Woaah, I'm really getting flamed here! I didn't realize I had written anything that people would take personally. I must have hit some nerves. Spacejunk, invisibleeye, wafflesock thanks for the support.
Arci: As for depression, OK, I'm at the tail end of heroin withdrawal. I dont' know if you've ever experienced opiate withdrawal, but it sucks the color out of life for a couple of weeks. That and I'm crabby in the morning anyway. My gf insists that instead of grumbling at home, I get it out of my system and put it on a blog. WaffleSock's post resonated with me. So here it is.
I admit that my world view is bleaker than most, but overall I think it's well rounded and accurate (sadly). I won't get into the details, but during childhood, I saw a side of humanity that people who were born into relatively sheltered, entitled, and comfortable middle class lives have never imagined or have only read about. It's affected me all of my life. Today I'm more aware of those aspects. When I see them, I tend to want to point them out and figure out what to do about them.
Overall, however, I'm generally not depressed. I actually try to get a lot out of life and I'm very active. I do sports, cycling, body building, climb mountains, do multi-week backpacking trips, participate in cultural and creative activities, travel (including 3rd world countries where I've seen their version of grinding poverty first hand), work, do drugs, and generally try to keep informed and engaged in current world events.
1000words -- "Woah is me, I have an arts degree and I have to work in a supermarket."
I think you completely missed my point. That or I hit a nerve. My post was partially about people like you who are in that situation. I think working in a creative field is one of the most fulfilling things anybody can do.
So I take it that you worked hard in college studying and acquiring skills in your field, the arts, music, theatre, art history, whatever, but YOU (I'm assuming from your reaction) and many like you are BAGGING MY GROCERIES or PUMPING GAS! That's messed up, right? Don't you want to live up to your aspirations? Live the American Dream? Where's the anger (other than what you seemed to direct at me?). I see why you're bitter.
Most likely, you are aware taht you're wasting your talents and skills, and are not living your youthful dream of earning a living by working in the arts. No doubt you have that midlife? crisis somebody mentioned.
What about your children? Do you want them and their children stuck in that cycle of family and mediocrity? It's great that you're putting work into being a good parent. Being raised by loving and responsible parents is very important in shaping one's prospects in life. I respect that, but can you provide them with a level playing field? Do you understand what I'm talking about? No offense, but are you on Food Stamps, welfare, or something similar? There's no shame in that considering today's economy. It's not uncommon for bagboys, checkout clerks, fast food workers, etc who earn minimum wage to receive public assistance here.
If I recall, only 10% or maybe a little more children born into poverty in America are able to escape it as adults. I realize that upward mobility is still possible. I'm living proof. I grew up in relative poverty to semi-illiterate parents, but I worked hard in school, got scholarships and escaped it. Without the benefits and entitlements of being Middle Class, it was a struggle. So when I complain about how hard it is, my account is first-hand.
"I know plenty of families who life off grid, grow their own food in self sustained communes with no real world contact with the economic woes that you are crying about.... socko's moan fest simply highlights someone trapped in a consumerist system."
Again, you don't know what you're talking about. It might surprise you to learn that I spent a year (partially) off the grid. I lived in a remote cabin in the high desert at the foot of a mountain in Eastern Oregon. I sold, gave away, and threw away many of my belongings. I had solar and wind power. THe nearest town was about 25 miles away. I did not have running water. There was a stream fed by snow melt about 1/4 mile away that I had to walk to. For food and some money, I hunted, fished, harvested (mostly commercial wild mushrooms), and grew some of my own food. I didn't and still don't have a car, but I had a bicycle. This is my first month back in civilization.
As for being trapped in consumerism, WE ALL ARE. Even living off the grid, I still had to buy supplies made by the consumerist system. Unless you live in a tent made from animal hides and absolutely never go back into civilization, there is no way to avoid it. The best you can do is minimize it - recycle, reuse, DIY.
Unemployment of 7% was just a pipe dream in 1932. Pretty sure kids living through ww2 had it much tougher than most kids today.
Real unemployment is estimated to be above 20%. Taking into account "underemployment," it's even higher. The 7% figure misses everyone, a large group, who have dropped out of the labor force, is underemployed, or given up. For people under 30 years or so, It's even higher. The picture is truly bleak and that's why this age group is sometimes referred to as "the lost generation." As for WW2, the actual war years were hard with rationing, but as soon as it was over, those kids grew up in an economic Golden Age. It was the most prosperous era, they had more opportunities, earned more than any other generation had (and possibly will if things keep going the way they are) in US history. US economy experienced more growth than any other period. US industry had been built up during the war, and industrial and economic output would grow and continue to grow at an unprecedented rate. Real wages grew. The middle class rapidly expanded. Jobs that payed a living wage were plentiful, even for high school drop outs. Houses were affordable. In fact, anybody who was willing to work hard and who had a good attitude could make it.
"I bet socko thinks not having the latest play station console is reason enough for a kid to be miserable. I feel for the kids in war zones constantly sheltering from falling bombs. These are the parents who should be wearing a condom and having their tubes tied. Some entitled white dude in America with access to fresh water, cheap basic medical care and access to higher education complaining about how terrible the world is is laughable. Y"
You're good at building a straw man, but nothing more. You think that everybody who is born white in USA has it easy? The two "entitlements" you mention that I had access to growing up were fresh water, and I'm white. But the extreme poverty, lack of nutritious food, lack of access to social services, lack of medical care, illness I experienced as a child partially negated them. My living conditions were closer to those of a late 19th century share cropper/hard scrabble dirt farmer child.
Unlike the entitlements of your straw man and most people born into the Middle Caste, I had to work for what I have now. I didn't have an entitled childhood, IN fact, I barely survived. Starting out, I experienced first hand some of what I complain about here or elsewhere.
As for complaining about how terrible the world is, EVERYBODY should. It is the duty of every world citizen to become informed and engaged and start complaining and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Go out and vote, write, participate in political activities, do volunteer work, etc. Everybody should be made aware of the worlds problems. It's one's civic duty in a democratic country. People are too complacent and don't engage. And why do you bring race into this? White people somehow don't have the right to complain or see the world accurately according to you? Do you think all white people are born into comfortable and entitled middle class families? In a way, they (anybody born into relative privilege) are in a better position to learn about and complain about the world's problems because they have the luxuries of time and access to knowledge and resources that half the world doesn't and will never be heard from as a result. Then you mention access to higher education (knowledge) like it's a bad thing. You sound more like an eastern Oregon hill billy who hates "book larnin."
Where did Play Stations come into this? I'm not talking about owning the latest Mickey Mouse consumer goods. My point is that it is the responsibility of the parent to provide a child with a level playing field. The parent needs to be able to give them everything they need to succeed in life, but not too little (or too much) that they fail. By success, I mean simply to be able to earn a middle class living working in a field they enjoy, to be mentally engaged and to use their talents. The Universe doesn't owe them anything, as you say, but the parents do.
My whole rant was mostly about the fact that those now being Born into This are less likely to succeed at living a Middle Class life. Upward mobility and even stability is becoming a thing of the past. Current and prospective parents do wrong to their children if they don't/can't prepare their children for what they bring their children into. If I were wandering in the Bardo today, I would avoid the lights, especially the smokey red lights.
In closing, I wanted to share a poem by the prophetic Charles Bukowski - Dinosauria We (Born into this)
Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante's Inferno will be made to look like a children's playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.
