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.

One of the reasons humans have been so successful as a species, is that we are very adaptable, and have very "plastic" (maleable) brains, especially through infancy and childhood.

Still though, we are SO, SO removed from hunter gatherers (as we've still spent the vast majority of our evolution being), I have to agree with you. We're almost victims of our own success in a way. Capable of surviving, but not necessarily thriving, in the world we have created.

Children are a choice

And so many are choosing not to have them which makes certain public services unaffordable.

They do!!!! No way can see my washing machine living happy life for 20 years....
Imho it's too much technology in one thimg and lower quality parts.
The more technology stuffed into one thing, the more likely it is to break

Have you seen the price of housing? How is my 22 year old newly graduated DD meant to buy a house in central London where she has to work right now because of her job role? Many folk don't have control over where they live, expensive houses are not always big houses either in the SE. A high cost lifestyle is now the norm just trying to eat, pay bills and a mortgage.

I totally agree on consumerism though and the constant need / drive to own things, I think social media is very much to blame for fuelling this.

I work part time at home mortgage free. Left the ratrace years ago. Modest income but worth it

Life has always been a struggle but in different ways. Things that were relentless hard, expensive tasks for our ancestors are easy for us, but they have been replaced by stuff that is hard in a different eay.

This morning I completed some very mundane thing easily, quickly and cheaply - had a hot shower, made some porridge for breakfast, heated my home to an acceptable temperature, washed up and sorted out some minor banking jobs.

A hundred or so years ago all of those things would have been more difficult, time consuming and expensive. Lucky families would have had domestic servants to get up in the cold before dawn to lay the fires, light the stove and heat the water. The rest of us would be doing it ourselves or more likely leaving for work at the crack of dawn after a quick wipe with cold water, a bit of bread and feeling freezing cold.

I'm in the building trade and have a couple of gypsy mates who are respectively a bricky and a groundworker - I think there is much to be admired in your lifestyle, you look after each other, stick together as families, always seem pretty happy and to some extent stick two fingers up to modern officialdom - good for you!

@sugarandcyanide has absolutely hit the spot.

Very true, my 1986 AEG tumble drier is still going strong - not the case with modern tat.

Agree. We have just downsized. I had a fear of everyone not having enough space or their own bedrooms but it has been remarkably liberating and absolutely fine.
We also have sen kids, that is the hardest part, sending them into school every morning knowing that their potential and needs are not met in the current system.
I read about people that live in microhomes, or buy a caravan and homeschool their kids and I do think there are ways out if you are willung to drastically rip up your current way of living. I am not that brave.. yet.

I think people wear rose-colored glasses when they think about "the past"!

I agree we should do better, a lot better, and standards are especially low in this country (England at least) but it's too easy to be blind to all the modern luxury and modern help and quality of life we actually have.

You don't even need to look back very far, It's outrageous to pretend people who lived in the poorest tenements in years and even decades after the 2nd WW had a life "that worked".

Buying a house in central London isn't a life necessity. I bought a flat in SE London on a single person income, like many of my friends, who work in central london.

This sounds utterly miserable.

One parent in a large house with a large garden they're barely in, with 38p in their account. The other in a bedsit.

How are the children coping with all this?

When did 22 year old graduates expect to be able to buy a house in central London. They would have rented and many would have continued renting all their lives or, at least, until they were much older. It was Thatcher that raised the expectation that everyone should own their own home. When I was at school in the 60s my teachers lived in council houses or flats. When I wanted to buy a house as a teacher in London I had to move a couple of hundred miles North to be able to afford it. (Late 80s).

But why is it everyone else’s fault? I don’t get these posts.

At some point, it also comes down to choices. Many of us would never had managed to buy our first property if we had decided to have our children first.

There's no right and wrong choice, but you need to accept the consequences of choices you make.

Life has always been shit for 99% of the population of the planet at any given time in history.
We were led to believe that "things" like "democracy", "technology", "globalisation" would increase our quality of life.
It has in some ways, longer life expectancy, easier access to knowledge and education, but it has introduced a degree of ruthless competition for the resources that is killing us in the mental health front.
I am sorry for your troubles, OP. Good luck.

I agree @DeluluTaylor

Then when you finally sit down, and turn on the telly to the news 🙄 😑

Life seems much harder and more expensive than it when I was growing up, I think this is because the world population has doubled over the last 50 years, putting a huge strain on resources.

We don’t all live that way. My life is very different to that, I’ve made different choices, so we still do cope with a mortgage and bills.

And I know people who complain about their bills who still pay for multiple streaming services, is there anything you can do to reduce your outgoings?

Aside from big meaningless things like housing costs. I actually think workplace culture has become really dour and as its where peoole spend most thier time we should jolly it up again.

When I first started work it was really common for large employers to have canteens with pool tables etc and people actually took thier lunch break. Fridays a lot of senior people stopped after lunch and went to thier members clubs, actual christmas parties, paid for. There would be pranks like turning everything upside down in the bosses office.

Over time I've seen lunch breaks dissappear, you pay for your own party, alcohol unheard of. Pranks woukd be a major hr issue.

Microhomes are a fab idea but planning rules don't allow very much in the way of land to put them on - which has always struck me as ridiculous because they're only really another form of 'park home' and there's plenty of sites with those on all over the country.

The government would much rather create sprawling estates of cheaply-built, extortionately-priced little houses to make millions more of us mortgage and council-tax-trapped and buying into the 'ideal' of home ownership, good little consumers buying loads of shit we don't need to keep the economy chugging along.

Well you could look at it with half full cup eyes rather then half empty.

You earn a salary from doing a job that does a good, positive thing (finding homes for vulnerable adults). You have a lovely big house. Your DCs are in education and you also have time to yourself when your DCs go to their dad’s. I think you’re winning at life!

I bought a flat in SE London on a single person income, like many of my friends, who work in central london.

Its much harder re housing now.

People will have to work till they're 70 and give up all of their healthy years

This leapt out at me. In the past, pensions paid out from aged 60 and average life expectancy was around 65 or so. Pensions were generous but not paid for long. With life expectancy increasing, I think we have to accept working for longer