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hawkwing_lbMy conversation lately has been somewhat depressed and depressing. I have spoken to a number of people, recent graduates and post-graduate graduates of my alma mater, in the last several days. They are for the most part barely - or not - making ends meet, relying on their parents, and working dead-end jobs with no expectation of better.
Note, I do not say either relying on their parents or working dead-end jobs. With one exception (who is working two jobs) they're all still living at home.
There's something wrong with an equation where honours graduates of one of the country's top universities are aspiring to a standard of living that is working class "Clerical and most blue collar workers whose work is highly routinized. Standard of living varies depending on number of income earners, but is commonly just adequate." Or at most, low, very low middle class.
And those aspirations? The aspiration to be more than working poor? They aren't much in reach. The only employment available is in low-skill, low-security positions. An ideology friendly to (big) business and the corporatocrat state - not to mention invested in keeping the wealthy super-rich and the rest of us desperate - created, and continues to create - more so now than in the boom years - an increasing social divide. On one side are those who have forgotten what it is to know want. On the other, those of us who do not believe that "there is no such thing as society."
I don't see a solution, other than for us to preserve what dignity we have any way we can. Which will mostly involve leaving, I think. Leaving for somewhere - some mythical place - which is not prepared to sacrifice its young on the altar of Mammon. (The one of my graduating cohort who went to Toronto, Canada, is doing quite well.) This government relinquished any truthful claim to care for the welfare of its citizens when it chose to mortgage our future to failing - failed, in some cases - banks in return for absolutely nothing as far as I can see.
So. I don't know. I want my PhD. If I can't get supervision and funding here for one after the M.Litt (god knows the odds of getting funding elsewhere are minute), I don't know what I'm going to do. Ask one of my never-spoken-to-'em Canadian second cousins to sponsor me for citizenship? Go to Denmark or Sweden or France?
It seems selfish, to focus on how this affects me. But I can't think of it on a wide scale without wanting to rip the people responsible to little bloody gobbets of human flesh. And that's not a healthy urge.
While I still can, I'm trying to build up a reasonable classics library from cheap or second-hand editions. If I do end up trapped on the soulless bloody dole in two years' time, I want to be in a position where I can keep engaging in some intellectual activity without great outlay, and without relying on Perseus's (really quite cruddy) interface.
I mean, I'd prefer to work, if there's work going. But I'm not going to work six days a week at an exhausting job in which I find no satisfaction if I can help it at all.
Maybe I obsess over this possibility too much. But I've lost too damn many dreams to the cold grey turn of "reasonable expectations" not to fight this one with all my soul. I will write history, dammit. I can be good at it.
I'll write fiction, too. But there, good is more complicated.
Note, I do not say either relying on their parents or working dead-end jobs. With one exception (who is working two jobs) they're all still living at home.
There's something wrong with an equation where honours graduates of one of the country's top universities are aspiring to a standard of living that is working class "Clerical and most blue collar workers whose work is highly routinized. Standard of living varies depending on number of income earners, but is commonly just adequate." Or at most, low, very low middle class.
And those aspirations? The aspiration to be more than working poor? They aren't much in reach. The only employment available is in low-skill, low-security positions. An ideology friendly to (big) business and the corporatocrat state - not to mention invested in keeping the wealthy super-rich and the rest of us desperate - created, and continues to create - more so now than in the boom years - an increasing social divide. On one side are those who have forgotten what it is to know want. On the other, those of us who do not believe that "there is no such thing as society."
I don't see a solution, other than for us to preserve what dignity we have any way we can. Which will mostly involve leaving, I think. Leaving for somewhere - some mythical place - which is not prepared to sacrifice its young on the altar of Mammon. (The one of my graduating cohort who went to Toronto, Canada, is doing quite well.) This government relinquished any truthful claim to care for the welfare of its citizens when it chose to mortgage our future to failing - failed, in some cases - banks in return for absolutely nothing as far as I can see.
So. I don't know. I want my PhD. If I can't get supervision and funding here for one after the M.Litt (god knows the odds of getting funding elsewhere are minute), I don't know what I'm going to do. Ask one of my never-spoken-to-'em Canadian second cousins to sponsor me for citizenship? Go to Denmark or Sweden or France?
It seems selfish, to focus on how this affects me. But I can't think of it on a wide scale without wanting to rip the people responsible to little bloody gobbets of human flesh. And that's not a healthy urge.
While I still can, I'm trying to build up a reasonable classics library from cheap or second-hand editions. If I do end up trapped on the soulless bloody dole in two years' time, I want to be in a position where I can keep engaging in some intellectual activity without great outlay, and without relying on Perseus's (really quite cruddy) interface.
I mean, I'd prefer to work, if there's work going. But I'm not going to work six days a week at an exhausting job in which I find no satisfaction if I can help it at all.
Maybe I obsess over this possibility too much. But I've lost too damn many dreams to the cold grey turn of "reasonable expectations" not to fight this one with all my soul. I will write history, dammit. I can be good at it.
I'll write fiction, too. But there, good is more complicated.
