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Musings Report #35 8-27-16 What Are You Willing to Give Up?
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Welcome to August's MUS (Margins of the Unfiltered Swamp)
The last Musings of the month is a free-form exploration of the reaches of the fecund swamp that is the source of the blog, Musings and my books.
"A Radically Beneficial World" Is Now Available as an Audiobook!
Longtime correspondent and supporter Mark J. has issued "A Radically Beneficial World" as an audiobook--so those who prefer to listen to books (during long commutes, airline flights, etc.) now have that option. Needless to say, I'm very happy that the book is now available as an audiobook.
What Are You Willing to Give Up?
That life is a series of trade-offs is a given. That the mix of trade-offs is different on a case-by-case basis depending on nationality, age, gender, experience, income. ethnicity and faith is also a given.
This is the value of first-person accounts: they present the context in which one person sorts through the trade-offs and then makes a series of life choices.
Another way to describe this process is to ask: what are you willing to give up? What are not willing to give up? What are you willing to sacrifice to secure what you're not willing to give up?
And the related questions: what can you afford to give up? What can't you afford to give up?
What is everyone around you giving up because they feel they have no other choice?
What trade-offs are false choices, that is, we get the same results no matter which option we take?
Some people decide that they can't give up a certain pay scale or income. Others decide they can't give up their agency (self-direction).
Some people decide they can't afford a certain level of risk, while others can't afford (not necessarily in a financial sense) to remain rooted in a predictable, dependable but soul-draining position.
This first-person account covers a lot of ground: unrealistic expectations of women, gender bias, defining equality by how much alcohol people are drinking and so on.
Bias is a reality: gender, ethnicity, age, nationality, class--I doubt anyone is 100% free of stereotyping and other forms of bias. That said, our goal must be to eliminate institutionalized bias so everyone has the same set of opportunities.
here is the essay:
Giving up alcohol opened my eyes to the infuriating truth about why women drink
These excerpts struck me as saying more than the author may have intended:
"The things women drink are signifiers for free time and self-care and conversation - you know, luxuries we can't afford."
"Instead, I round up some girlfriends and we spend hundreds of dollars in a hipster bar, drinking rye Manhattans and eating tapas and talking about the latest crappy, non-gender-blind things that have happened to us in meetings and on business trips and at performance review time."
Regardless of their gender, relatively few American workers can afford to spend hundreds of dollars in a single night of drinking with a few friends--especially if they have children or family members to support. The reference to meetings and performance reviews suggests the author and her friends are high up the food chain in Corporate America, which demands quite a few trade-offs to earn the sort of disposable income these workers enjoy.
The trade-offs required to earn this sort of income generates self-pity in the author--poor me that I have no free time for self-care or conversation. But why is this so? If the author decided she could give up the big-bucks job and couldn't give up having free time, then she would make another set of trade-offs.
Instead, she is filled with self-pity that she can't have both the high wage and everything that she traded for the big bucks: free time and self-care and conversation. Clearly, in her mind, she deserves to have it all, and that she doesn't is the result not of her own choices but of some injustice.
Interestingly, she then explores the idea that it's her own expectations--arising from society's unrealistic and unrelenting expectations--that cannot possibly be met.
"We can’t afford to act like it’s okay that “Girls can do anything!” got translated somewhere along the line into “Women must do everything.” We can’t afford to live lives we have to fool our own central nervous systems into tolerating. We can’t afford to be 24-hour women."
No one, male or female, can meet expectations of perfection--of being attractive, fit, strong, a perfect parent and mate, earning a big salary while also enjoying ample free time for self-care, yoga, vacations and leisurely conversation.
The author concludes that women drink too much as a means of self-medication in a pressure-cooker of unrealistic expectations, as an expression of equality and as a signifier of desirable class status.
There is essentially no recognition that despite the limitations of gender bias, a self-directed, self-aware person might make a different series of trade-offs that started with recognizing the impossibility of meeting society's unrealistic expectations and moving on from there.
As I have often noted, the consumerist ethos we inhabit creates a state of permanent insecurity: we are never quite good enough, and so the solution is to buy something that makes us look larger and better than we are in real life, signifiers of a success we don't actually possess or feel.
The author of this account lacks an awareness of her complicity in creating this state of permanent insecurity; no one forced her to internalize the impossible standards of "having it all."
The first step to making different trade-offs is to realize you can never be good enough in a consumerist ethos, and the first critical step of self-awareness is to detach oneself from the entire ethos.
If a person isn't willing to trade away authenticity, integrity, self-care and self-direction, then they must be willing to give up virtually everything the corporation and state demand in exchange for a secure salary, status and other benefits.
But to expect no trade-offs (i.e. I deserve it all) while bemoaning the fact that you uncritically internalized a consumerist ethos of unrealistic expectations (i.e. surrendered autonomy and agency)--what is the author willing to give up? The answer appears to be: nothing.
The author is not alone. It seems millions of American workers feel the same conflicts between "having it all" financially and retaining some measure of free time, autonomy and agency--what we might call the space and ability to define oneself by one's own standards rather than measure ourselves against some impossible standard and find that we don't measure up. (That's the whole idea, of course.)
Accepting the need for trade-offs and making those difficult choices with self-knowledge and clarity is the core of being an adult. We all indulge in self-pity every once in a while, but it isn't very helpful in terms of making deeply considered trade-offs.
Much of our work-life happiness depends on answering this question honestly: what are you willing to give up as the necessary means to getting what you are not willing to give up?
From Left Field
Dash-cam of the new Ford GT catching a Ferrari at Le Mans 2016 -- this 9 minute clip gives you a feel for what it's like to drive 200+ MPH supercars....
Ford GT Documentary - The Return: Chapter 1 -- Ford returns to Le Mans 50 years after winning 1-2-3; the only American auto company to ever win the 24-hour Le Mans.
RECLAIMING "REDNECK" URBANISM: WHAT URBAN PLANNERS CAN LEARN FROM TRAILER PARKS
Xtreme Eating 2016 (via John F.)-- appetizers that exceed your entire daily calorie allotment...
TOO RICH TO BE POOR, TOO POOR TO GET BY -- the story of the middle class in high-cost regions...
A Dozen Facts about America’s Struggling Lower-Middle-Class
If Schools Don't Change, Robots Will Bring On a 'Permanent Underclass'
Why a record number of university places might not be a good thing
The Female Economy (via Iris K.) It’s still tough for women to find a pair of pants, buy a healthful meal, get financial advice without feeling patronized, or make the time to stay in shape. Although women control spending in most categories of consumer goods, too many businesses behave as if they had no say over purchasing decisions. Companies continue to offer them poorly conceived products and services and outdated marketing narratives that promote female stereotypes.
That’s All Folks - Capitalism’s not the problem: carbon is. It’s carbon-fueled capitalism that is destroying the world
The Surprisingly Large Energy Footprint of the Digital Economy -- what they don't note is that much of this energy goes to having super-fast search results...I've seen estimates by others that the Internet uses 2% of all energy globally...
Migration in Motion: Visualizing Species Movements Due to Climate Change
"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence." Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Thanks for reading--
charles. |
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