Paul Krugman noted today that Musk is in deep trouble with the Orange One. It's what happens when oligarchs clash with autocrats. Look at Russia - observe who wins and who gets to inspect ten+ floors of windows at 9.8 m/s^2.
What happened to Millennial ambition? R.E.M. answered that question decades ago - a song that still brings tears to my eyes remembering all the loved ones and good things that we lost along the way:
This makes me so happy! I bought a copy of I Want to Burn This Place Down yesterday in anticipation of an event tonight and I thought of you Lyz because your both women that inspire me. So it made me smile this morning seeing you writing about Maris! I am also a Gen X-er, further left than I was as a teenager, also dependent on insulin to live, also in the book world, also child free, and also pissed off! It is awfully nice to see people I like come together.
I have been thinking about this a lot. I was a go-getter, no job I can't do, bust my whole ass because I was told that rewards were waiting. Don't get me wrong, I have a decent life. I've been successful in both my day job field and my creative field, though not as successful in the latter as I'd hoped. But god, there are some days I feel like I did ALL THAT, at great expense to my health, and wonder what the fuck it was all for.
Same! I spent years in law school... and now the law is whatever some orange dimwit says it is. Seems like a bit of a waste to me.
I am a doughy-middled cis white guy in a professional career with two kids and a wife that's also a professional - I should be highly invested in the status quo. But given the choice between the fascist hellhole that's coming and the alternative of burning all this shit down and starting afresh, I'm so firmly in the latter it hurts. Our system was unsustainable as it was, and now it's going to collapse. It's going to be up to us to make something better on the other side of all of this. I sure as hell hope we learned from everything that's happened. Ultimately the only thing that matters is leaving a better world for future generations, and we are failing miserably at that.
Instead of going trad wife, my trans son and I are buying 37 acres of wooded land 30 mins out into the hills of the Northern Appalachians from our town. With cash, so we don't have financing to pay off. And, slowly but surely, we're going to build a common house, with kitchen and full bathroom, by the pond, then we'll spread out into the woods with little cabins and tent platforms. We have a small cadre of queer, creative, multi-racial folks who will put down some roots there and remember what it is to really live in community. Part-time, full-time-- whatever works for folks.
My ambition is to love on my people as well as I can and get to know a piece of land intimately. We'll be off-grid, but not dropped out. Just rebalanced, so the bulk of our attention is given to what is right in front of us. What we can touch and love and impact positively and continually.
Come visit, Lyz! We'll have a bonfire and sit in the wood-fired hot tub.
I was born in 1963, so on the cusp of Boomer - X. Some call us “Jones” because we missed the best part of the postwar Boom but were in our 30’s for the Clinton boomlet, thus never, ever enjoying the status of being both cool and young. We were victims of Reagan, but bought into the ‘play by the rules and things will be great for you’ in a way that no Millennial can imagine. We were the War On Drugs generation! I never, ever used anything illegal! I never slept around! I competed to earn more comp time that I didn’t use! I spent decades suffering crippling guilt about a $700 VISA balance, because Good People Did Not Have Debts. And I ended up ordinary, while my cocaine huffing and sleeping around peers, who had trust funds, all ended up wealthy because they started out that way.
Now, I’m just tired. I’m still working for a better world, but it seems so hopeless right now.
I was born in 68 and really relate to the feeling of never being cool and young, perhaps because I was in grad school in the early-mid-90's. I think the gap was probably fairly large.
Also born in 1963 and used nearly everything illegal and slept around 😜 I worked hard because we were told that working hard got you ahead and without that, I would have no money. I played hard because there was going to be a nuclear war at any minute. I volunteered to help those who needed it because that is what you do.
I have a good life, nothing spectacular. I am proud of the work I did and am still doing.
It makes me so sad that all the work, all the sacrifices made to 'get ahead', save money for the future, and helping others to have a better life seems almost futile now. I am scared for my nieces and nephews and their kids, for the people I support at the food banks and clinics...what kind of a life will they have? Why did we work so hard, just to have it all given away to make rich people richer.
This makes my reading material complete for my trip up north this week. I'm 60, and I've been feeling that the system didn't have me in mind for about 30 years. My PhD has given me deep knowledge about something I care about, but fuckall in terms of job security. I found a letter I had written to my grandmother when I was about 16. My parents had moved me to Reno from Spokane, and in that letter I described my ambition of being an assistant to a millionaire. I was 16 in 1982, for context. I had yet to go to a women's march for abortion rights. I did better than that, but had I been a millionaire's assistant at least I'd have some stock to fall back on.
Higher ed has been corrupted to its core by neoliberalism and business carveouts for at least as long as we've been in this racket. Arguably, with the recent sharp focus on workforce development as a mission statement for even R1 institutions, we've been assisting millionaires for some time now -- in vain, if I understand the headlines correctly, for millionaires are never satisfied. Turns out that job sucks, too.
Refreshing, however, to see the generation(s) behind us voting their class interests instead of wish-casting themselves into a fictional middle class. There may be hope yet. Provided free elections are still a thing, that is.
"She told me she no longer has big ambitions for herself, but her ambition hasn’t gotten smaller; it’s gotten more encompassing. Now, she said, “I am ambitious for my community. My ambition is that I don’t want to see people die from a lack of insulin.”
It’s a reframing of ambition that is subtle and big-hearted, moving from the American dream of individual prosperity toward community survival."
This is a beautiful statement, and it reminded me of something. The 1st century rabbinic sage Hillel famously taught:
"If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am I?"
Typically those two clauses are understood as balancing between two priorities - we have obligations to take care of ourselves and obligations towards others.
A 20th century Rabbi Shimon Shkopf, though, understood that Hillel is teaching us that we should live with an (ever-)expanding version of ourselves - that acting in our own best interest is not in balance with acting for others, but it MEANS acting for our families, our communities, etc.
Conversely, if we are only ourselves, what, really, are we? We are very small indeed.
Lyz' "Men Yell at Me" is worth the price. If you are reading, pay up! It's funny. It's articulate and not stupid. It introduces you to stuff you wouldn't read elsewhere. I sometimes don't agree with Lyz (hey, what do you expect, I'm a 72 year old privileged white man) but I wouldn't know that her perspective existed if I didn't read her!
This is exactly the kind of writing and perspective we need - both you and Maris! I just got this book and appreciate you highlighting it. Women need to stop burning their communities and networks trying to monetize everything like finance bros. Uplifting and serving ourselves and our community is how we are going to be ambitious in a good way. I also appreciate you giving one month subscriptions for me to give to friends when I subscribed!
People get more conservative as they get older? That's strange. I turn 60 this year and I get more liberal with each passing year. Let's just say the greatest mistake I made as a teenager is how I voted back then. We all make mistakes but mine was a real doozie.
My dad got way more conservative as he got older and kept telling me I would too... then he watched in horror as I got increasingly more liberal as I aged. I'll be 63 next week and I'm as close to a socialist as I've ever been, attending more marches and protests, and calling/writing my representatives way more than I did even as a "youngster" :)
"We can't believe we're still protesting the same shit."
I'm old (boomer = old). I'm tired of this shit too. And I'm also tired of the fact that most people my age have been duped or are stupid. Or maybe they're dupid. Why are things going backwards? I want things to be better for my grandchildren, not worse. It's becoming difficult to maintain hope.
I've always been ambitious, but you wouldn't know it by looking at my IRA. That's because my ambition was like a little pilot light that kept getting snuffed out by men I married. (There were two.) Well, that and having to rawdog capitalism.
(What they're taking away from us right now is less than even the bare minimum, even though we know that a little something is better than absolutely nothing. And the ghouls running the country wanted us to clap when they lifted only HALF of our children out of poverty, when they damn well could have afforded to lift them ALL out of poverty. And, sigh. We also now know that half was better than nothing.)
With each giant step forward in their careers, my career took 10 or 20 steps back, and there was no reciprocity. If there had been, it wouldn't have been because of any laws protecting my rights or a system that was looking out for me. It would have just been at the whim of good luck I might have stumbled on. (A husband who's not abusive? Oh, my lucky stars.)
My ambition has changed in only that it would be nice if I didn't have to work until I die (but that's not likely to happen).
When it came time to split assets, my last ex huffed and puffed about having to share his retirement savings. He actually said, well, I'd been retired this whole time (the 25 years we were together, most of which I followed his better-paying and benefits-laden career while I did cobbled-together freelance work -- sometimes FT, sometimes PT but almost always without benefits and a retirement plan, and my 24/7 raising of three children), and now it was my turn to work. Like I'd been sipping margaritas by the pool that whole time. Never mind that I asked to put the max allowed into my retirement account every year, and he never would.
And WHY is there a max? It's just one more of the hoops we have to jump through and obstacles we need to avoid in this punitive system that was not set up by us.
In any case, I was ambitious -- for myself and for my community -- this whole time. I didn't have to get to 40 to look around and realize I didn't want diabetics to die because they can't afford insulin or to care about my community. Along with scrambling for decent-paid work (with a foot on my neck), I've always contributed to my community in myriad ways. Always.
And I still want to burn things down, but they won't need me to light a match. It's already burning. And those who are torching everything don't care because they'll just fly their private jets over the wreckage on their way to some safehouse (or, hell, a whole country) provided by other greedy billionaires. They've got to look out for each other, because who else will attend their tacky weddings?
What we'll need when we're sifting through the ashes is to build a better infrastructure with a real safety net that is big enough for all the rest of us. And while that may mean starting from scratch, it's the kind of work that so many of us have been doing our whole lives.
A retired judge friend of mine always has her family re-read the Declaration of Independence on July 4. It’s a real Burn It All Down document. Until recently, I thought its complaints against the king no longer applied. But here we are, losing our ambition as well as our unalienable rights.
“A whole generation of Paris Gellers crashing out” is one of the most surprising, clear images I’ve read in a while. Thank you!
Yay for Gilmore Girls reference!
Paul Krugman noted today that Musk is in deep trouble with the Orange One. It's what happens when oligarchs clash with autocrats. Look at Russia - observe who wins and who gets to inspect ten+ floors of windows at 9.8 m/s^2.
What happened to Millennial ambition? R.E.M. answered that question decades ago - a song that still brings tears to my eyes remembering all the loved ones and good things that we lost along the way:
Hey now, little speedyhead
The read on the speedmeter says
You have to go to task in the city
Where people drown and people serve
Don't be shy, you're just dessert
Is only just light years to go
Me, my thoughts are flower strewn
With ocean storm, bayberry moon
I have got to leave to find my way
Watch the road and memorize
This life that passed before my eyes
And nothing is going my way...
This makes me so happy! I bought a copy of I Want to Burn This Place Down yesterday in anticipation of an event tonight and I thought of you Lyz because your both women that inspire me. So it made me smile this morning seeing you writing about Maris! I am also a Gen X-er, further left than I was as a teenager, also dependent on insulin to live, also in the book world, also child free, and also pissed off! It is awfully nice to see people I like come together.
Maris is great I’ve known her for years!
The event with Maris and Josh was amazing last night. Full house, lots of questions and laughter. It was lovely.
I have been thinking about this a lot. I was a go-getter, no job I can't do, bust my whole ass because I was told that rewards were waiting. Don't get me wrong, I have a decent life. I've been successful in both my day job field and my creative field, though not as successful in the latter as I'd hoped. But god, there are some days I feel like I did ALL THAT, at great expense to my health, and wonder what the fuck it was all for.
Same! I spent years in law school... and now the law is whatever some orange dimwit says it is. Seems like a bit of a waste to me.
I am a doughy-middled cis white guy in a professional career with two kids and a wife that's also a professional - I should be highly invested in the status quo. But given the choice between the fascist hellhole that's coming and the alternative of burning all this shit down and starting afresh, I'm so firmly in the latter it hurts. Our system was unsustainable as it was, and now it's going to collapse. It's going to be up to us to make something better on the other side of all of this. I sure as hell hope we learned from everything that's happened. Ultimately the only thing that matters is leaving a better world for future generations, and we are failing miserably at that.
My daughter is feeling the same way right now…. Thanks for expressing it so well
Instead of going trad wife, my trans son and I are buying 37 acres of wooded land 30 mins out into the hills of the Northern Appalachians from our town. With cash, so we don't have financing to pay off. And, slowly but surely, we're going to build a common house, with kitchen and full bathroom, by the pond, then we'll spread out into the woods with little cabins and tent platforms. We have a small cadre of queer, creative, multi-racial folks who will put down some roots there and remember what it is to really live in community. Part-time, full-time-- whatever works for folks.
My ambition is to love on my people as well as I can and get to know a piece of land intimately. We'll be off-grid, but not dropped out. Just rebalanced, so the bulk of our attention is given to what is right in front of us. What we can touch and love and impact positively and continually.
Come visit, Lyz! We'll have a bonfire and sit in the wood-fired hot tub.
This is the perfect ambition!
I was born in 1963, so on the cusp of Boomer - X. Some call us “Jones” because we missed the best part of the postwar Boom but were in our 30’s for the Clinton boomlet, thus never, ever enjoying the status of being both cool and young. We were victims of Reagan, but bought into the ‘play by the rules and things will be great for you’ in a way that no Millennial can imagine. We were the War On Drugs generation! I never, ever used anything illegal! I never slept around! I competed to earn more comp time that I didn’t use! I spent decades suffering crippling guilt about a $700 VISA balance, because Good People Did Not Have Debts. And I ended up ordinary, while my cocaine huffing and sleeping around peers, who had trust funds, all ended up wealthy because they started out that way.
Now, I’m just tired. I’m still working for a better world, but it seems so hopeless right now.
I was born in 68 and really relate to the feeling of never being cool and young, perhaps because I was in grad school in the early-mid-90's. I think the gap was probably fairly large.
Same 68 sister. Why do we feel so old? Oh wait...
Also born in 1963 and used nearly everything illegal and slept around 😜 I worked hard because we were told that working hard got you ahead and without that, I would have no money. I played hard because there was going to be a nuclear war at any minute. I volunteered to help those who needed it because that is what you do.
I have a good life, nothing spectacular. I am proud of the work I did and am still doing.
It makes me so sad that all the work, all the sacrifices made to 'get ahead', save money for the future, and helping others to have a better life seems almost futile now. I am scared for my nieces and nephews and their kids, for the people I support at the food banks and clinics...what kind of a life will they have? Why did we work so hard, just to have it all given away to make rich people richer.
This makes my reading material complete for my trip up north this week. I'm 60, and I've been feeling that the system didn't have me in mind for about 30 years. My PhD has given me deep knowledge about something I care about, but fuckall in terms of job security. I found a letter I had written to my grandmother when I was about 16. My parents had moved me to Reno from Spokane, and in that letter I described my ambition of being an assistant to a millionaire. I was 16 in 1982, for context. I had yet to go to a women's march for abortion rights. I did better than that, but had I been a millionaire's assistant at least I'd have some stock to fall back on.
Higher ed has been corrupted to its core by neoliberalism and business carveouts for at least as long as we've been in this racket. Arguably, with the recent sharp focus on workforce development as a mission statement for even R1 institutions, we've been assisting millionaires for some time now -- in vain, if I understand the headlines correctly, for millionaires are never satisfied. Turns out that job sucks, too.
Refreshing, however, to see the generation(s) behind us voting their class interests instead of wish-casting themselves into a fictional middle class. There may be hope yet. Provided free elections are still a thing, that is.
🙏🏼
I always joke about being a burnt out former G/T kid.
Omg. As someone born in 1985 this is everything. All of it.
"She told me she no longer has big ambitions for herself, but her ambition hasn’t gotten smaller; it’s gotten more encompassing. Now, she said, “I am ambitious for my community. My ambition is that I don’t want to see people die from a lack of insulin.”
It’s a reframing of ambition that is subtle and big-hearted, moving from the American dream of individual prosperity toward community survival."
This is a beautiful statement, and it reminded me of something. The 1st century rabbinic sage Hillel famously taught:
"If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am I?"
Typically those two clauses are understood as balancing between two priorities - we have obligations to take care of ourselves and obligations towards others.
A 20th century Rabbi Shimon Shkopf, though, understood that Hillel is teaching us that we should live with an (ever-)expanding version of ourselves - that acting in our own best interest is not in balance with acting for others, but it MEANS acting for our families, our communities, etc.
Conversely, if we are only ourselves, what, really, are we? We are very small indeed.
Lyz' "Men Yell at Me" is worth the price. If you are reading, pay up! It's funny. It's articulate and not stupid. It introduces you to stuff you wouldn't read elsewhere. I sometimes don't agree with Lyz (hey, what do you expect, I'm a 72 year old privileged white man) but I wouldn't know that her perspective existed if I didn't read her!
This is exactly the kind of writing and perspective we need - both you and Maris! I just got this book and appreciate you highlighting it. Women need to stop burning their communities and networks trying to monetize everything like finance bros. Uplifting and serving ourselves and our community is how we are going to be ambitious in a good way. I also appreciate you giving one month subscriptions for me to give to friends when I subscribed!
People get more conservative as they get older? That's strange. I turn 60 this year and I get more liberal with each passing year. Let's just say the greatest mistake I made as a teenager is how I voted back then. We all make mistakes but mine was a real doozie.
My dad got way more conservative as he got older and kept telling me I would too... then he watched in horror as I got increasingly more liberal as I aged. I'll be 63 next week and I'm as close to a socialist as I've ever been, attending more marches and protests, and calling/writing my representatives way more than I did even as a "youngster" :)
"We can't believe we're still protesting the same shit."
I'm old (boomer = old). I'm tired of this shit too. And I'm also tired of the fact that most people my age have been duped or are stupid. Or maybe they're dupid. Why are things going backwards? I want things to be better for my grandchildren, not worse. It's becoming difficult to maintain hope.
I've always been ambitious, but you wouldn't know it by looking at my IRA. That's because my ambition was like a little pilot light that kept getting snuffed out by men I married. (There were two.) Well, that and having to rawdog capitalism.
(What they're taking away from us right now is less than even the bare minimum, even though we know that a little something is better than absolutely nothing. And the ghouls running the country wanted us to clap when they lifted only HALF of our children out of poverty, when they damn well could have afforded to lift them ALL out of poverty. And, sigh. We also now know that half was better than nothing.)
With each giant step forward in their careers, my career took 10 or 20 steps back, and there was no reciprocity. If there had been, it wouldn't have been because of any laws protecting my rights or a system that was looking out for me. It would have just been at the whim of good luck I might have stumbled on. (A husband who's not abusive? Oh, my lucky stars.)
My ambition has changed in only that it would be nice if I didn't have to work until I die (but that's not likely to happen).
When it came time to split assets, my last ex huffed and puffed about having to share his retirement savings. He actually said, well, I'd been retired this whole time (the 25 years we were together, most of which I followed his better-paying and benefits-laden career while I did cobbled-together freelance work -- sometimes FT, sometimes PT but almost always without benefits and a retirement plan, and my 24/7 raising of three children), and now it was my turn to work. Like I'd been sipping margaritas by the pool that whole time. Never mind that I asked to put the max allowed into my retirement account every year, and he never would.
And WHY is there a max? It's just one more of the hoops we have to jump through and obstacles we need to avoid in this punitive system that was not set up by us.
In any case, I was ambitious -- for myself and for my community -- this whole time. I didn't have to get to 40 to look around and realize I didn't want diabetics to die because they can't afford insulin or to care about my community. Along with scrambling for decent-paid work (with a foot on my neck), I've always contributed to my community in myriad ways. Always.
And I still want to burn things down, but they won't need me to light a match. It's already burning. And those who are torching everything don't care because they'll just fly their private jets over the wreckage on their way to some safehouse (or, hell, a whole country) provided by other greedy billionaires. They've got to look out for each other, because who else will attend their tacky weddings?
What we'll need when we're sifting through the ashes is to build a better infrastructure with a real safety net that is big enough for all the rest of us. And while that may mean starting from scratch, it's the kind of work that so many of us have been doing our whole lives.
A retired judge friend of mine always has her family re-read the Declaration of Independence on July 4. It’s a real Burn It All Down document. Until recently, I thought its complaints against the king no longer applied. But here we are, losing our ambition as well as our unalienable rights.