Coping with Western Civilization

Some of my students are very, very good. Others are not quite so good. Many of those "others" have difficulty dealing with details, meeting deadlines, and generally understanding what's required for someone to be successful in the Modern Industrialized World. Occasionally, I have said to such struggling individuals, "You know, you really don't HAVE to learn to function in this manner--you could, for example, build or buy a small cabin up north, fish the lakes and farm the land, and say goodbye to schedules, computers, cell phones, faxes, and bureaucracy." And sometimes I want to join them if they ever choose that route! Some cases in point:

Financial planning. Anyone who truly understands investments and taxes and the like has a leg up on me! IRAs, tax-free municipal bonds, annuities, price-to-earnings ratios, and so on (including anything that involves a "rollover" and anything where a "cost basis" needs to be calculated) are in the end a complete mystery to me. I try to rely on a couple of "professionals" to help me navigate these worlds, but I really don't have a clue as to whether I'm doing it all right, or well. For all I know, I've squandered thousands of dollars in some way or another by doing what I have been doing.

Health and dental insurance. I had a tooth extracted. Dentists say I don't absolutely have to do anything about the hole in my jaw, but they recommend either a three-tooth bridge or a dental implant. But try to figure out how that's handled by insurance! There are procedure codes, pre-treatment estimates, x-rays, and "in or out of the network" issues that need to be addressed. Yuck.

Car and home insurance. Deductibles, levels of coverage, comprehensive coverage, liability, etc. etc. might as well be written in Urdu. Once again, I pretend that I know what I'm doing, but the best I can say is that I seem to do what most people do, and I'm not a big fan of doing something just because the majority does it. (In argumentation, we might call that the fallacy of argumentum ad populum.)

If I were independently wealthy, I might just hire someone to take care of these things. But we all know what that could mean: some shyster trying to take advantage of me and my vast sums of money! Perhaps what we have here is the strongest argument for mortality: at some point, I'll never again have to worry about this stuff! (And, in the afterlife, I pray that hell is not a place where one must continuously fill out insurance forms.)