The Circumstances of Comfort

As current society collapses, there has been a great fervor to hold on to the fervor and passion of the past. Whether warmongering or continuing suburbanization, everyone has conveniently forgotten all of the negative side effects that come with all of those elements. However, I would actually posit that most people are not anxious for the violence of war or the stress of suburbanization. Instead, what they want are the feelings that were inspired by the propaganda, and the comfort that many people experienced for lower prices than those at present. After World War II and the GI Bill, a lot of communities were created; even non-white populations managed to make our communities without a great deal of federal assistance in ways that allowed us to have pride. “Everyone” bought homes, cars, and participated in the world as best we could on our own terms, since we were not allowed full participation. All of those circumstances contributed to the creation of a middle class, and considering the social progress that has not occurred, I would contend that there was actually no benefit to the creation of a middle class, especially one that thrives on comfort at the expense of others.

First and foremost, most middle-class people have been trained to accept atrocities for the sake of convenience because they are comfortable. No matter what war it is, no matter what exploitation is going on in other countries, no matter what communities are being destroyed, as long as middle-class neighborhoods were okay, there were no problems. They cared very little about the pain of many, with very minimal exception. We see huge protests and pictures, but remember: protests have always been fractions of the population, many of whom based reputations on being seen at protests. Most of the population was at home, waiting for the commotion to die down so they could drive to a convenience store, or to another restaurant, or to a party, or to a concert, or anything that allowed them to forget that the advocates were advocating for everybody, not just the protesters. Incrementalism is a mindset that is only acceptable to the comfortable; most people under distress have been radicalized.

Comfort is a great deterrent from progress, and a huge swath of middle-class people nationwide meant that people excused racism, sexism, and every single atrocity — like violence in other countries and environmental degradation — because they could instantly have what they wanted. The middle-class is responsible for that mindset. Yes, industrialization had a great part to play, but comfortable people fail to question anything that threatens their ease. People cannot keep screaming that “love wins” without doing the difficult work of creating a society where love and justice are valued. One cannot claim that “love wins” while binging out on distractions and justifying abusing economics; something has to be wrong with a society where the most abusive people have the most money and the most respect after decades of exploitation.

Secondly, most middle-class people cannot accept ideology outside of the stated propaganda. Mark Fisher discussed capitalist realism, meaning that people cannot imagine a society that is not capitalistic. They defensively ask one another about other solutions, but dogmatically say, “But this is the best there is,” and offer solutions that people have already unsuccessfully tried. There is no way for people to look outside of what currently exists because for so long, so many people were comfortable with both the propaganda and the existing ideology. Moreover, so many people did not simply, exist, but were raised, trained, educated, and created nice careers off of such ideology. They are not actually interested in changing what they know because changing might mean discomfort. It might mean that comfortable people might experience a lack, for which they have zero coping skills as evidenced by behavior during the multiple global crises. A millionaire was whining about how it was difficult for white men just because he failed to reach the top of the pile anymore. Anyone actually connected to reality knows that people lack extensive disposable income, and people are tired of stories that continue to perpetuate the dominant narrative. Good authors know that people are looking for change and those offering the same paradigm will be left behind with all the grace society can muster.

The existence of a large middle class justified people’s belief that “coming together” was uniformity, rather than self-actualization. The industrialization giving way to the middle class was not just indoctrinated in the economic reality, but the social reality that required so many people to make the same choices. Consequently, society is now experiencing the violence of seething resentment from people living lives they were neither suited to nor emotionally equipped to handle. Among all of these “unwanted” legacies lies a mass of emotionally underdeveloped people who ignored all the signs of crises in favor of getting what they wanted, whenever they wanted, and feeling good about it. One of the reasons there has been an escalation of violence is that people who enjoyed an emotional safety at the expense of everyone else are now finding that emotional safety challenged, because everybody else wants to be emotionally safe. The middle class is responsible for that entitlement because when people go home and have multiple people believing the same thing, they think, “Well, everybody thinks that way.”

From the younger generation, society is experiencing the violence of people who feel they were denied comfort to which they were entitled based on the lies people were accustomed to perpetuate. The biggest pitfall of suburbanization is that people are socially isolated from reality, which is why the suburbs were created in the first place and revered through propaganda. Lying to people about college education, home purchases, and spending capabilities obscured the realities of spiking education costs, corrupt home valuation practices, and artificial pricing (both low and high). As long as highly competitive contempt continues to breed in the suburbs, there will continue to be mass shootings because seeing everyone outside of a community as the “enemy” sustains that kind of behavior.

Also, the middle-class tendency of discounting emotional safety outside oneself has caused a lot of dysfunctional relationships. Everyone wants to tell everybody to let all the insults, abuse, mockery, condescension, and belittling that someone is subjected to roll off their backs. That is an irrational way to be when one considers that those ideologies and that mentality imprint on people. If somebody is condescending to somebody else nonstop, that person receives the message that nothing they say is important, so maybe they stop speaking. Or maybe they fail to write. Or maybe they avoid taking chances that they otherwise would because somebody is constantly being condescending. In schools, when people are constantly told that “those students” are stupid, and “those people’s” schools deserve to be shut down, and “those people’s” communities are worth destroying, such language has an effect. Resilience does not matter if someone is never emotionally safe; one’s life can be changed forever. Most people are exposed to different thoughts, different ideologies, and a different world now, so it is past time for people to accept the fact that no opinion, mentality or belief system needs to be forced onto everybody else to keep people comfortable at the expense of others. Comfort at the expense of others, is not actually comfort, but enabling abuse.

Another issue is the daring rise of the middle class BIPOCQ communities. Suddenly, we had access to video cameras, recording studios, etc. so we created a very prominent culture that people stole and emulated on all the time. Therefore, it is very easy to use that mentality of the middle-class where we were able to create our own consumptive, dismissive societies, as bait for other BIPOCQ. Not enough people consider all of the other issues that were still there during the rise of Black communities in the 50s and 60s, or that there really was no perfection. Instead, too many people have this idealized version, believing “Well, we had houses and cars, and could buy things,” and they ignore many of the other issues that came with that mentality. Yes, we could buy things, and then when we threw them away, they went in the landfill that was put next door to our house. Yes, of course we could sing our music, but we had to be careful, or Elvis would steal it — I wonder if that will be in the new biopic. Yes, we had all of these communities, but if somebody wanted a highway, somebody would steal our homes and communities and build a highway so that they could avoid looking at us. All of those things happened within the middle class, but all we see are the houses and the dinners; we are blinded to the reality that no trying to reach middle-class existence is not the answer for liberation.

Support of the lies of the middle class is even more evident when looking at the salaries offered in the public and private sectors that disconnected people claim is affordable. For example, many employers offer around $30,000 for entry-level jobs in the United States under the now moronic understanding that such a salary is “middle class,” and people can raise families on that. This behavior is offensive because many of the employers also have income properties (think high-ranking politicians) and know that rent precludes $30,000 being acceptable. Moreover, employers ask for people to disclose any additional income that people might be receiving because they know they offer too little for people to live. Employers are gleefully mocking those who supplement that $30,000 with everything up to and including second full-time jobs. This is the reason for high employment, not a plethora of living wage jobs — one job is simply not enough to abusers who need to believe in the myth of the middle class.

One of the results of this obsession with comfort is that society actually regressed. Instead of people saying that artificial comfort is the reason everybody is so miserable right now, people are saying, “Well, those people were comfortable, not everybody.” In truth, those people had the microphone and all the platforms available at that time. Now everybody can have a platform to a certain extent, and not everyone holds the same ideology. Middle-class created a toxic mindset that industrialization enabled. “Everybody does this.” “Everybody thinks that.” “Everybody understands history and reality this way.” None of that was ever true, but a comfortable middle class strengthened all of the negative things that people hate about society, because there were more people who could be enabled without a struggle.

Most importantly, the only plus side to the middle-class is the validation of economics. That is it. There was literally no further reason why all of the negative traits of society should have been pushed aside in favor of comfort. A lot of people were able to make a lot of money, and too many people care about that because either a) they worship people who have too much money, or b) they think they might be next. Environmental degradation does not matter to them, because they count on a huge middle class waiting to buy stuff, even though the cost of living has skyrocketed. The cost of everything has been artificially inflated because of psychopaths unable to see past the notion of profit. All of these ideologies were created by a “strong middle class.”

At this point in time, it becomes crucial to consider if economic prowess is worth more than all the aspects of the socioecosystem combined. If one says, “Wow, the water is poisoned, but people are making a lot of money bottling it,” then society is saying that money for water is more worth more than clean water. When people would rather have cheap clothes made by exploited workers instead of slowing down consumption, they enact a reality that says other people’s sense of self and physical wellbeing are less important than the “need” to find a bargain. The current era requires putting everything in context and that will allow for the mentality of slow growth, but continuing to obsess about economics as if a society is nothing but money is why the socioecosystem is collapsing. The amount of wealth transfer has been so extreme, but abusive people cannot see anything else. People would tend to argue that the upper classes deserve most of the blame. I offer this pushback: their wealth would be impossible without a huge middle-class itching to rationalize anything. People will never defeat a world that is toxic to all of us until we see that more people are going to have to pay attention to systems and realities that cause harm.

Feel free to follow me at DecipherCity.Org!