It’s Designed That Way

I’ve been having more and more conversations where I find myself saying something to this effect: “It’s not broken. It’s designed to work this way.”

These conversations have been about a variety of topics — finances, politics, the institutional church, media, and more.

We often have an idea about how something is supposed to work — an ideal really. We look at a situation and think that someone, somewhere saw the same thing we did and what they made isn’t working like it’s supposed to. Only that belief is more often than not just something we made up in our heads. An unreasonable expectation — something not based on any evidence, but really about our preference and how we think the world should operate.

Last week I celebrated another birthday. And the thing that struck me about it was the number of ads that were sent me wishing me a happy birthday. I know full well that these companies don’t really care about my birthday. What they see is an opportunity to try to make a connection that might cause me to part with my money for a service or product that they offer. It’s designed to work that way. Business is tough and so any upper hand that can be had over the competition will be tried.

And you can see this play over and over through so much. You think that politician that you follow so closely really, really cares about you? I will say, the closer the politics are to the local level, the better the chance that the politician actually knows who you are and therefore might actually care because of…