A strong narrative early in the pandemic was also if we do the right things, we'll be okay. Mask up, stay home, be kind, we'll get through this.
I've been noticing lately that this element of reassuring people it will be okay is gone from the narrative. They're removing protections, but there's no "It's okay now" to it.
I fully realize there was a propaganda element to the messaging that everything will be fine, but now it isn't even an element of propaganda. There seems to be no more interest by those in power in having people think we'll be okay. Early in the pandemic, much of my translation work was morale-related. I haven't seen any attempt to boost or maintain morale in a very long time.
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A similarly strong narrative when I was growing up was the idea that if you do
what you're supposed to, things will turn out well. Go to school, get
good grades, get a good job, you'll be able to support yourself and build a better life for your family.
I'm not seeing this narrative around lately. I've even seen some voices acting like it's unreasonable to expect to be able to raise a family or even support oneself on a given job. Those in power complain that no one wants to work, while disavowing the employer's end of the bargain.
Again, I know there's an element of propaganda to the messaging that if you work hard you'll be successful. I know from Thomas Piketty that the economic success this messaging promises is specific to a brief period in the mid-20th century. But, again, it's telling that they aren't even attempting this messaging any more, aren't even hinting that there might be something better or different. It's just "Work or you're Bad and Wrong."
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Another mid-20th-century narrative, often used in WWII, was the notion of sacrificing for the greater good. I keep thinking about this, thinking about how they used a sort of WWII narrative early in the pandemic, and how that contrasts with the current state of removing protections and asking people (especially school children!) to sacrifice for . . . nothing.
Nothing is gained by allowing COVID to rip through society. It doesn't make anything better for anyone. Some people say that they're doing this for the economy, but it doesn't help the economy to have millions ill or disabled (or dead). They're actively removing protective measures that actually help the greater good, and instead making people sacrifice for nothing.
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As a second-generation Canadian, the very premise of the origin story I was raised with was a better life for one's children. My grandparents' jobs were worse, my parents jobs were better. My grandparents' houses were smaller and older, my parents' house was bigger and newer.
But that dream stopped with my parents' generation. I've never been able to afford a house like my parents', even out in the small town where we lived. I was, for a brief period of time, able to afford a house like my grandparents', but in today's market I no longer can.
In fact, in today's market, I could no longer afford my actual condo that I actually live in if I didn't already own it. My salary is 25% higher than it was when I bought my condo preconstruction 10 years ago, but the prices of condos in my building have nearly doubled in the same period of time.
I was looking at a Twitter thread about this - people who can no longer afford to live in places where they previously lived, even though they now make more money. And there were some comments - which, as far as I can tell, were from regular people, not, like, real estate speculators - to the effect of "Welcome to real life, suck it up and get roommates."
So not only is a better life for one's children implausible, but a not-constantly-getting-worse life for oneself is so implausible that there are regular people who think it's unreasonable to be able to afford the same home you lived in when you were making less money.
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Years ago, after I missed an unprecedented and never-since-repeated Eddie Izzard work in progress show here in Toronto, I set up a Google Alert for Eddie Izzard. I deliberately have it set to "all results" rather than "best results", which means the signal to noise ratio is not so good - it includes casual passing mentions of Eddie, not just items about her. (This blog post will probably show up in it.) But it only takes a second to scroll through in my feed reader, and I now don't have to worry about missing anything.
Recently, there has been a massive surge in transphobia in this Google Alert feed. When I started out, it often went months without any transphobia whatsoever. Now I'm seeing transphobia almost every day. Same transgender public figure, same wide-scope Google Alert, but tons more transphobia than a decade ago.
In 2010, advice columnist Dan Savage started the It Gets Better Project, with the goal of preventing suicide in queer youth by talking to them about how life will improve in adulthood. I agree with his thesis and it aligns with my experience (I can walk down the street and people ignore me!), but it also seems like it isn't happening any more, at least not on a societal/longitudinal level. Discourse is reaching me where queerness is being equated with pedophilia, which is not something I've heard since the 20th century.
This kind of thing should be an appalling horror story of the olden days that Kids Today cannot fathom, not an actual thing that's actually happening in reality!
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There's a conventional wisdom that people's mental health is worsening. Some people are quick to blame remote work or online school, as though proximity to random people without regard for compatibility is some kind of mental health panacea.
But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the root of worsening mental health is that so many things are getting worse that the idea of things getting better has become so implausible that it isn't even part of propaganda.
4 comments:
In my experience, the only thing "it gets better" about the childhood-to-adulthood transition is the fact that grownups, on average, are more polite, so there is less direct interpersonal conflict, and less experience of interpersonal enmity such as bullying and ridicule. A typical adult will quietly slide your resume into the circular file rather than ridicule you mercilessly like a middle school (or whatever is the Ontario equivalent) kid would.
I posit that it's still better, even if it's insufficient. It's not like people were hiring me or picking me for the team or whatever the age-appropriate equivalent was when I was a kid, and at least now I can walk down the street in peace.
Things are definitely getting worse, and the root causes are all economic -- unchecked capitalism causing housing insecurity, food insecurity, and so on.
I personally wouldn't include random Twitter comments as proof of more transphobia, because at the same time, we have more transpeople being out, vocal, demanding equal rights -- and this will always lead to a backlash. The backlash will ultimately be unsuccessful, but we're witnessing the backlash now.
I would also give more weight to the propaganda part of the "things get better" generational message. It applies to white people in North America with European heritage. It's too small a slice to generalize from, IMO.
On the other hand, I'm totally with you on the child-to-adult improvement. I'd rather have some measure of control over my life, thankyouverymuch.
The weird thing about the transphobia is it isn't limited to random twitter comments!
First of all, it's starting to turn up in areas where Eddie was previous criticized on substantive issues. For example, for the past decade, criticism of her political work has been that she's a celebrity or that she's a member of the Labour Party. But in the past year, it has become transphobic.
Similarly, criticism of her charity work has previously focused on whether she should really be fundraising rather than donating her own substantial money, or whether she really should be starting her own foundation rather than donating and/or fundraising for the people already doing the work. But now there's transphobia in the mix.
Secondly, a new thing I'm seeing coming up in the google alerts are people in unrelated contexts (e.g. parenting support groups, fitness discussion forums) starting threads transphobically dissing Eddie (rather than just regular dissing Eddie) for no apparent reason. (And by "for no apparent reason" I mean "I can't see any recent developments this is in reaction do, despite my broad-reaching google alert")
It's like a bunch of different people all suddenly developed a much broader sense of what constitutes the time and place for some transphobic discourse, where previously it wouldn't have occurred to them to say anything whatsoever.
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