Modern life doesn’t work

[DeluluTaylor]

I say this reading thread after thread of people trying to work around nigh impossible situations.
I am sitting here with chronic IBS from stress, trying to get the kids out of the door, to a school which can’t meet their need, to go to a job where I’m firefighting as nothing is fit for purpose anymore. Finding care homes for younger and younger people. People who want to work but can’t as they have learning disabilities. Yet in the 20th century an estimated 40-70% of people with LD were employed.
I have 38p in my bank account and all my money goes on paying for a big house that we’re in from 6.30pm 7 the next morning, with a huge garden which none of us have time to do anything in. That I sit in on my own when the kids go to see their father in a bedsit at weekends. Yet there are families down the road with three kids and two parents in one room.

The whole thing is crazy. If you were going to arrive here from another planet and looked at late stage capitalism you would say why do you live like this? Getting in debt to spend two weeks abroad rather than making changes to make the other 50 weeks off the year more bearable.

It's a depressing thought OP.

I've always considered it bizarre that we have to spend more time out of the home to pay to keep it. Obviously there's no alternative, but it's bemusing to say the least.

I totally agree with you OP.

We humans have created a crazy world.

Goodness me. People think all this stuff is normal because they are used to it. Kids who hardly see their parents as they eat breakfast at breakfast club, go to school, play at after school club and eat tea late that their parents have raced home to prepare, homework and bed later than anyone who like. Nice houses that are bigger than we need rammed full of stuff the end up in the landfill ruining the environment but costs us so much money we had to keep working long hours as we feel we need this stuff. We could all live simpler and slower lives if we all forgo a lot of the material things but society had told us that is what we need and what is normal. I could go on but nobody agrees and partly that because it’s hard to admit that your lifestyle isn’t ideal when you are told by everyone it is just the way it is and by the time you are deep in it’s impossible to change. And how do you make meaningful change on your own? It’s not a criticism of individuals but of our society. What a waste. A previous post was talking about how a mother should work longer hours because her husband wanted her to. It’s not always that’s simple and there is value in being physically and emotionally available for your children because you have done household jobs when they are at school. Just because others do doesn’t mean it is the only way.

Our brains have not adjusted to the huge changes that have happened over the last 200 years. We work ourselves to stress, but rarely see what that work actually 'did'. 200 years ago we'd have worked 10 hours reaping wheat, and at the end of it we'd be physically tired and have seen huge bundles across the field and known 'I did that'. Now we sit in a chair and have to trust that our admin somehow helps to meet a target that does something important somewhere. And theres no beginning or end to it, theres always multiple things we are just in the middle of. Theres no planting, harvesting, feasting, conserving. There's just a constant flow of equally important things that need to be done now.

I'm not sure it's like that for everyone though is it. You've described quite extreme examples.

I agree. Life has got so expensive that we live to pay bills and buy food. Disposable income gets lower every year.

Families need two parents working to afford to live and they end up paying the equivalent of a second mortgage to someone else to look after their children. Then everyone is scratching their heads wondering why people aren't having children any more!

People will have to work till they're 70 and give up all of their healthy years. Social care is a disaster in this country and relatives can't help like they used to because they're at work, so those houses families had to give up their lives to buy will eventually end up being sold off to pay £6k a month in care fees.

But it's still the better of two evils to own the house as the alternative is to have no assets and be at the mercy of a state that has no money and even less inclination to look after their elderly.

Couldn’t agree more. We pay other people to look after our kids so we can go out to work then buy stuff we don’t need with our wages because you’ve got to feel like there’s a point to working and in the moment nice things tick that box but long term none of it makes us happy.

@BlackCatDiscoClubthat’s a really good point, my job will never be ‘done’, I imagine many people’s won’t.

Fantastic post @sugarandcyanide 🙌🙌

But the human struggle is never 'done' and never has been 'done'. If you think about it, we have unprecedented security compared to almost all our ancestors who everyday would have to wake up knowing that they had to source whatever was needed that day just to survive. Shelter, food, water etc would have been constant needs that would have to be met. We have this because most of us trade our time for money to buy these essential commodities but someone somewhere is getting up at the crack of dawn to feed the livestock or working long hard hours in a quarry to supply the stone needed to build our houses etc. I don't really think they would ever feel 'done' either as there would always be more food to grow the next day.

I think there was a short window in the last century when it seemed possible to have all the resources we needed readily available and to have a decent work:life balance. This is being eroded now and we are going back to the norm where it is more of a struggle to survive. We are competing over dwindling resources with a growing global population. It's not even about money allocation either. We literally only have so much water, food etc. Yes, it could be more evenly distributed but if it were then we in the UK would be worse off not better off.

How much of that is choice though? It’s a choice to buy a big house with a big garden, to buy tonnes of stuff that ends up in landfill, and if the house were smaller, and the stuff didn’t get bought there would be less pressure on finances and possibly different choices about work.

Too often we sleep walk into a high pressure, high cost lifestyle because that’s what people do, rather than questioning the big house and the tonnes of stuff. It’s madness, but some of it we do to ourselves.

Dh and I sometimes remember what we could afford 15+ years ago on nmw of a fiver.... Half went on rent and bills, but the other half provided bit of savings, party every weekend, cinemas, takeways, trips, good food, ticket to visit my family couple of times a year....
It think that's it. Our salaries obviously rose considerably but no way could I live flush like I did on 500 pcm (post all bills) on what's now left after bills even though it's more!

I think the money are one of the biggest stressors tbh and the change from ok to not ok happened quite quickly.

This is so true

I agree we are in the end stages of Economic Liberalism. It served us for a period of time, but it is running its course, as you can see with the rise of Authoritarianism and I believe we will see a move to Christian Authoritarianism...Trump is a clear move in that direction.

Completely agree with everything. All my monthly wages just about cover my rent (small flat), utilities and travelling expenses. Haven't had a holiday since 2017.

I am 55 years old and have fuck all for the future. No pension, savings or rich parents or partner to help.

My 14 year old mini needs over £1000 worth of work to get it through its MOT. Fucks me right off when people say "why not just buy another car"?

Most days I think...what the hell is the point?

I feel like we are very lucky to live when we do.

Im not sure there will ever be a “perfect” society.

But I’m glad I have a toilet and a shower and choices to a certain extent. I can work and have a bank account and society allowed me to leave my horrible ex. I can call an ambulance if sick, give birth knowing something will help if it goes wrong. I know my children are mostly likely going to survive to adulthood. Very few people in this country are starving or homeless. If someone tries steal stuff from me or break into my house I can call the police and don’t have to “defend” my home myself. There are lots of little very basic things which our ancestors couldn’t take for granted like we do.

Im not saying life is easy. But I wouldn’t trade it for the alternative of living in the past. It’s easy to idealise but I think we live like kings compared to a lot of the human race have done over the years and even in other countries.

Maybe this is a chance for you to look at your life and think how can I make it work better for myself. And although you may not think you have a choice, no one is stopping you from homeschooling or living a simpler cheaper life if you want. If you don’t want that then you have to think why and work out what you actually want.

I’m not sure blaming late stage capitalism for the above situation is accurate. Many people don’t live like that. I certainly don’t.

if you’ve got 38p in your bank account and a big house that you don’t spend time in and a really stressful job that’s on your life choices surely. Blaming capitalism seems a massive cop out.

The thing getting me down is paying someone else to look after my baby. I really want to do that. But I’d have to lose my job and I’d never get it back.

We could all live simpler and slower lives if we all forgo a lot of the material things but society had told us that is what we need and what is normal.

Many people can barely afford housing though.

Wage stagnation has down a number on us & life is only get more expensive. Does anyone actually think the NHS will exist in its current state in a decade?

@Jellycatspyjamaswell some of it is choice, some of it isn’t. I have two children of different genders so they need their own room as they are nearly teens. Most three beds are houses where I am, haven’t seen many three bed flats. Of course I could share with my daughter but society/ media has showed her that she needs her own room. We don’t particularly buy a lot of stuff. I have to work full time to prove affordability to the bank that lent me the money to buy the house that I can no longer afford. And ironically because I’m living paycheque to paycheque I can’t afford to move. I can’t afford to live here and I can’t afford to move.
I can’t work part time and I can’t afford the petrol to work full time.
I follow a lot of ‘I left the rat race’ type accounts on SM, can’t help but feel their lives are propped up by others who can’t leave. If their children get ill, they will be treated by people who can’t live in a gypsy caravan. If they need a loan to buy a new camper, those bank staff are still tied to the capitalist system. We can’t all ‘opt out’

@KarmenPQZ as someone who writes out a lot of food bank vouchers, a lot of people do live like that. You’re just privileged to not know.

I think ‘we all buy too much stuff’ is a cop out. Most people I know aren’t in debt because they go mad in Next. They are in debt because they put utility bills, kids school shoes, work clothes and petrol on their credit cards.

What you describe isn’t how everyone lives. We aren’t all in houses that we can’t afford, with a parent in a second property, not seeing our kids at the weekend, or working full time with kids in wraparound rushing dinner every day. You’re spending a lot of money on somewhere to live for both parents, and having to work full time to pay for it.

The way we live now is so far away with how we evolved to live that it's actually amazing we're coping as well as we are.

The idea that this is the 'norm' though is completely wrong. It has always been very difficult for people earning the lowest wages to even survive, let alone have fun money. I just think our expectations as a country are rooted in a relatively short time period that was never going to be sustainable in the long term.

A good example is food. We have largely got to a point where we expect food to be roughly 10% of our expenditure but there is absolutely no real reason why this should remain the case. Other people in other countries routinely have to spend 50% of their income on food. If food becomes more scarce and our economy continues to falter then we will have less buying power as a country. Food will become more more expensive. There are also ethical questions about whether it should ever be such a low proportion of our spending in the first place anyway.