(7:24 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Hopelessness, Hopelessness Is What I Long For

According to a couple polls, young people in America have very little confidence in the continued viability of Social Security -- in fact, significantly more young people believe in UFOs than feel confident about Social Security. It is a commonplace in political discussions for someone to say, half-jokingly, "Well, you know Social Security isn't going to be there by the time we retire anyway."

I'm not sure that this particular issue, taken by itself, is that big a deal. It does contribute to the overall attitude of negativity among people of "my generation." There are many examples of this, but the one that hits closest to home for me is the "abyssmal academic job market" -- the majority of us with academic leanings are led to believe that we'll get to the end of our degrees, saturated with debt, and have no meaningful work waiting for us. A recent blog exchange between me and Mike Schaefer is a case in point -- he noted the terrifying reality, and I came up with my best possible defense for getting a PhD anyway. But once I get to the end of my degree, which I supposedly will enjoy getting, what is there? Nothing. Maybe I'll go back to working for Dr. Grumish. Maybe I'll get my teaching certificate.

There's a similar sense of hopelessness on other fronts. The radio sucks, and it will never get better. TV is only going to get worse and worse. Our schools are becoming little more than prisons for the innocent. We're going to be at war for ever. Maybe we can find some meaning and companionship in marriage -- but then, half of all marriages end in divorce. I feel very naive whenever I don't picture myself reaching a point in life when I just completely reach the end of hope and live for decades as a hollowed out shell of my former self. The only thing to do is enjoy what we have at the moment -- if I can get into that PhD program with a stipend, I can fritter away my time with Heidegger for six years, and after that, who cares? Even if I will inevitably be "downsized" at any job I ever get, I might as well enjoy the benefits of a steady paycheck while I can. In fact, why not just run up the credit cards, then declare bankrupcy (while I can -- they are steadily moving to make that impossible, too, calling it "reform")?

I don't even know what else I want there to be. I don't even know what it would mean to have real "hope" for the future. I know I'll get by. I know I probably won't end up out on the street -- the deck is still sufficiently stacked in my favor, since I'm white, male, and college-educated. In fact, I might even get that academic job, but "chances are," it won't be a tenure-track job, or else I'll have to cobble together a bunch of adjunct work. Failing that, I might get a nice job teaching in public schools, but then my union will probably overreach, and labor laws will have been gutted by then, and we'll all lose our jobs. Nothing is sustainable in the long term. Planning for a hope and a future is naive, liberal bullshit.

I'm going to have to face up to the stark reality. Reality always has to be stark. We have to make damn sure to build our society so that reality is stark, so that people have access to plenty of edifying "lessons" and have to always "live with the consequences of their actions" -- because that's most efficient. That's realistic. That's the way to go.

There's nothing more efficient than a thoroughly hopeless situation, and we still can't think of anything better to do than to keep everything exactly like it is right now. I can't think of anything to do but write my vague criticisms and post them for the whole world to see, as if that counts as doing something.

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