HeavenlyPossum on Nostr: I think back to that optimism I had as a child and I mourn it. The society I live in ...
I think back to that optimism I had as a child and I mourn it. The society I live in is a hollowed-out shell of what I remember, and even that was a decade or more into the decline.
Our horizons shrink. Our expectations for the future become more modest. Some of us leave if we can, and others stop having children, and some check out a bit more permanently. Big projects are postponed or canceled. Collapse is a slow process: institutions can coast on momentum and bring to bear enormous resources—including and especially violence—to maintain the status quo, at least for a shrinking elite. People will get used to new conditions, or deny that anything has changed.
But things have changed. I was trained from an early age: do well in school, go to university, get a job and work your way up. I could, I was led to believe, expect a quietly prosperous life in which I would be more comfortable than my parents and my children even more than me.
In reality, quality of life in the US is declining. I am burdened by crippling student debt. I have few realistic options for advancement. I even tried hustling a hobby into a second job once! I am so fucking tired of being stressed all the time. I am, by dint of genetics, prone to anxiety anyway, but genetics alone cannot explain away this ever-present sense of precarity, that one wrong move could ruin my life as thoroughly as millions of other Americans have had their lives ruined.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-09-11/a-global-anomaly-the-us-declines-in-annual-quality-of-life-report
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Our horizons shrink. Our expectations for the future become more modest. Some of us leave if we can, and others stop having children, and some check out a bit more permanently. Big projects are postponed or canceled. Collapse is a slow process: institutions can coast on momentum and bring to bear enormous resources—including and especially violence—to maintain the status quo, at least for a shrinking elite. People will get used to new conditions, or deny that anything has changed.
But things have changed. I was trained from an early age: do well in school, go to university, get a job and work your way up. I could, I was led to believe, expect a quietly prosperous life in which I would be more comfortable than my parents and my children even more than me.
In reality, quality of life in the US is declining. I am burdened by crippling student debt. I have few realistic options for advancement. I even tried hustling a hobby into a second job once! I am so fucking tired of being stressed all the time. I am, by dint of genetics, prone to anxiety anyway, but genetics alone cannot explain away this ever-present sense of precarity, that one wrong move could ruin my life as thoroughly as millions of other Americans have had their lives ruined.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-09-11/a-global-anomaly-the-us-declines-in-annual-quality-of-life-report
13/