic to buy votes from the electorate so that they can have political and economic control over their lives. To make matters worse, welfare programs bring out the worst in the recipients by destroying whatever remains of their self-pride and their capacity to work and also by encouraging a sense of entitlement in those emotionally dependent people who always want something from their government. A manifestation of the emotional plague, these programs function to cover up doing something about the real source of poverty in America (a disturbance in the biological work function), and to secure the power of those who benefit from them.
Charles Konia, M.D. 