Do You Complain Too Much?

William F. Buckley Jr. wrote an article “Why Don’t We Complain?” to encourage Americans to complain more. He assumes that people in America are: “…reluctant to make [their] voices heard…”

His article was published in 1960, so a lot has changed after that.

I remember when a guy asked me a couple of months ago what I thought about Americans in general. Then I started to list some characteristics and one of them was that Americans speak a lot. I don’t mean that in an offensive way, I think it’s good to say what people think, we in Finland tend to be too quiet and shy to say anything even if something is wrong.

My point of view has always been that Americans complain a lot, so Buckley’s article doesn’t really make sense to me, even though I know that his article was published in 1960. Sometimes little complaining is good, but if it is whining about small issues I think that can get on one’s nerves.

Buckley also claims that Americans used to take an action if they noticed that something was wrong, but now in the age of technology Americans sense of helplessness has increased, and they will call, for example, the plumber, or the electrician to fix little problems that they could fix themselves.

I really agree with Buckley that people, these days, are very helpless. I think if people were helpless already in 1960, now they are even more helpless.

I think our parents do more things for us today than for example our grandparents did for them. With this statement I mean that we are raised to be helpless, everything has come to us so easily, even the food we eat is usually pre-made.

When it comes to complaining, I really think that people in general complain too much. Unfortunately we usually complain even if we don’t have anything to complain about.

Do you think people complain too much?