Thursday, March 28, 2013

Nothing Scares Me Anymore - But It Should: Voices our Generation

In my home culture in the United States, we're living in a state of many anxieties and fears. There's even a  column in The New York Times devoted to a different contributor's anxiety on a regular basis. Fear and anxiety is especially well-documented among my generation, in our late twenties and early thirties. Many of the social contracts we grew up with seem to have evaporated; older generations either recognize this and document it, while issuing dire predictions about our prospects for "catching up" or generations discount this evidence and try to soothe us with cliches about "this too will pass" and "this is temporary."

I'm talking mostly about economic expectations: the idea of an upwardly mobile society, and that education secures this upward mobility. But beyond this, there are trends about wealth distribution and compensation that are systemic; some have been tracked by authors such as George Packer to 1980, the year before I was born. Others may have emerged over time from evolving philosophies about changes in how the private sector sees its responsibility to the public, but the data has just exploded into our consciousness in the aftermath of the Great Recession - a term I've only heard or seen used by scholars.

Many people outside of specific fields or industries aren't aware of the magnitude or irreversible nature of changes happening, unless they are seeking jobs in those industries. And that's why my generation embodies these fears and anxieties. We understand better than anyone else that much of what we were taught, and what our nation still represents around the world, no longer applies for many people here and now. We're caught between our mentors and parents, whose advice is well-meaning but sometimes as up-to-date as a VHS, and the experiences of our peers, which affirms our discouragement but makes us feel less alone, if we confide in each other. 

Last week, I went shopping with a friend who I admire for her professional and creative accomplishments. Neither of us has full-time work, and we both do things like bring our own snacks to coffee shops so we don't have to buy a muffin with our tea. We were walking through Union Square, en route to a discount outlet of a very pricey store. Looking the part - fronting - of economic success seems as important in achieving it as anything else. But it also keeps up a mirage, especially if you have a job, as I do, where the world should be able to safely assume I'm making far more than, if not at least, the equivalent of what one senator recently calculated would be the minimum wage if it kept pace with inflation.

I'm not - and I seldom talk about it. In fact, I actively concealed it for a long time. Why's that? Because the narrative is if you take steps X, Y, and Z, you end up with your house, car, vacations, whatever luxuries you like, the ability to give to charities you support - and you do this by age thirty or so.I did X,Y, Z and I was praised at every step of the way because I did them well. I didn't want to embarrass myself. But why do I assume this embarrassment? I am proud of the work that I do; the more I share a fact about my pay with individuals, the more a similar, woeful tale tumbles out.  Many of us do our work for very little money, because we know someone else is ready to fill our shoes, for what we make or even for free.

There's a political party whose message is that you've earned what you've achieved, and if you are poor, you are deficient in some way. If you haven't risen as high on the economic spectrum as your neighbor, you're less deserving. You're less qualified. You're in the lot in life that the free market has spun for you - and that's capitalism, and that's freedom. Well, they're wrong.

Nonetheless, our national narrative continues, led by our president, whoever he is, at the annual celebration of our greatness. The State of our Union is strong, the future will be better than the past, we will overcome our challenges and create a better world for our children. I'm not alone in feeling that this message always makes me feel warm, fuzzy, proud to be an American, but also strikes the wrong key of late. I'm interested in creating a better world for today's children, whether they are mine or not, and for today's adults, too. I don't want to fetishize children of tomorrow. I love children and have long imagined motherhood. But I can't predict if I'll be able to afford a child, or when that will be. First, I have to get my economic house in order. And, doing that can seem impossible when assuming debt was done because of a promise of future earnings that are not materializing. 

I am an optimist; I believe in the beauty of my dreams (like Eleanor Roosevelt) and I'm happy with the State of My Life. Things I'm not content with are largely beyond "my life": they're not the essence of me. They frustrate me, but not to the point that they outweigh how I feel when I wake up most mornings: excited to experience a day in which anything is possible.  

Many people who are not naturally optimistic are now trying to shift their thinking to become optimistic. How? They're doing it through cognitive behavior therapy, which emerged after the realization that our thoughts impact our actions. If we don't believe something will happen, it's less likely to, because we're less likely to take steps to make it occur. That's a simplification, but the general premise of this is also the reverse: you can impact what happens through your thoughts. This sounds like voodoo, but it does make sense. If you believe you'll succeed, you're more likely to keep trying. Positive thinking can even, I've been told, give off a positive glow that will make positive things happen. Now I'm starting to put on my skeptic hat.

Here's the problem. No amount of merely thinking positively and smiling that a system will change will alter it. No amount of telling myself I deserve a salary, or health benefits, is going to alter higher education so that 75% of courses are not taught by part-timers with neither salary nor health benefits. 

What does need to change is the amount of shame, and the amount of silence, in my generation. It's not polite to talk about money. We avoid mentioning to our friends who do have secure economic situations that if we come along to a certain restaurant, we'll have blown our budget for a month of socializing.  We don't share that our annual health insurance costs more than half of one job's yearly earnings. We don't like to admit we're borrowing money to live - accumulating more debt. We don't want to have to explain the choices we make to help us deny this situation. We're ashamed personally, when it's a system that bears responsibility. We're caught in this odd state of privilege, where we feel we have no right to state facts because it'd be a complaint. No right to criticize - or no idea who, if any one person, bears the blame. We're highly educated. We do what we love.

But attempts at comparative injustice or comparative degrees of suffering or pain can be a disservice to everyone. They encourage pity for "the weakest" - "the sickest" - in a way that dehumanizes and removes the agency of these individuals. Who falls into those categories?  Nobody wants pity. For every hardship in someone's life, there is likely something else they are fantastically proud of that defines them more so. I wrote about this years ago when the woman in the hospital bed next to me was gabbing on the phone behind the curtain separating us; she was going home, she was so relieved and she felt so lucky not to be HER. I was her; the young woman in the next bed. It was a shocking moment. I loved my life and could not imagine anyone being happy that they were not me: I was boiled down to 'brain tumor.' Other than that, I had a fabulous life. I was even going to get better. This was a shadow, passing. That woman had a condition less medically serious. I knew nothing about her life, but I didn't want this terrible form of pity; it reduced me to something I am not. Scribbling this blog now, I wonder about that woman and who she is: where she is today, what she does, what makes her get up in the morning, what drives her, what her passions are, how she'd feel about being me if she could see me today. 

Some arbitrary comparisons can also create silence when other injustices seem "relatively" minor. This makes me think of a conversation I had with another friend when both of us - adjuncts at the time - were discussing our pay, and she pointed out that most people in the world are surviving on less than one dollar a day, for food. This was, she said, meant to give context. Make us feel better. I'm an amateur scholar of the Global South, so this was not news. It also does not invalidate the problems of my American generation  nor does it improve the situation of people who survive on one dollar a day. Neither situation is right, and they're not directly comparable; it's what we'd call a false binary, a simple reductionist compare-contrast. They don't have the same variables so we can put them into a mathematical formula with an equal sign, greater than or less than sign. 

What does this have to do with fear? For one thing, the hesitancy to put a face or name to a bizarre "over-educated underclass" -who exist in the thousands in anonymous numbers of college adjuncts who have master's degrees but sometimes qualify for welfare depending on the number of classes they have per semester-  is about fear. It's about exposing ourselves as part of a system that's duped us, when we haven't figured out a way to stop participating. We need to go on in this system. We can't divest. I recently went to a conference where working conditions for "contingent labor" in higher education were discussed refreshingly; then, during a Q&A, the hammer came down. "Until you get a tenure track job of your own, don't advocate for others." Oh. What we'd been discussing is the scarcity of tenure-track jobs. What if that's not the track we're interested in? What if we don't ever get there? What does this insistence on silence suggest? Protecting ourselves out of fear, until we're no longer in the impacted group. How should we weigh this fear? 

One of the most oft-quoted lines from an American president is FDR's : "The only thing to fear is fear itself." Roosevelt said this in a specific context, but this quote has become  carte blanche endorsement of the notion that fear is paralyzing, unhealthy, and an impediment to our goals. And it can be. But fear is not a one-size-fits-all emotion. And that's what we forget: fear is an emotion. It occurs in degrees, it can occur as a result of a rational thought process but it is more likely to be a biological impulse. 

Fear can be a survival mechanism. It can give us clues about our surroundings; it can sound a warning we should heed. It is absolutely true, especially in an age of over-analysis and intellectualization of everything [which I'll do further down to a Lana del Rey song, to demonstrate the existence of this era], that some fears do deserve to be thrown out the window. Maybe they're not in proportion to the situation; maybe they are not based in reality; maybe they are a form of worry, a habit that only ferments fear instead of taking action to resolve it. 

My recent thoughts about fear came from two sources besides the conference: the first was the publication of my review of Anne Lammott's book "Help-Thanks-Wow." I re-read it, after writing it several months ago. In the review, I write briefly about my sudden, surprise diagnosis with a brain tumor when I was twenty-one, which was the first time I understood, viscerally, that I would (one day) die, as EB White does in that wonderful moment in Once More to the Lake.  My first response was a terrifying fear. In the next twenty-four hours, though, this fear was washed out of my system, because I was not in control of the resolution of the problem. I had an expert brain surgeon. In my first experiment with memoir years ago, I wrote, from the perspective of 21-year old me, that the day of the surgery was the easiest of my life. Nothing was required of me. My fear would accomplish nothing: it would not give the surgeon an adrenaline rush to keep him at his best, it would not change the outcome, it would not alter the molecular makeup of whatever they found. It was, indeed, useless. I let it float away; I abandoned it. This was a healthy abandonment of fear.

The second, more unlikely source of my fear ramblings was a pop song shared by a friend. Lana Del Rey's song "Summertime Sadness" - in which she says goodbye to a lover and then, in her video, proceeds to drive recklessly on a freeway, and climb over the edge of a bridge - includes the phrase "Nothing scares me anymore." Before I listened to the song, I saw the phrase and thought of it as empowering. There was a lot happening in my friend's world that merited fear. I was glad she had overcome the fear, that she had, perhaps, achieved a form of peace - an interpretation most listeners may have.

When I listened to the song, nothing being scary anymore took on an ominous tone, one in which I feared for the song's protagonist. She's been left behind, she'll miss someone - and so she does whatever she feels like. Liberating, yes? Somewhat - she feels electric, she dances without her shoes, she wears red. Sounds great. Harmless. Celebratory. I wanted to do all of those things. The beat is  neutral, if not calm, like we'd just be waving our arms in the club. She's sad, but she's going to do her own thing. So far, this is not worrying. Then, things take a disturbing turn. "I know if I go, I'll die happy tonight...Nothing scares me anymore." So our narrator is accepting of death. She has no fears. She's moved beyond it to a place that she wouldn't mind dying, she'd even be happy with her hair done and her red dress. Accepting the possibility of an imminent death is completely different than the adult process of coming to grips with being mortal. But accepting death should come when it is a real possibility that cannot be avoided, and this acceptance does not have to mean no fear. Perhaps it does; I cannot say with any certainty.

But as this song goes, no, this is not an appropriate abandonment of fear. This is a form of madness. With no fear - that literal interpretation of FDR that is chanted to school children as incitement to "do one thing every day that scares you" (another pop mantra, one I can embrace as long as the degree of scare is from trying something new, not life-threatening ) - the protagonist is in a world where she is unconcerned for herself or others. Fear comes from a place of investment, of caring, of concern. If we have absolutely no fear, we have abandoned any precautions to protect ourselves or our world: in this case, wearing a seat belt, obeying speed limits, staying on the usual side of a tall bridge. 

Fear is also about repercussions. With zero fear, repercussions do not matter. I recall a song from another era, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." 

I began to think about Summertime Sideness, mesmerizing musically, in a different way. Maybe it's fear she's asking to kiss her once before she goes. (I doubt this is the intended interpretation, or what most listeners will hear). It is when fear is gone that nothing scares her anymore and she can begin her spree of electric activity. She'll die happy because she's irrational. The images of edges - we never see her crash her car or plunge into a bridge - suggest blurring the boundary between sanity and insanity; an incongruity of rational and emotional thinking which, ideally, align. 

This is, of course, only a song, probably written about a person, a lover, and the loneliness the protagonist feels without him. Words, in art, can be excellent ways to express wishes or desires we would never act upon. But this notion of assuming power by abandoning all fear is a dangerous illusion, like most all-or-nothing thought processes, and one that pervades much of our national dialogue. 

I'm even drawn to the "have no fear" to some extent; my favorite hymn has always been "Be Not Afraid." I like to think this is outside the scope of my analysis given that belief in God is accepted as mysterious - and the song is not called "Never Be Afraid." 

Powerful people don't have fears, we are often told in advertising or media. Wrong. They do, and that helps them direct their energy. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable is not rewarded in our society, but it's a sign of strength and perhaps the only way to overcome the fears you should discard.

It's biologically impossible to stop all fear - unless the brain reaches a state in which it is shut down, a condition in which electricity (shock treatment) can be needed to literally zap it back into action. In such states, the brain is so damaged that it can stop forming memories. 

On the other extreme, the brain can become so activated that it fears everything, and it needs to be eased back on the spectrum, in the opposite direction.

In the end, fear deserves our attention, but also our skepticism. To end where I started, a cliche that I think does help my generation: "everything in moderation." 

We feel trapped sometimes, but we have voices we can use, after we measure the repercussions and cast aside some of our fears of talking about the economic situation from personal perspective. 

This is not about blame; it's about searching for understanding. Recently I heard Robert Atwan speaking with a group of college students. They asked him how to avoid subjects nobody cared about, or  that had already been written about.

His advice? "Be the voice of your generation." He hadn't heard that yet, he said. 

Let's change that, whatever our experience has been. My fear that if we don't do that, we won't change the future is part of what drives me. And that's a healthy fear, a fear that has been transformed into motivation.

-CMMOB, 3.28.2012.


Summertime Sadness


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