A Culture of Complaint

Does it seem that people are complaining more these days, and about situations and conditions where they have to go out of their way to find a problem? It’s almost as if there is a conceit among mature and otherwise stable people that finding and lodging a complaint gives them some kind of competitive advantage. It’s like ammunition they can use from a bargaining position or to win a counter-argument.¹

I don’t remember this as part of the national personality when I was a child. Of course, children always have complaints: they didn’t get the candy or cereal they wanted, the bedroom’s too dark, the food is too hot or cold or spicy, and the world is not going the way the child expects it to be. At a certain point, however, the child learns that the world is never going to be perfect, never going to give him or her all the conditions she or he can imagine. And at that point the person grows up.²

In my view, complaining about things you know cannot be changed, or for which you have only a slender justification, is a loser’s position. It’s an acknowledgement that you do not have the personal strength and resilience to live in a world of hard choices and few accommodations. It also confuses having a grievance—especially one that cannot be easily remedied—with a form of advantage and therefore a strength.

In my life, as I was taught by my parents, being strong means taking care of yourself and not complaining or even acknowledging that you are not getting the thing you want. Perhaps this was just a way for them to live quietly without two boys whining all the time, but I think the lesson went beyond their own comfort. My mother and father had lived through the Great Depression and World War II, and still they made their way in the world. They knew about hardship and damaged expectations, and in the sudden good times of the postwar years they wanted their sons to have the same perspective: life is fragile; the future is not certain; you have to make your own way; and you should be thankful for what you get.

Complaining about the small things—and especially going out of your way to find things to complain about—does not fit into this world view. To show yourself as being overly concerned with the picayune inconveniences of everyday life is a vulnerability. To exhibit such weakness is to expose yourself to the deceptive practices of others—not that I am paranoid, just watchful and careful.

Beyond that, complaints about situations that are not immediately damaging, dangerous, or life threatening is just plain rude. Especially so if the object of your complaint is not anyone’s fault or represents a problem that cannot be remedied except by precautions and ameliorations that are out of proportion to the inconvenience caused.³

But for some people, I suspect, that is the point. They want to embarrass or harass the person to whom or about whom they are complaining. They think that doing so increases their stature—either by showing themselves as more discerning and of greater refinement than others, or as stated above, giving themselves a weapon to be held in reserve against a future argument.

Such people have—at best—small, shallow lives. Instead of aspiring to greatness, or even to meaning in their daily life, they aspire to petty annoyance and the garnering of small advantages against futile arguments. This is not evil. It’s not even tragic. It’s just sad.

1. I may be overly sensitive on this issue, however. I’m on the board of my homeowners association, and it seems that many owners—and not a few renters—are engaging in this kind of preemptive complaining. Maybe they think it protects them when they themselves are accused of violations of the rules, although our board tries hard not to antagonize people with trivial violation notices.

2. Of course, the final pulse of childhood complaint, in my time, came with the Vietnam War. A whole generation of previously spoiled children either went off to fight or they decided that the government was wrong and they had the better grasp of geopolitics, and so the public protesting and the street riots began. Maybe the culture of complaint started with the protests of the 1960s.

3. Again, we’re in the realm of a child’s discontent. You see this in living situations were a speck of dirt on a windowsill or a scrap of paper on the ground causes anxiety. Clean it up or pick it up yourself, or keep quiet about it.