The Present Moment

The present moment is marked, above all, by unrelenting nihilism.

We have reached the point where middle class families, those who likely felt the hope and progress in their own material pursuits, cannot imagine a stable world for their own children to grow into. On one hand, the political climate of America has truly fractured, and we find ourselves in a society that politicizes science, as shown during the pandemic. Although we live in a democracy, this polarization has gone to the point where a non-negligible amount of constituents, both Republican and Democrat, have little faith that presidential elections were fairly counted.

Perhaps the most significant contributor to this nihilism is the destruction of the material stability of the working class. The material reality of workers is the precondition for their psychological reality. From the perspective of a laborer, we can trace the fulfillment of their highest psychological goals through their material reality.

For example, a single father wants nothing more than to bring stability into both his life and his daughter's life. This desire for stability is manifested from his ability to pay bills, rent, and any unexpected expenses. The precondition for his economic stability is uninterrupted employment. Knowing he won't return from the weekend family trip to a layoff email is a requirement for him to feel that he can weather any storm.

Likewise, consider a young woman who aims to carve out her own life after graduating college. That flame of youth is one of agency, the feeling that she can ascend into her own reality through her own actions. If she finds herself laboring for wages that hardly cover her bills, even against a modest lifestyle, then her ascent into potential exposes itself as a descent into slavery. Without a modest surplus, she cannot feel agency. She would find her life replaced in the name of the company. Wages that produce a modest surplus after essential expenses are a precondition for agency.

When we look outwards, we see the material conditions of stability and fair pay corrode in front of us. Since 2023, an unrelenting wave of layoffs have devastated entire industries, especially the tech industry which promised material security through diligence. Many workers find themselves asking, "We have had layoffs for years now, when is enough?" Moreover, the cost of living in the United States after the pandemic skyrocketed, and simply paying rent is a monumental challenge for many Americans. Dreams of buying homes, land, or other assets simply are out of reach for most considering the fact that wages have not tracked inflation.

From layoffs to poor wages, Americans find themselves both stripped of stability and agency. The result is one of despair: why would a young American who entered the workforce during the pandemic find any hope after their economic reality was shattered before they even started playing the game?

This is not a universal experience. This is an experience split between those who hold assets outside the United States Dollar and those who do not.

Those who held real estate, stocks, and even alternative investments like crypto experienced an explosion of their networth after the pandemic. Suddenly the home that they bought years ago for just $200,000 are now valued at $400,000 or more. People invested in broad market index funds found their nest egg plump. Those who had a chance to play the game are inconvenienced, not shattered, by the cost of living crisis in the United States.

Predictably, classical rhetoric reemerged during and after the pandemic, citing that young Americans do not want to work or that they do not work hard enough. But when they come of working age punished by a game they never got to play, why would we expect anything but nihilism from them? The contract between employer and employee, stability for loyalty, is irreparably shattered. Our forgotten workers are forced to watch those companies and shareholders enjoy consistent, immense profits while left with nothing.

Most cruel is that this outcome is engineered. At-will employment shows itself to be fundamentally incompatible with job stability. In the face of inflation, investors essentially require immense growth and return on their investment. In fact, many live from low interest rate loans against their portfolio, so growth is required to secure their own material security to not be threatened. To them, growth is not greed but survival. Those who have capital are in a position of power and influence over the rules of the game.

What is the most rational response to this reality from a young American worker?

If the one path heralded as stability eroded in front of your eyes as a path of precarity and stagnation, both to the checkbook and the spirit, the only rational response is to withdraw. To stay is to willingly participate in your own voluntary servitude. In this type of world, leaving the game itself is the most radical assertion of their own agency and value systems. By refusing the game entirely, they reclaim the only arena left to them: their own participation.

We find here that to step away is not to give up, but to stop willfully feeding the machinery that devours you.