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US QUALITY OF LIFE Umair Haque: Why American Life Is So Bleak ... What Happens When a Society Becomes a Place Where No One Wins? 
Image Credit: Evan Frost Original article: https://eand.co/why-american-life-is-so-bleak-b4cc797f19e5 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | ||
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Why American Life Is So Bleak
What Happens When a Society Becomes a Place Where No One Wins? Umair Haque Febeuary 20th, 2023 It’s almost spring. And do you know what my favorite thing is in the springtime? Paris. Avignon. Maybe Berlin. Barcelona. Pick a great European city, and springtime in it’s…beautiful. Breathtaking, even. People pour into the streets. Life roars back to life. But in America…well…things are different. When I’m back in America, one thing always strikes me. American life is bleak. It’s…weirdly…joyless. Now, if you’ve only lived in America, you’ll be indignant. But come now. Is anybody in America really happy? Maybe… the billionaires? Anybody else? So why is American life so bleak? What happened? What went wrong, exactly, on the way to building a modern society? You see, it’s not just my random opinion. Every statistic imaginable shows it to us. Young people are in crisis, depression and suicide skyrocketing. Families can barely make ends meet. The shattering loss of confidence in institutions and trust in society and between people is all too real. American life really is bleak. But why? When I’m in Europe, it always strikes me how different it is from America. It’s not unusual to see art installation on the streets in the summer and springtime. Musicians playing, as irritating as that is for the people living upstairs. People laugh and smile and hug. But in America, that’s not just rare, it’s almost unheard of. There’s a strange alienation about America, and you can see it in the way that people interact. It’s not they’re cold — but it is that there’s a lack of human emotion, contact, closeness. I don’t say that as an insult — it’s an observation. One which begins to point out to me what went wrong with American life. Why are Americans like this with each other — almost suspicious, aloof, not reserved, like say, the British, but… It’s hard to put into words. Like I said, you feel it better if you’ve lived outside the States. Just cross the border into Canada, and people are famously “nice.” But what does that mean, really? Well, if Canada was in Europe, Canadians would just be normal. It’s because they’re right next to America that they’re “nice” — not that they aren’t, but that the juxtaposition is so striking. Cross the border the other way, go south into America, and suddenly — nobody’s nice. Being nice is something wrong. You can’t be nice as an American — what the hell is wrong with you? You’ve got to be tough, cruel, cunning, self-reliant, individualistic, or else. Or else what? You don’t make it. Maybe you see what I’m getting at. So let me now put it a little more formally. Why is American life so bleak? Because it’s a zero-sum game. That means: for me to win, somebody else has to lose. When I say that, maybe it doesn’t even strike many Americans as something particularly strange or odd or bad. But it is. Because, well, the entire point of a modern society is to create a positive-sum game, where when I win, you win. But in America, that’s not true. Let me start with a few very, very simple examples. Why doesn’t America — famously, by now — have any of the advanced public goods that the rest of the entire rich world has? From healthcare to high speed trains to universal higher education to retirement? For me to win, somebody else has to lose. Americans don’t back these things — not enough of them for them ever to become major social institutions, or the basic constitutional rights, that they are in Canada and Europe — because at a social level, enough Americans don’t believe that everyone should have these things. But the only way you believe that people don’t deserve basics is if you first believe: for me to win, somebody else has to lose. The right wing became expert at triggering that in Americans during the Reagan years. All kinds of code words were employed, “welfare queens” and so forth, to instill in people the idea that for them to win, someone else had to lose. Their neighbors weren’t just people like them — they were liabilities, parasites, sucking the money right out of their wallets, costing their families their futures. I won’t pay for those people’s healthcare or their educations! They have to lose, in order for me to win! This belief, this feeling, goes so deep in America by now that most people don’t even recognize it as one. Too many think it’s really true. They don’t stop to examine and question it — and reveal it for the myth that it really is. Let me give you another example. Why are American kids so miserable? Well, it’s not just climate change and the world generally going to blazes — that’s true everywhere, in many places more so than America. It’s because from they day they’re born, this zero-sum belief is beaten into them. I’ll give you my own example — as a “gifted” kid, psychologists and teachers immediately started me on this bizarre diet of “games.” But they weren’t really games — they were exercises in zero-sum logic. Only one kid could win. I recoiled. I didn’t want to play these games. They struck me as wrong. Why couldn’t we play games where everyone could win? They were trying to teach me a lesson, mold me into a certain kind of person. I didn’t want to become him. They labelled me difficult. Don’t cry for me. See the point. From the day American kids are born, this belief is beaten into them — only the strong survive. Maybe when I put it that way, you can see it starker relief. Now think of how generations of American kids are literally “trained”…to deal with “school shooters.” To the rest of the world, the following sentence will be fairly mind-blowing: American kids are taught, if there’s a gunman in their school, to “run, hide, fight.” What on earth? You see the principle right here: survival of the fittest. In their own perverse way, all the lunatics that shoot up schools are taking this very principle to the extreme — driven mad by it, out of their minds with rage and hate. American kids are miserable because they’re growing up in a zero-sum society. And what happens to young people who have to grow up with the ugly, grotesque principle “for me to win, someone else has to lose”? Well, they get depressed and anxious, quite naturally, because then everyone begins to worry if they’re the loser or not. You can see this acutely amongst young men, who are susceptible to being radicalized by figures like Andrew Tate, that tell them way to win the game of status, wealth, and power is to make someone else a loser — women. Exploit them — that’s what being a man is. Meanwhile, young women are taught by Instafluencers that to win the game of status and power they have to be prettier or thinner or what have you than the rest — for me to win someone else has to lose. To some extent that’s all “always been true,” sure, but now it’s true on steroids, it’s increasingly all that is true. So of course American kids are miserable. For them to win, someone else has to lose — but they have zero power, so they get punched down on by everyone, from lunatic governors to a crazy Supreme Court to entire generations above them. You’d be depressed too, growing up like that: only the strong survive, and it’s like Squid Game out there. Now. All of that’s well and good, but you might still wonder: is all that just a feeling, or is it really true true? The bad news is that it’s true true. America doesn’t just feel like a zero sum society. It is one. And that explains more or less everything that’s wrong with it — really. Let me illustrate, because that’s a big claim, so it deserves some room to unfurl. What’s perhaps the most startling fact about the US, at a socioeconomic level? It’s that the rich capture even more than 100% of growth, by some estimates. At the very least, what’s happened in America is that the rich take all the gains in the economy, over and over again, over decades. That is why the average person struggles — why America’s gone from a society with a prosperous, renowned middle class, to one where basically everyone but the ultra-rich lives and dies in debt, can’t make ends meet, and will never retire. The consequence of that is fatal. It means that society really is a zero sum game. When the richest are taking 100% or more of the gains in the economy, year after year — what’s the result? Well, it means that everyone else has to fight for what’s left over. Life becomes a bitter, brutal battle — just for subsistence. I have to get that job — because otherwise my kids won’t have healthcare. I have to put off that operation — because my parents can’t sell their house just for me. I have to fight, over and over again, every day. I have to work harder, find a side hustle, somehow, do something, just to make it. That’s not just some kind of cultural feeling. It’s a socioeconomic truth — one that’s overlooked in America. Because the rich take 100% of more of the gains, everyone else is left fighting…everyone else…just to keep their heads above water. But what happens to people when those economics take hold? This is the fatal part. People regard each other as adversaries. Rivals. Contestants. Who they’re in perpetual battle with, over a limited set of resources, which are perpetually scarce. But also fundamental to life, basic necessities. When life becomes this bitter, brutal battle for subsistence, just to stay afloat — then people’s social attitudes, too, change. Friends and neighbors and colleagues aren’t just that anymore. Now they’re your opponents — in a game called life. And that’s a Big Problem. Why is it that, famously, Americans don’t have many friends? Again, not my opinion, fact. Why is that social bonds have imploded, that a sense of community is gone, that people don’t trust one another? This is what happens in a zero-sum socioeconomy. It is what has to happen. Because when you have to compete with everyone else, over and over again, for the very basics, in this wearying, Sisyphean way — then enduring social bonds, real ones, meaningful ones…they’re that much harder to form. It’s hard to make friends when all you do is work, just to make ends meet — and meanwhile, everyone else is doing exactly the same thing. But that’s the mild version of the Big Problem. The severe version is the fever America came down with, and which still hasn’t broken, yet. Fascism. What happens when a socieconomy goes zero-sum? Well, demagogues emerge, who blame that very problem — stagnation, not enough to go around, people becoming distrustful, the feeling that for you to win, someone else has to lose — on scapegoats. Now the true social problem — a zero sum economy — gets transmuted. The ones who have to lose are the hated social groups, in order for the ones who have to win, the in-group, to rise supreme. Now society gets divided along lines of old hatred, of bigotry, resentment, grievance, tribalism — and real violence begins to erupt. This is where America is now. Think of the American right, for example — meaning the Trumpists and their ilk. What do they genuinely fervently believe most? Not just that their magical Father Figure is going to save them, but first, that for them to win, someone else has to lose. In their case, it began with hated groups, like immigrants from the south, and just kept on expanding and expanding. Today, that list of who has to lose for these “real” Americans to win includes…who doesn’t it include? If you ask Ron DeSantis, everyone from the LGBT to women to kids are on it. But when kids have to lose — as in literally, books, words, ways to express themselves, be, history classes — for someone else to win, something is very, very wrong with a society. The lesson that I want to teach you is this. When a society goes zero-sum, it’s a grim omen. It is not a good thing, and it should never be ignored, as generations of American leaders did. America’s central problem is that it is a zero-sum society now. People feel like they’re under threat and attack all the time to the point that paranoia, delusion, even massacres aren’t uncommon. But that feeling is grounded in a certain and very true reality. For me to win, someone else has to lose — and that fact is true about America, sadly. It isn’t just a feeling or an anecdote — it’s an economy and a society, in hard terms. If anything, here, I’ve understated the case. A truer way to put the above is that America’s a negative sum society. That means that even if I take something away from you, I might still lose. There’s no guarantee of me winning even then. That’s what generations of downward mobility mean. It’s what falling real incomes mean, too. The harsh truth is that America’s negative sum, if you want to be totally precise about it. And if you understand all that, then you begin to see just why America’s lunatics and fanatics — who are corroding it from within — believe what they do. Why do they hate everyone so much? Women, kids, just gay people living their lives. What’s with that? Why so threatened by someone just…living their life? It’s because there are people who are always under profound threat, stress, distress — because it’s true that for them to win, someone else has to lose, or, worse, that even if they take something away from someone, they might still lose anyways. When that’s your reality, it’s easy enough to rage at a scapegoat. You need to take something away from someone to win anything at all, after all. And that is the central point. You see, it’s a paranoid delusion that gay people and women and kids are out to get anyone. They’re not. But it isn’t a paranoid delusion that the central fact of American life is the zero-sum principle — the strong survive, the weak perish, and that means for me to win, you must lose. That part is true. Because that is the country that America chose to be, instead of maturing into Canadian or European style social democracy. Now, though, is the last chance, really, to undo all of that. And create a society where nobody has to lose. When I say that, Americans roll their eyes. They think it’s impossible, or at least too many of them do. But I mean that quite literally, not in a sentimental way. Right now, too many Americans lose. Lose their healthcare, their home, their retirement. Right down to dignity. Or truth itself, by way of Big Lies. Europe’s beautiful in the springtime not because nobody’s depressed or suffering or struggling — sure, many are. But because you can sense the return of this feeling. People throng the squares and boulevards and avenues. Nobody is out there trying to take anything away from anyone else. Nobody’s getting anyone, hurting anyone, harming anyone, on some grand social scale. They’re just enjoying life, and everyone around them, walking, talking laughing, relating, learning, knowing. People are, by and large, OK with each other, and the feeling that we are all here, and nobody has to take anything away from anyone, but that this is here for everyone to enjoy, this moment, this time, this square, boulevard, avenue, is what you can sense wafting through the crisp air. That is a great, historic accomplishment. You see, it took human beings millennia to build societies like that. I don’t have to take anything away from you, because nobody has to lose for me to win, because this isn’t about winning or losing. It’s about living. American life is bleak because, well, in too many ways, it still hasn’t learned that lesson. Umair ... February 2023
| The text being discussed is available at | https://eand.co/why-american-life-is-so-bleak-b4cc797f19e5 and |