Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
One of my biggest worries of all time is that the working class is no longer capable of fighting for equality the way that they did 100 years ago when they were unionizing. All social change is now being led by members of the middle class and even the upper middle class. The days when day labourers stood on soapboxes, or organized general strikes, or packed lecture halls to listen to people like Emma Goldman or Eugene Hartke...those days are gone.
Blue collar institutions have been completely eviscerated, and it's just a matter of time before many of these people slide into a rapidly growing, permanent underclass.
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again: one of the greatest ironies of all-time is that Marx's preconditions for communist revolution were never present in 1910s Russia or 1930s China, but they are in modern-day China. But of course that history won't repeat itself, and just as well.
We're gently sliding back into a gilded age, though this time with electronic baubles, instant communication and decent healthcare. Maybe those things will be enough to placate the hordes, but I tend to find koulmaudit's characterization of the flimsy edifice of our modern day secular Western society with its post-Enlightenment and multicultural pieties (of which I'm a true believer) quite convincing. It's too easy for middle-aged men to become apocalyptic, I know it's a cliche, but I can't help it. Seems to me that when the shit hits the fan in the form of a devastating nuclear attack somewhere, a massive ecological disaster or, you know, maybe an earthquake that lays Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tokyo to waste on the same day, our rational feathers are going to be ruffled and we are going to retreat to our primal, tribal natures.
Although, then again, it was pretty easy to be apocalyptic in the 1930s and 40s, and yet somehow we survived. We'll see.
If I can rant tangentially for a moment, since we're doing it in this thread: I'm starting to become really disenchanted with the current vogue for identity politics. I'm aware that a middle-aged straight white man saying this plays to type, blah blah blah, sure. But it seems to me that there is a fundamentally incoherent disconnect with the identity politics crowd in how they genuflect before the struggles for "self-realization" or "personhood" of ever more fragmented identity groups while being completely tone deaf about the problems of economic class and ethno-cultural cohesion.
There, I've said it. I've gone there. I'm a white guy ranting about "political correctness gone mad."
Essentially: I think we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Too many people are spending too much time policing speech for evidence of perceived improprieties against the thousands of aggrieved identity groups that are shouting on the Internet and social media for "justice and respect." It's solipsistic, myopic and narcissistic in light of the real economic issues that we are faced with.
By all means, I want dignity and respect for all. But I think that more effort working on the economic side of things is needed, from the macro to the micro. For example, I wish I had the economic wherewithal and the know-how to start up some kind of small, innovative manufacturing firm that would employ a dozen local people making...something. It's not my field, or my area, so while I might have some zany ideas, I don't have the practical vision to bring them to fruition. But you see what I mean here?
I find it very moving every time someone opens up something like a new restaurant. Such dreams and hopes! These people are putting everything on the line and working their patooshkas off, and the odds are against them. I've been in Stratford long enough, this being a tourist town, to see the whole cycle several times over, from the flushed excitement of the social media campaigns to the initially supportive crowds (of friends and relatives) to the yawning malaise of slow midweek evenings to the sudden realization, as you pass by one day, that hey, that place closed, the storefront is empty.
Too long? I guess I'm saying that the "personal is political" has become too monumental. It may be your life, and very important to you, but there are more important things out there to ask others to care about.
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