Identity and Social Capital

Just found this.
I'm probably late to the party but I am looking forward to hearing her new album this Spring.

Also, is there anything more Millennial than having an existential crisis from being "socially bankrupt?"

This takes me to the heart of my recent reflections on the concept of identity.

Collective Nouns

A brunch of Millennials
A kaleidoscope of butterflies
A Presence of activists
A flamboyance of flamingoes
A cast of Falcons
A convocation of eagles
A coalition of cheetahs
A rake of colts
A glaring of cats
A sleuth of bears
A shrewdness of Apes

Nostalgia for the 80s

One of the things that tickles me and confuses me in equal measure is the current fascination with, and romanticizing of, the 1980s. From Stretch Armstrong to the Thunder Cats, I can understand the strange relationship that 1980s popular culture might engender. But to take it as far as to bearing actual nostalgia for the time of double-digit interest rates, state-sponsored racism and egregious sexism, the hegemonic sway of the religious right (who were neither) and conspicuous consumption seems delusional. This was the height of the arms race, and, until recently, the closest we had gotten to the destruction of the planet by nuclear war, according to the Minutes Til Midnight clock by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Perhaps I 'm just very GenX here, but I share with my age group a bit of PTSD for being old enough to have to live by the rules and policies enacted by rulers I was too young to vote against. Please remember that Reagan was the head of the Hollywood House of Un-American Activities and delivered names gleefully to Congress during the Red Scare, laying waste to his professional competition in the process. And let's not gloss over the fact that George Bush, his running mate and later 41st president of the united states, was the head of the CIA.

1984 indeed.

What do the 1980s mean to you? What informs and shapes these impressions you have of the era?

Class Struggle, the City, and the Willing Worker

David Harvey presents a lovely picture of the unique framework that cities present to enact a recreation of ourselves through our cities, a rebirth that reflects who we are in terms of our interactions and our values. This rebirth, he holds, is a right, a “common rather than individual right,” and  “one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.”1,2

Harvey holds that cities are predicated on the “concentrations of surplus product,” a dead giveaway to his Marxist underpinnings, and to a point I agree with him. I certainly stand with his identification of urbanization as a “class phenomenon.”3 But I’m not certain I can join him when he identifies the mechanism of classist interactions and control to be that of control of distribution of that surplus. While he is right that control lies in the hands of the few and affects the lives of many, there is something else going on here, and it’s not only about urbanization, though -- we have brought this forward since medieval times: control of access to avenues of power.

The focus on control over the distribution of surplus as the hallmark of class issues misses the mark a bit and is, to my mind, a bit short-sighted in that it focuses specifically on the more modern human collective expression of urbanization. I find that control of distribution is but one piece, and a relatively new one given that there is a surplus, but that since the Middle Ages we have, as a Western Society certainly, held control of inclusion, of access to avenues of power, as the hallmark of class struggle. As Western society has become cash-based and production-oriented over the last half-millennium, the tools that bestow power and legitimacy have shifted, but the desire to control access to them has gotten fiercer than ever.

By limiting and controlling access, the class itself is protected and nurtured, insulated from the shock of social change that seems to explode on the scene more frequently than ever before. This insulation also protects the ruling class from having to worry about competition, at least in the near term, as exclusion has long been used to mitigate the pressures that competition or scarcity of resources -- natural, labor, or production -- can create for production and management of wealth, with as money or as social capital.

Harvey does identify the role of the state in promoting an unlevel playing field in the realm of competition, certainly.  But he doesn’t seem to identify the role that we, the workers, are having in shaping a corporate reality through working for what are more and more often corporate cities. Corporations are creating and maintaining their bottom line through the creation of corporate cities -- controlling the labor force and the municipality in which they operate in order to reap the mega-profits that are available in the twenty-first century economy, whether mining diamonds or data.

Class organization as a social justice tool is only as good as the pressures workers feel; it has been said by more than one labor attorney that the way to prevent workers from organizing is to treat them well. If the current workforce isn’t desperate for better wages and conditions, then organization and the change that Harvey identifies all die on the vine. We of the white collar, no less yoked and caged, are willingly eschewing organization in trade for coffee bars and game-stocked employee lounges, ignoring the social ills that are perpetuated outside the halls of our air-conditioned, gym-sporting office complexes. Our youth-driven greed is being stoked by corporate America, a small price for producers to pay to avoid the costs of really dealing with the inequality that persists and grows, largely in direct proportion to the white-collar, high-tech workforce and what it produces.

1. Harvey, David, “The Right to City,” New Left Review 53, Sept-Oct 2008, p. 23.

2. Please note: I am a utilitarian. I do not discuss rights this way, but I certainly allow others to do so and can follow the line of reasoning from this point of origin. For more on my perspective of responsibilities instead of rights, contact me and we will hold a symposium; there just aren’t enough symposia these days. 3. Harvey, David, “The Right to City,” New Left Review 53, Sept-Oct 2008, p. 24.

Debt

On average, total consumer debt accounts for 37% of annual income -- but it accounts for 57% of annual income among those with student loans.

Stuck Between the Me Generation and the Not You Generation

Alexa von Tobel seems to think Millennials created the on-click, streaming universe in which they swim so well.

Fiftysomethings now enjoy bingeing on Netflix, texting that they’re running late and trolling Facebook as much as their kids do. “It’s beyond the tipping point,” says von Tobel of her generation. “[We] are the decision makers, the influencers.”

Bitch, please.

Do you have any clue that when the first of your generation was being conceived, your Gen X cynical, detached, risk-taking parents-to-be were rejecting the hyper-traditional model being forced upon us by our resource-pillaging, nostalgia-laden, responsibility-adverse Boomer parents who were crafting a stricter, more conventional climate than any we had seen in this country as the Hippies-turned-Yuppies--who once rallied behind the call to trust no one over thirty--set themselves up as The Authority on Everything(tm), especially morals? The Reagan years made McCarthyism look tolerant: at least it only cared about your political affiliation.

We of Gen X, born between the assassination of JFK and the election of Reagan, were the first to have no hope of achieving a standard of living of our parents, and we knew it long before we graduated from increasingly defunded schools where ketchup was a vegetable and arts were too expensive, trying to find work despite two million jobs being shipped overseas during the bust of American Manufacturing. When we got accepted to college, the tuition was out of sight, and we didn't qualify for loans on our own - our parent's income(s) were the basis for determining need until we were 24 or made $8,000 in a calendar year, more than we could gross at $3.35 minimum wage, even if we worked 40 hours a week.

The Millennial Generation needs to stop being impressed with itself. You are are really cool, and we love you, except for when you tell us how cool and loveable and hip you are.

Gen X created Netflix - a DVD by mail service - to accommodate our transient and erratic lives. We worked weird hours, whenever we could get them, and frequently had more than one job. We didn't have time to participate in a brick-and-mortar schedule, and we were often spending more on late fees than we did on rentals, with little time to watch a show.

We created PayPal, Google, and Amazon and had web logs crafted by hand before Steve Jobs got hired back to Apple to make an iPod or Mark Zuckerberg got dumped. We truly dig that you have embraced the digital universe into which you were born, but please stop being so impressed with yourselves. We made it up out of thin air, because we had nothing to lose.