Is My One Marshmallow Better Quality Than Your Two: A Citizens' Guide to Occupy Wall Street

Is My One Marshmallow Better Quality Than Your  Two: A Citizens’ Guide  to "Occupy Wall Street"

I was at a meditation workshop when the teacher  mentioned the marshmallow  experiment reported on NPR as a reason why these new meditators should stick out the day focusing on the breath, in order to learn to meditate. The children in the reported study who could wait until the experimenter came back before eating  one marshmallow sitting in front of them would get two, while those who wolfed down the first one wouldn't get anymore. 

Sounds like the myth that if you put $5 in a savings bank when you're 20, it will grow to be $50,000 by the time you retire, compounded interest. Not any more. There are bank “inactivity fees” and by the way- almost no interest in bank savings accounts: all because the financial system says “No, we’re going to get that money away from you one way or the other and pay ourselves with it. ” Delayed gratification has changed.  Social science experiments often mirror cultural values and our best learners absorb them well. They do what the advisor recommends and wait for the marshmallow.  Those marshmallow waiters sit and think,  “Oh but the next one will be worth it. “ In the study, those  kids who waited  went to college, took out student loans, on good faith that they would be able to get jobs with health insurance when they finished.   Occupy Wall Street says that is the wrong lesson. 

We do not teach kids to ask- “How many marshmallows are there? Why 2? Is anybody getting 3? Show me the whole bag.”  These are the questions of our time. Not- “Can you wait for the second marshmallow?”  Of course we can wait. It is in the human genome. Manjushree, one of several incarnate Buddhas, it is said, took one breath his whole life. Of course,  we can savor one marshmallow.  But asking where the whole bag of marshmallows is and what a fair share is?   We only ask those questions when those  who took the whole bag and make us wait for two destroy the financial system. For most of us, getting the whole bag is not based on merit  or delaying gratification.  It is based on believing there is nothing wrong with taking the whole bag, or with health insurance companies paying  CEOs multi-million dollar salaries while the entire country ‘s economy goes under because health insurance premiums are unaffordable.  Our children need to be taught to ask where the rest of the marshmallows are and claim the moral  statement: “It is unethical for Wall Street to thrive at our expense.“ And then do something like occupy Wall Street.