On second thought, posting links has been a good discipline for me, operating in much shorter form than usual. I'm going to keep going.
Two from ACX:
Heckuva work environment in Wisconsin. Oz, Endor, Castle
Three from Rob Henderson
Flourishing. I dislike ill-defined concepts like this, but there is value in discussing it anyway. Young people feel more distressed and have less sense of meaning in rich countries. My take: in less-developed countries a network of people needs you to succeed and just getting a good-paying job of any kind, even if you hate it, has meaning because of those who depend on you.
Activism and Psychopathology I have seen this so long in the mental health field - patients, staff, and families, that it seems over-obvious to me.
Revolt of the Rich Kids. Excerpt:
According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, fewer than four in 10 children born into the richest fifth of households stay there; more than one in 10 fall all the way to the bottom fifth. Similarly, a 2014 study in The Quarterly Journal of Economics found that while 36.5 percent of children born to parents in the top income quintile remain there as adults, 10.9 percent fall to the bottom quintile.
Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi, in his 2024 book, We Have Never Been Woke, argues that this downward mobility of children born into wealth is the psychological engine of contemporary politics. This may look like a trivial problem—the petty disappointments of a small slice of America—but the unhappiness of this group, raised to expect the world and denied it, has outsize consequences.
To be clear, this cohort has never faced genuine poverty. Still, they have experienced the sting of loss: They came of age after the Great Recession, watched job security fade as the digital economy made their skills obsolete, and learned that highly coveted jobs in academia, media, and politics were far fewer than promised. These disappointments, al-Gharbi writes, helped power the Great Awokening. Many disillusioned strivers aimed their anger at the system they believed had failed them, and at the lucky few who did manage to retain or enhance their class position.
3 comments:
Re: Activism and Psychopathology
I knew quite a few activists in my youth, and what I observed was that their activism and their narcissism were mutually reinforcing. They often started out as fairly decent people, if a bit too assured of their own righteousness. But after marinating in activist movements for a few years, they became monsters. Eventually I decided I needed better friends.
Epic is pretty famous around here. I've never been there myself, but I was on the carousel they bought when Ella's Deli went under.
They hire a lot of new grads at good salaries--and burn out a lot of them too. A co-worker had long talks with his family before accepting a job there--he wanted everybody on board with the likely long hours. It didn't turn out badly.
I'd read that disaffected upper middle class people started most revolutions.
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