My lifetime includes a terrorist attack, financial collapse and global pandemic and yet I feel largely unscathed the way previous generations were scarred by The Great Depression, 1900’s influenza, and both world wars. 9/11 was a performative attack prodding America that its biggest icons weren’t insulated from harm. It was successful. Americans were anxious of large crowds, aware the Trade Towers and Pentagon getting hit meant anything could be hit. A friend raised in the Grand Canyon told me his community of 2,000 people was concerned because of their proximity to a National Park. Shared anxiety aside, little preparations were made for a full invasion of the homeland. The United States Army didn’t draft eligible men aged 19 to 64 into service nor did my family have any immediate members tour Afghanistan or Iraq. Arriving 30 minutes earlier to commercial airports may have been the only tangible sacrifice average citizens had to make.
In 2008 when the housing market crashed all of my friends retained their houses. Some parents lost jobs and all were burdened with undeserved, unfair financial hardship but no one in our town was begging on the street or huddled around potbelly stoves. We don’t relate to this suburban St. Louis woman recalling the Great Depression, “there were a lot of, I guess you would call them vagrants or hobos who would walk along Highway 40. And they would come down to our house and ask for food. And mom would always give them food. She would make sandwiches or whatever we were having but she always asked them to chop some wood. So they would chop wood outside while she fixed their dinner and their lunch. And then they would sit out in the back porch and eat their lunch, and then they would go on. But that happened quite often during the Depression.”
Aided by troop movements around the globe, the Spanish flu ravaged humanity at the tail end of WWI. The Purple Death, as it was otherwise known, killed an estimated 17 to 50 million people. Sore throat, chills, and fevers were often followed by an attack on the lungs. Autopsies showed firm, red lungs so filled with fluid victims slowly drowned to death. I outlasted Covid two or three times from 2020 to 2022 and, thank God, did not have an immediate connection to a single person who died from it. It sounds like I am complaining about being insulated from traumatic events outside my control but I am not. I am grateful for advances in modern medicine, the power of the internet to keep the world connected and transparent, and how the threat of nuclear war has changed the medium of war itself. I bring up the differing experiences as a piece of the anxious American pie I call Suburban Guilt.
Our great-grandparents conquered the world, leaving us the beneficiaries of generational wealth. Relatively speaking we are trust-fund babies – the world’s One Percent flying around in private planes with BMW’s waiting in the driveway on our 16th birthdays. There isn’t a company or a profession ruled out of our future. At birth we are carried in helicopters to the mountaintop of economic opportunity. But our view there is sour, producing feelings of guilt not from any particular crime or betrayal but one’s privileged existence in itself. Growing up middle class in rural Southeastern Pennsylvania I remember generally supportive coaches and teachers who seemed to want us to succeed. We had instruments, computer labs, cafeterias, and two libraries in the middle school (the building once housed high school and middle school). My ordinary town had enough support and resources that anyone could’ve done anything they wanted.
Like most spoiled rich kids, suburban students don’t accept the responsibility of their position. “Why I am learning about slope and Shakespeare? I should be learning how to do my taxes,” is parroted in schools everywhere, even though students know taxes are surface level deep while pursuing the meaning of the slope of a line or Shakespearre can bring them to the limits of understanding of our physical world or Western philosophy, respectively. Instead of embracing their cheap Internet connection, exposure to music, science, art and encouraging adults they make a mockery of the path their benefactors want them to take. Why don’t rich kids take the bait? Why can’t they stop themselves from squandering the family fortune? The answer is three-fold:
Spoon feeding
Generalization
Boredom
Walking through the woods on a perfectly paved path can be quite nice but it offers little exploration. Like the public school curriculum, someone else designed it for everyone to use. Leaving the path could result in muddy shoes or twisted ankles but it’s the only way to pick mushrooms and generate experiences worth retelling. Imagine a society of spoon fed path walkers. What’d you do with your life? I walked along the path. How about yourself? I also walked along the path. As Russian author Fyodyor Dostoyevsky said of utopias, “Man really is stupid, phenomenally stupid. That is, he’s by no means stupid, but rather he’s so ungrateful that it would be hard to find the likes of him. I, for example, would not be the least bit surprised if suddenly, out of the blue, amid the universal future reasonableness, some gentleman should emerge, set his arms akimbo, and say to us all: “Well, gentlemen, why don’t we reduce all this reasonableness to dust with one good kick, for the sole purpose of sending all these logarithms to the devil and living once more according to our own stupid will!” Humans, young ones especially, don’t want the utopia provided for them because it’s impossible to generate good stories without pain and adversity.
Mastery of any domain is not just committing to the domain, it’s a rejection of other domains. To be a prima ballerina is also to not be a hip hop, salsa, or modern dancer. Learning forms of movement outside ballet bolsters the ballerina’s skillset, intuition, and body control but pirouettes, arabesques, and plies must be the highest priority of her time and attention. The educational infrastructure puts so much pressure on students to be well-rounded, it’s created a society of spheres instead of all the weird, natural shapes students would have formed if encouraged to pursue their obsessions. I understand the concern over antisocial, alienating behavior, but being obsessed with something does not mean an unhealthy relationship exists by definition. The Samurai, for example, believe there are levels of beauty and gratitude accessible to specialists that are inaccessible to generalists. Doing the same thing over and over because you choose to build antennae of appreciation. Rich kids feel guilty, in part, because they lack appreciation for the little things.
If God asked me to design a hell it would not be an eternal burning pit of fire, that’s much too exciting. No, my hell would be infinite boredom – after experiencing everything there is to experience, sinners would be sat in a four walled room with one fluorescent light. No sleeping, writing or exercising. Just sitting with inescapable thoughts for the next billion or so years. The hardest part of being born rich, relatively speaking, is dealing with boredom. Ascending above the clouds doesn’t inspire someone who’s been flying private since they were a baby. The miracle of grocery stores means nothing to someone who’s served a full English breakfast every morning. Boredom is not a natural state for creatures surviving in the jungle, it’s a modern luxury and side effect of increased technological innovation. The only antidote I’ve found to fight boredom is to make time for it. Practice it like a skill. Take a walk. Look at a pond. Shut electronics off for one hour. A bad wedding, missed flight, visiting the hospital, parenting toddlers, going to class; almost any situation becomes manageable to someone who can sit comfortably by a body of water without distraction. Taking over a peaceful empire is boring, which means willingly confronting the profound anxiety that existence in itself is wrong is a superpower.
To the builders of generational wealth, thank you. You climbed the mountain so we don’t have to, but please for the love of God don’t drop us off at the top in one of your helicopters. It sounds cool, but it makes for a boring story.
As an educator, I see how the perspective of "fun" has shifted. If the Wi-Fi goes out during indoor recess, kids are lost. Many have lost the ability to create and enjoy the simple things. When we were in elementary school, we didn't even know what Wi-Fi was. I often wonder if I was very wealthy, would I still like a lot of the things I currently do? Would trips to the grocery with my fiancée be something I look forward to? Would I even go? If I have to give up the ability to see life's little blessings to have wealth, wealth may be something I am not interested in. Thanks for making my brain work today.
Interesting point on fun, I would totally agree that imagination is a muscle we are forgetting how to flex.