It feels like no matter where I turn some septuagenarian, or older, is making life miserable for myself and others. Usually these are older white Christian conservatives, obsessed with a delusional sense of reality that no longer has a basis in fact, or perhaps never did.
There is a disproportionate amount of wealth concentrated in the older generation and those who will inherit it will probably be even worse with that money than the last generation. Certainly we see evidence of that already, anyone in their 30's who has parents who help them out VS those who don't have that have radically different outcomes. For some reason those lucky enough to come from good families ascribe laziness and bad attitude to those who don't have the family support, as if they are somehow enjoying "self made success" while mummy does their laundry for them.
No generation previous needed this kind of assistance well into adulthood, but this infantilisation of working adults has happened because of the hoarding of wealth, refusing to pass on the torch in workplaces and just blocking change for the sake of stoking petty politics. Most of us will never own our own home but all the politicians want to talk about is whether it's OK to dehumanise trans people or not.
I'm 36 this year. For most of my teens I thought there'd be some kind of tipping point where the conservative boomers would fuck off or at least let the next generation step in, but that hasn't happened. Back in the 1990's you could be a girl and wear jeans and be empowered, now this is considered some kind of woke statement. As if we recently invented this idea of women and men being equal.
The faces of my two dogs, my cat and my husband are all that keep me going. Knowing they need me gives me just enough to get out of bed in the morning and start moving... but I'm struggling to do even that without having a breakdown. My husband and I have medical expenses we can't afford and are borrowing money to survive right now. I run my own business and just feel this immense pressure on my shoulders, that again is compounded by how unfair the world is right now.
Anyone got any advice for coping with this late stage capitalist hellscape?
Know that not everyone is like this, but it seems that the type of people you describe are the biggest shouters. There are people who have been fighting against climate change and 'the establishment' since the seventies or earlier, who do their best to always patiently continue to vote instead of giving up and not voting at all, who still join protests, discuss their views in the hopes of changing the perspectives of others. But they usually are just not the people who catch your eye. I'm a lot older than you, and i also still try to write to companies (sometimes even successfully change their product which is very encouraging), sign petitions, donate to certain causes, vote, answer questions when people ask for my opinion. I always was a bit of a rebel and i know of others who are too. I know that i am not alone in this. I was inspired by those lone rangers in the seventies who were already fighting against climate change, even though i don't know their names. They were usually portrayed in the media as the exaggerating crazies or hippies. But i'm not 'in your face' about it and i will only discuss things when other people approach me and ask me something. This takes away some of the hostility of other people who tend to feel attacked when i do things differently than they do. I always knew that i was never alone in my views. I might not know most of them but i know they exist. They always have. It might feel like you are alone, but you never are. And i feel like i do have a certain influence on my own personal environment. It makes some people think about certain things. They might even change, if only a little. At the very least, they now know from personal experience a person like me and can use my existence in conversations about certain topics, just as i could use those anonymous strangers who were putting up a fight in the seventies.