I was unemployed for most of the Great Recession and can empathize with much of this book. I also just remember the “tragedy of my twenties” realizing society had basically no interest in me. Despite a math degree and IT/programming experience. Then the myriad people I’ve interacted with in the last decade plus who are in this situation.
Luckily I now have good paying career. But I fear a society that leaves so many cold.
Now the zeitgeist in the job market seems to be "Why should we give you the gift of this job? Speak quickly and well, lest we cast you back into the void! You are a piece of shit until proven otherwise!"
Granted some of that was always around for more competitive jobs, and some fields like engineering seem relatively exempt (outside of FAANG-style interviews) due to demand, but given what I was taught to expect growing up by schools/parents vs what reality turned out to be, there's definitely been a shift.
But, if you look at trade jobs (plumber, electrician, etc.) then there’s still tons of demand and they pay well.
But no one wants to do that.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting here, jobless, with an art degree (a few credits short of a sculpture minor), watching woodworking Youtube videos in my garage-less Millennial apartment. I tend to think enthusiasm is not really the issue.
Domestic workers losing leverage isn't a huge surprise given that the last 30 years have been about globalization.
The courts, too, largely moved towards corporation rights over workers rights/needs.
Probably too minimum wages are below the market clearing levels in most places. This evidenced by places seeing an increase in the number of employed when minimum wage increased.
Bean-counting and cost cutting has always been present in business, but, likely due to the rise of modern computing and metrics/data gathering capabilities, it seems to have been taken to an unproductive extreme.
Of course that's only the social component. Globalization and the hollowing out of labor unions (at least in the US) have also certainly contributed.
This might be a local thing, but here (central europe, balkans), there are currently enough jobs for basically anyone, even shitty jobs for really uneducated and slightly incompetent people and up to great jobs.
The problem I see most is housing... "society" expects you to get a job, get a wife, settle down, make 1, 2, 3 kids, have a dog etc. You've got a good enough job, average pay... want to move out? Still expect half (or even more) of the paycheck to go for rent. Want to buy a nice three bedroom apartment in the capital (nothing luxurious, just something normal, in a socialist apartment building, a few kilometers outside of city center)? That'll be 250-300 monthly paychecks. The boomers got their apartments or built their houses during socialist times, and now we have an extreme case of NIMBYism everywhere, even rural areas.
This means that a lot of young people stay at home... and if you're at home, you have a room, a bed and food... why bother working more than bare minimum (to cover entertainment costs, parties, drugs,...) if it's almost impossible to move out and still live normally.
It does not include: - those who don't work and can't benefit from unemployment insurance (e.g., anyone fired from work for misconduct, - those who don't work and are not looking for work - those who don't work and can't work
That makes much more people overall. A recent Pew research published in 2020 estimated that an estimated 29% of unemployed americans are included in that number.[1]
1.https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/24/not-all-une...
Last I heard, there's plenty of businesses that are deseprate to hire people (restaurants etc.).
This is so damaging to our culture. Also, getting really sick of these insanely specific reqs, then when qualified people don't show up begging on their hands and knees: "nobody wants to work anymore".
Female, but same hat and I empathize. In my case, I'm a lesbian who ended up with MS, so like with your average straight guy, my worth in society is pretty much based on my work life/career. I also share the jealousy a lot of straight men have for straight/bi women being more able to 'opt out'. It's not a rational feeling, but it's there.
> But I fear a society that leaves so many cold.
Me too. We can only expect people to beat themselves up for so long before some of that rage and despair is turned outward, contributing to the destabilization of society.
It matters because if we're talking biology, there aren't many people who are like 'yeah, I'm going to have the cripple carry my child!' and dating as a female with a progressive disease is not great. So from a social standpoint, I am also an 'extra' 'useless' body, like how these men tend to feel.
I really feel for people with mental health issues and no insurance. I have insurance, but have somehow still payed thousands of dollars out of pocket, and in far worse shape.
It's like they're TRYING to get people with ADHD to kill themselves. You can find countless accounts of people traumatized by this system, but they don't want to change a thing... they seem to think it's our problem just for existing. I was told to just give up on my career... nevermind that it will never matter, and the next job will just fuck me up.
I can't really put into words the rage I feel against Doctors and Psychs... this is who they expect us to go to for help.
You're raging against the wrong machine.
By rights, ADHD should not exist. The amount of task-switching humans are expected to do in demonstrating mastery of the domains of entire departments is inhuman and unsustainable to begin with. We're pumping the population so full of amphetamines to keep up that we've literally run out of them.
Medicine can't fix the fact that nobody can survive as a fisherman anymore-- he has to be a full-stack scuba diver, boat captain, marine biologist and have a whale-hunting side hustle going on. Actually catching fish is what you do on the weekends.
I don't know how you square your ideology with the fact ADHD people often struggle with day to day activities, eg. chores. So unless you think man was meant to have a women at home (I guess you could generalize to "caretaker"), I have no clue what you're talking about. Even if you solve this problem that doesn't explain the many other areas ADHD people struggle, like with basic socializing.
There's a place for critiques of our culture and work environments. However, ADHD certainly exists and needs treatment, even in a more ideal world... they had these problems in "fishing times" or whatever, they just called it madness, or figured you were a horrible person.
Many just are giving up, they don't see an opportunity here, they just are going to play video games, take drugs, and accomplish nothing with their lives.
Progress could be as simple as introducing or better funding employment programs. It’d clearly really help if there was some clearinghouse type organization informing people about labor market opportunities based on the individual characteristics. The clearinghouse could seek information directly from employers as to preferences/priorities/etc.
But also some people just cannot function in society without some kind of back support. It can’t be a social optimization to leave such people to homelessness.
https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/occupations-most-job-growth.h...
For me it was wallowing in grad school for five years after graduating college in 2007 and not being able to find any entry level positions with a math degree due to the housing crisis, and the relative uselessness of an undergrad math degree, without useful experience in anything else. I remember the constant manic hum of "when am I going to start making real money, instead of pulling out more loans each year?".
Fortunately, I learned to program during that time and eventually got my first job writing Python for a small civil engineering start-up.
I'm pretty sure society is not obligated to have an interest in you (I'm not trying to put words in your mouth however).
I think you become truly actualized only when you decide what it is you want, what you imagine for yourself. If what you want is in conflict with what society wants of you, you have to decide then whether it is important enough to you to take the road less travelled.
Watching biographies of various artistic people ("The Art Life" about David Lynch comes to mind, also "Crumb") it's clear that some people are just "a certain way" and will choose to live that way - society be damned. (Of course, that there are documentaries about these luminaries tells you that a few at least have found societal acceptance after all.)
And I can't help but think back to the punks, or goths or any of the other disenfranchised youth cultures that appeared to revel even in the rejection from broader society.
"The children they despise us, the difference is now we want to be hated."
If you consult statistical trends there's no reason for anyone ever to even feel any amount of joy. Either the economy is in collapse or headed towards a collapse. Either you are healthy and thus headed for illness or ill already.
It somewhat stops being a society if it says to some members "whether you live or die is irrelevant to me, I will not care either way". That's what some people experience at least some of the time.
There's a social contract. Is it still binding you if society doesn't hold up its end?
(Ethically, of course, spherical cows and all, there are many ways to discuss it - but why?)
Good fences make good neighbors.
Enforcement is the fence.
Functional societies have reasonable fences, and rarely need to test them in the majority case, because they’re functional. There is no point in thinking about testing something you know works.
When someone starts wandering off, or a problem case is there, it also deals with them in a way that doesn’t undermine everything else. It keeps problems at bay.
Without that fence, or when the fence starts being moved so it’s NOT in the right place, problems cascade and grow, society starts fighting itself and others as trust is lost in institutions and other people, and eventually, either vigilantism, civil war or mass corruption is the result. Like you’re discussing.
It’s a constant, ongoing process.
This also makes it pretty rough being an edge case, which is the context of the thread we’re in.
A society beyond a certain, relatively small size without law enforcement (or similar boundary setting and enforcement) will, no matter how amazing, fall apart as the natural forces of corruption and selfishness tear at it unchecked. It doesn’t have to be a professional corps of folks, but it has to be a working mechanism though. Even small groups have this. Usually in the form of a chief, village head, etc.
Larger groups of course need something more formalized eventually, just due to scale.
Regardless, not towing the line is going to get you stomped on, unless you’re able to get under the radar, or are part of a large enough group that you can force the apparatus to leave you alone. Though that definitely contributes to the whole ‘mass corruption’ problem.
I have grown to believe over time that this is true, and that most people are willing to throw away unsuccessful or unlucky others using this reasoning. It's depressing, but also frees you from feeling any particular obligation to society. If society doesn't either provide you with what you need or a means to achieve it, I recommend that you cheat, steal, tax-evade, and law-break as much as is personally beneficial.
And society has lots of fangs, in that sense.
It does matter. Plenty of subcultures have done stuff that is technically illegal, or at least could be prosecuted/or would be made illegal if noticed, but was quite beneficial to them in their own view, by not getting enough attention to be worth directly attacking! Or having folks be distracted enough elsewhere to not go after them.
I’m guessing most in the LGBTQ space can pretty clearly identify the difference between the two, for instance. Being accepted being even nicer than both, of course. Catered to almost unheard of!
I'm not sure that you're following exactly what I mean. I'm saying that once any ethical barrier involving 'obligation' to society is overcome, it's a problem to be calculated like any else. What are the risks, what are the returns.
As for the second part, it doesn't matter when the result is the same. I don't care if I'm being persecuted or ignored when my life is still shit. I'm not willing to sit on my hands under some false belief that turning the other cheek is pious when the only life I'll ever live is slipping through my fingers.
It tends to really bring the contrast out in the shit spectrum.
It can almost always get worse.
Young non-white men are less likely to be under the impression that society is looking out for them in the first place, so their choice of anti-social entertainment looks very different. It's more about detachment and the use of violence for personal enrichment because the social system doesn't matter.
I never personally experienced this (I've always been employed since graduation and I got married before there was tinder), but it still always feels like a gut punch to read that other people experienced it.