Teetering on the Precipice

by Jeff Bloom

This essay is a brief meandering through my observations and those of others that paint a picture of some of the contexts that have been contributing to our present state as a society (and societies) in 2024. I also look back in history for a sobering perspective of where we may be cycling back to in more contemporary version. I end the essay with a few suggestions we may want to consider in terms of how we might find new ways to move into a more positive future.

My parents were among those who contributed to the big surge in homeownership in the late 1940’s. My father only had a grade 5 education, but was brilliant in anything mechanical, structural, and electrical. From before I was born till his death, he worked as a metal lathe operator in a factory. And, he moonlighted fixing TV’s and wiring houses. At home, he built new structures, fixed his and his friends cars, and repaired whatever needed repairing in the house. I recall my mom telling a story of buying their house, which was the house I grew up in. My father didn’t want to spend the money, but she hounded him into buying it. It cost $2,000. They got a mortgage, which they paid off pretty quickly. He was probably making about $8,000 a year at the time.

When my wife and I bought our first house, just after I finished my graduate work, we had no money. A professor leant us the money to rent a U-Haul truck and trailer to move from Houston, Texas, to Kingston, Ontario, where my first academic job awaited. We sublet an apartment from a couple with whom we were friends, then started to look for an apartment or house to rent. All the rentals were too expensive, so we started looking for house to buy. We looked at one cute little house, which we immediately liked. We told the realtor we didn’t have any money for a downpayment. When we told him I just started working at the university, he said, “If you buy this house, I’ll lend you the downpayment, just say your parents gave you the money.” Just after we bought the house, the prices of housing in the U.S. and to some extent in Canada began to surge as the demand increased. Along with the rapid increase in the costs to buy a house, the already high costs of rentals increased even more. And, now, in 2024, the situation of housing availability and costs have gotten even worse. It is the rare single person who can rent an apartment without getting roommates to share in the cost. And, both parents in families have to work, and sometime work multiple jobs. And, single parents are really struggling.

Housing is a major marker of the health of a society. But, even if you own a home (or more likely the mortgage company owns the home), many families also have car loans, education loans, and credit card loans. If your mortgage payment is $2,000/month, your car payments are $800/month, your student loans are $600/month, and you’re paying just over the minimum on credit card loans, for $100/month, you have a monthly load of loans of $3,500. If your family income nets $7,000/month. You have a debt to income load of 50%. The recommended limit is 30%. If you are this family, you are being squeezed pretty severely. The costs of food ($1,000/month), medical (if you get insurance through your job, could still be $100/month), home repairs ($200/month), car expenses (insurance, gas, repairs, and maintenance - $800/month), utilities ($500/month, phones for a family ($130/month), and so forth will leave you with no room for savings or emergencies. This total is $2,530, plus you debt load equals $6,300. That leave you with $700 for clothing, activities and schools supplies for your kids, home goods, pet food and care, etc. Such a scenario is one in which it is likely that the debt load will continue to increase.

People are going further and further into debt — large education loans to get through college and university, car loans, and increasing credit card balances. Many people are drowning in debt. What happens if they get laid off in a job sector that was once burgeoning, which now has few if any jobs. Where do people live? If they are struggling with debt, their credit scores take a dive, and then that makes it next to impossible to find even minimally decent rental accommodations. The homeless population is increasing, many of whom still have jobs, but can’t find housing. The number of families living on the streets is increasingly common. And, many people who have accommodation, but struggle with bills, as well as many homeless people, are the new impoverished “middle class.” People who had or have decent blue collar and white collar jobs are struggling for survival. And, far too many retirees are eking out an existence. Pensions, if one even has one, are no longer guaranteed. They fluctuate with the market place. The last downturn in 2019-2020, cut most people’s pensions in half. Then, trying to continue to live on half, cuts what may have been a relatively stable income for the rest of one’s life into a far shorter term. In other words, many people will run out of money way before the end of their lives. Social Security, which some politicians want to get rid of is the only now existing guaranteed retirement income. And, for many people, that is their only retirement income. People who’ve put away money into Social Security are now being threatened with another political con job that will take away their savings, give it to wealthy investment firms, and, if people even continue to get some money, it will be subject to market fluctuation and corporate greed. During the Reagan administration, the beginning of what has been called the “federal embezzlement of Social Security” began. Social Security (our personal money) has been the target and cash-cow ever since.

In the not too distant future, we very well could live in a 21st Century American Serfdom. The new middle ages of the future are almost upon us. Housing may very well be available for the masses, but none will be owned by those living in them. They’ll be rentals paid to our corporate overlords, who pay people a small fraction of what their work deserves. Women will be treated like chattel, and men not much better. Food will not be plentiful… and for several reasons. Arable land will be limited by toxic pollution, the ravages of global warming that destroy what was once fertile land, and gross over-consumption. And, all the while, the best foods will be reserved for the wealthy.

Those who have skills that pay a bit more, will not be all that much better off. Their accommodations may be a bit better, and they will have a bit more money to spend. But, the money spent, just goes back into the pockets of the corporate overlords.

All of the hard working people, who are barely getting by on their meager incomes will still be drawn into the illusion of getting ahead in the corporate world. This is the grand illusion to which we’re all addicted. It’s the carrot on a stick.

“If we can only do this, we will be better off!”

“How can we sell ourselves to a new corporate overlord and make more money?”

Volumes will be written and posted on the corporate overlords’ websites on how to get ahead in business, on how to please the CEO, on how to out-compete your fellow workers…. The mass social brainwashing will be endless and unrelenting. LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and all the rest will pound the messages into our heads. And, we will keep striving to please Mr. Big Pockets and drool over any hint of a dream for a better life, which will never happen. We’ll be like mice in a small cage with a wheel to keep running on and get nowhere.

Don’t worry… we’re almost there! It’s already begun.

Look at a few examples from LinkedIn:

• “Clarifying what you really, really want in your career can help you get ahead.”
• “The CEO of my very first company always used to say, if someone is regularly working more than office hours, then it simply means he is not smart enough to plan or prioritise [sic] his work!”
• “Thinking outside the box is the foundation of innovation. To achieve different results, you must approach problems in new and unconventional ways.”
• “Dealing with a boss who changes their mind often? Here’s what to do.”
• “Understanding the economy helps you make better career choices. Here’s why.”

It’s constant and overwhelming. People just buy into the storyline of corporatism and capitalism… the new religions of the wealthy overlords.

The new serfdom is already beginning. The zombification of the American people has already begun. The new Middle Ages are almost here.

Web content is immersed in this illusory vision of making more and more money. Substack is almost a caricature of itself. If you haven’t already created an account in Substack, you should do so. You don’t have to write and post anything, but do it for a few weeks then delete your account. Watch some of their videos on how to create and make money on Substack. Then, try to find a central location for substantive information on how to actually use Substack. It’s amazingly limited in how you can format and organize information. In fact, their whole site is pitifully organized. And, if that isn’t bad enough, the videos and emails you get from them, make you (well… at least me) feel like we’re drowning is a sea of corporate brainwashing cheerleaders. And, people buy into this with dreams of making lots of money, writing mostly about nonsense and other things that have very little value to our humanity and our growth as thinking and feeling human beings. But, there are some notable exception to this. There are few people whose writing is worth the time to read and ponder, and for that I am thankful.

For some perspective, here are some characteristics of the “old” Middle Ages:

• A strict hierarchy of lords and serfs.
• Serfs served the lord out of a sense of duty, as well as almost complete dependence.
• Serfs were obligated to pay taxes and other fees to the lord, even though it was just giving back some of the money you just got from the lord.
• The justice system was based on the whims of the lord and all serfs had to adhere strictly to his rules.
• A serf’s ability to move around and travel was severely limited.
• A serf could not own property.
• It was almost impossible to move into a higher status level in society.
• A sense of community among serfs was often undermined by micro-status battles between serfs, biases towards people’s lineages, and so forth. I suspect, much of this discord was promoted by the lords to maintain control.
• Serfs had severely limited access to any medical services that might be available, and relied on home remedies.
• Serfs had higher risks of disease, malnutrition, and injury or death from violence.
• Vassals, who held a higher position in society, were still subject to the whims and desires of the lord and his rules. Although they could have land, they were still severely limited in their ability to move about and attain greater wealth.

How far are we from a 21st Century version of a serfdom?

How many people in our society already have their feet in the muck of serfdom?

I thought about stopping with the last question, but I don’t want to leave this hanging as just an elaborate criticism and complaint. We are on a slippery slope at the edge of an authoritarian abyss. Although a number of other countries are in similar circumstances, the election in the United States may move the center of balance in one direction or another. Even if the election teeters the balance towards a continuation of democracy, the abyss is still right there. The U.S. is intensely divided, with half-ish leaning towards authoritarianism and half-ish leaning towards democracy. The election will not change this division. The media and their pundits on all sides of this issue just spew meaningless rhetoric, name calling, and attempts to elicit big emotional responses among viewers and readers. At the other end of a continuum of media commentaries, we find an approach that emphasizes a seemingly more rational approach to telling people to vote and that voting will make a difference. While voting may make a short-term, bandaid sort of difference, it does not address the deeper societal issues that will continue to keep us teetering on the edge of the abyss.

The entire issue as a whole is extremely complex and it cannot be solved in any simplistic, linear fashion. There are far too many variables at play. And, a wide variety of deeply entrenched ideas and beliefs that are often at odds with those ideas and beliefs of others. This division between people is exploited by politicians wishing to capitalize on the emotions of voters. The volume of misinformation and disinformation is overwhelming, and creates a great deal of confusion about what is true and what is not. Underlying this quagmire of confusion, doubt, anger, hate, and so forth, lies a further division among the voting public. Bertram Russell in his book, Power, discussed how many people do not want power. They don’t want to take on further responsibility, and be involved in decision-making. They want to defer power to others who can make decisions. And, these are the people who think they will like an all powerful leader who will make decisions and tell them what to do and what not to do. At the same time, there are people in this country who want to share in the power and have a voice in making decisions.

As mentioned in the last paragraph, the media and politicians play on people’s emotions to increase profits (for the media corporations) and gain more power and control, as well as money (for the politicians). Although emotions are an integral and critically important part of our make-up as thinking human beings, emotions also can be problematic and interfere with the clarity of our thinking. But, we have never received any guidance in how to balance and integrate our emotions and other forms of cognition. We don’t get the guidance from our parents, and we don’t get that guidance anywhere throughout all of our schooling. And, for the most part, we are never provided with guidance into how to think creatively, critically, empathetically, artistically, rationally, etc. The thinking we are told to use in schools is based on how to memorize and spew forth the “correct” answers. We are taught how to be obedient, how to follow the rules, how to conform to certain arbitrary ways of being. And, none of these thinking and learning processes are at all helpful for living in a democracy. However, they are just what authoritarians want. They don’t want a populace who can think more deeply.

While we may think (we’ve actually been brainwashed to think this) that we have been well-educated and can tackle the world of opportunity, we have been taught all along how to live in an authoritarian state. When we get out of school, we get a job, where the same expectations for behavior are still at play. Our places of worship also follow in the same hierarchical pattern. And, then we move into a neighborhood with an HOA (Home Owners Association), where we think we own our house, until the HOA steps in a takes it away from us, or just continues to badger the “owners” to conform to the standards of the HOA, until they amount enough fines to sue and take over possession of your house. We’re already living in a mostly authoritarian society. But, we’ve bought into the storyline, and think it is just the way it’s supposed to be.

To actually move towards a truly democratic society, if in fact that is the best form of government for provide for the freedoms we espouse, we have to start talking with each other. We have to just say no to hate. Hate is a terrible waste of energy (both metaphorically and physically/biochemically). Hate is a poison. It poisons our very soul to the core and poisons all with whom we come into contact. We need to start listening to one another without reacting reflexively. We need to find ways to appreciate one another’s shared humanity, and talk from that perspective. People want to feel safe, secure, comfortable, and appreciated. We can begin to focus on what helps us feel safe, secure, comfortable, and appreciated, then try to extend that to others. And, that will be a great start! Then, we can begin working on education, the economy, political systems, and the welfare of society.

REFERENCES

Fay, Bill (2023). Demographics of Debt. At Debt.org.

Russell, B. (1948). Power: A new social analysis (6th ed.). London, UK: George Allen & Unwin.

© 2024 by Jeffrey W Bloom

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