social anomie and alienation aren’t great. if most people in the world don’t know what they want to do with their lives, that is a bad thing. but you know what’s worse? that same social anomie and alienation happening behind closed doors, with the threat of what you’re ‘supposed’ to do hanging over your head.
if you’ve ever met a group of single mormon women in their late ‘20s, you’ll know exactly what i mean. fuck, if you’ve met a group of mormon women in their late ‘20s in general you’ll know what i mean. there’s this pervasive sense of quiet desperation: “i don’t know what i wanted out of life, but it wasn’t this.”
even the women who did everything ‘right’- got married between the ages of 18 and 20 to a young man they met in college after he served his mission, had between 2 and 5 children, live as a homemaker in a nice house in the suburbs, go to the temple/pray/read their scriptures regularly, go to church every week- even they are unhappy. they say things like “i could have been anything i wanted, but i chose to raise children”, or “i wanted to be a [vocation] but god had other plans for me”. and behind closed doors, they take xanax or get high on pain meds and try to deal with the responsibilities they’re stuck with.
they did everything they were ‘supposed’ to do, but it wasn’t what they really wanted. so they’re miserable and alienated and feel alone, even though they ‘have’ a strong faith community and a society that encourages/strongarms them into a particular social role.
i honestly think alienation isn’t a problem isolated to the modern-day West. it’s just that after 1918 people started talking about it, because the War and the Flu destroyed everything people knew about how things ‘should’ be. if you’re stuck in a world you can’t change, surrounded by people you hate? no shit you’re going to feel alienated and isolated, whether you’re a mediaeval dirt farmer or a ‘20s jazz swinger or a Silicon Bay programmer.
i also think that some of our problems with anomie are caused by a) having too many vocations you can pursue while b) systematically devaluing every single one of these vocations. it’s harder than ever to decide what you want to be when you grow up, and literally everyone in a kid’s life is going to try to push them away from stuff that could be meaningful.
want to be a firefighter/policeman/construction worker/lumberjack/fisherman? those are blue-collar jobs, they’re icky (and if you happen to be unlucky, you get told you can’t do them ‘because vagina’). want to be a baker/florist/tailor/chef/nurse? those are blue-collar jobs, they’re icky (and if you’re unlucky, you get told you can’t do them ‘because penis’).
want to be a writer/artist/filmmaker/actor/puppeteer? “good luck saying ‘you want fries with that?’!”, with a side of ‘that’s for girls/boys’. want to be a scientist/programmer/engineer/doctor/astronaut? good luck being told ‘you’re not smart enough’, with a side of ‘you can’t do this if you have a vagina’.
want to be a professor? a homemaker? a stay-at-home parent? an entrepreneur? a stripper? a lawyer? no matter what you pick, you’re gonna get shoved away from it in ways both big and small.
our society as it currently exists is designed to funnel people into white-collar office work. and while that kind of work is necessary, a) a lot of it doesn’t actually provide any value and b) most people do not find it very satisfying.
an author i like coined the term ‘voker’- someone who does what they love for the love of the thing. right now, it’s very, very hard to be a voker- because of the pressures of capitalism, because sexism, and because our society does not value Love Of The Thing, it values Joyless Work.
i suspect if we made it easier to be a voker, a lot of our problems with social anomie would dissipate like smoke on the wind.
This train of thought is…important, and very much worth talking about. Probably I’ll spit out several responses, over the course of a while, as thoughts come to me.
First round:
i also think that some of our problems with anomie are caused by a) having too many vocations you can pursue while b) systematically devaluing every single one of these vocations.
This is 100% accurate. But it’s not like the problem boils down to Vocations vs. White-Collar Office Work, with the latter thing being some sort of special socially-favored activity that gets total approval from all corners. Literally every job is devalued, including white-collar office work.
If you’re a regular middle-management type, lots of people will look down their noses at you for being a soulless boring drone whose existence is wholly meaningless, just like it was back in the ‘60s. If you’re a high-flying financier or CEO, lots of people will tell you that you’re the worthless parasitic scum destroying society. If you’re a Tech Innovator type…I don’t think you need me to list all the widespread nasty stereotypes about Silicon Valley douchebags.
(And, even in other fields, the mechanisms of devaluation go well beyond the ones you list. If you’re an unsuccessful artist, yes, you’ll hear lots of “want fries with that?” jokes – and if you’re a successful artist, people will line up around the block to explain why your work is terrible / weak / socially-destructive.)
@bambamramfan is wrong about a lot of things, but he’s right about this: most people aren’t super-thick-skinned, most people don’t have the wherewithal to deal well with scorn, and a diverse complex society with wide-open high-bandwidth communication channels means that everyone is getting the world’s scorn pumped directly into his brain.
Your parents expect one thing of you, your (potential) mate(s) another, your kids a third, and already you’re totally fucked, even before you start factoring in “any friends you might have” or “the internet.”
The “everyone should be a voker, and that will solve our problems” idea is super dangerous, but…that’s for another time.