It feels like no matter where I turn some septuagenarian, or older, is making life miserable for myself and others. Usually these are older white Christian conservatives, obsessed with a delusional sense of reality that no longer has a basis in fact, or perhaps never did.
There is a disproportionate amount of wealth concentrated in the older generation and those who will inherit it will probably be even worse with that money than the last generation. Certainly we see evidence of that already, anyone in their 30's who has parents who help them out VS those who don't have that have radically different outcomes. For some reason those lucky enough to come from good families ascribe laziness and bad attitude to those who don't have the family support, as if they are somehow enjoying "self made success" while mummy does their laundry for them.
No generation previous needed this kind of assistance well into adulthood, but this infantilisation of working adults has happened because of the hoarding of wealth, refusing to pass on the torch in workplaces and just blocking change for the sake of stoking petty politics. Most of us will never own our own home but all the politicians want to talk about is whether it's OK to dehumanise trans people or not.
I'm 36 this year. For most of my teens I thought there'd be some kind of tipping point where the conservative boomers would fuck off or at least let the next generation step in, but that hasn't happened. Back in the 1990's you could be a girl and wear jeans and be empowered, now this is considered some kind of woke statement. As if we recently invented this idea of women and men being equal.
The faces of my two dogs, my cat and my husband are all that keep me going. Knowing they need me gives me just enough to get out of bed in the morning and start moving... but I'm struggling to do even that without having a breakdown. My husband and I have medical expenses we can't afford and are borrowing money to survive right now. I run my own business and just feel this immense pressure on my shoulders, that again is compounded by how unfair the world is right now.
Anyone got any advice for coping with this late stage capitalist hellscape?
One of the reasons that older people have money is because society was sane when they were young. It was even possible for only one parent to work and the other to stay at home and take care of kids and the house.
Every decade since then, things get worse because capitalism wants everyone to work, everyone to buy things, and as few people as possible having enough money to not work. Because money is power and if you are living thanks to a monthly check, you have no power.
The main strategy from the top has always been to divide people as much as possible and distract them from the fact that they can't get out of the hamster wheel. So there are public discussions about gender politics, environmental issues and other things that divide people into groups, so they argue with eachother and stay distracted from the big picture.
Big picture, we are kind of like slaves but much more comfortable. As long as we can't stop working, we are slaves in a way, because we don't have freedom to spend our lives doing what we want in most cases. So we waste our days trying to care about company problems that are all about increasing their profits while paying everyone as little as they can.
Yeah this is not a encouraging post, sorry. I just say what I think here.
Also because they've had more time to make money.
As for the original question, "How to cope with existing right now?", I find that apathy helps.
In the 1960's you could buy around 21 burgers with an hours worth of work for average salary.
I know people with 3 homes because they bought them for $5 and a stick of gum.