Millennials – the unluckiest generation

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(A bit long, but important.  How millennials can benefit from the ideas of Epicurus)

For young people leaving college since 2008 the prospects of a full-time job have been stressful, to say the least.  Now, during this crisis, more than ever. Their grand-parent’s generation enjoyed almost full employment for the majority of their working lives, final salary pensions, health benefits,  sick leave, and paid holiday entitlement.  No longer.  These benefits have evaporated, and in their place has emerged the short-term contract, which offers no security and few benefits.  Meanwhile all too many young people are saddled with large education debts that are hard to reduce, given the employment situation.

This is a fact, and we have to deal with the insecurity as best we can. The cards are in the hands of employers.  So here are some Epicurean recommendations:

–           Abandon the consumer society you have grown up with.  Things don’t matter, people do.  If everyone stopped buying unnecessary things the exploitation would eventually stop (and so would the economy; on the other hand we would have freedom from our rulers, the corporations).  That Maserati you dream of is a five minute sensation.  Once you have it it is part of the scenery and you will want to find something else to hanker after.  The whole, massive marketing effort by industry is aimed at getting you to keep spending. Try stopping!

–   As a corollary to the rejection of consumerism, pull in your horns and save money.  How will you live otherwise in old age (will there be any Social Security by then?), or in the event of unemployment.  Americans have a bad savings record because they have been encouraged by companies to spend every penny and more, and credit has been historically cheap.   Use that credit card sparingly.

–  You need to be flexible in what you do. The future job market may require you to acquire new skills and learn the ins and outs of several businesses and industries.

–  Espouse the idea of lifetime learning and self-education.  Not only will you be interested in a host of subjects, but you will be more interesting to your friends and more able to adapt to changes in work.  It is possible that the extremes of specialization could fade and the idea of the educated generalists return, able to connect the dots and adapt to new opportunities.  We are too specialized for our own good.

–   Try to abandon the concept of after-office/factory time as being “time off” work.  Work should be something we enjoy, yes (if possible) but we should regard it as something that takes up part of our life and regard time with friends and time pursuing our activities as “time on”.  Work should be “time off”. We work to eat and to have a roof over our heads; it is not the be-all and end-all of existence. Don’t be a slave to the clock.

–   Not withstanding the above, be proud of a job well done. You need to look after your own morale.  So while you are at work do that little more than is required of you.  It also helps when your job review comes up.

–  You have to have something else to live for, apart from work. Nietzsche said, “He    who has a “why” to live can bear almost any “how”.” Throughout life you have to have a reason to look forward and find something you enjoy outside work, even if it takes time to find that something. Watching sport doesn’t cut it.   Don’t worry if you can’t immediately find something that you love – Van Gogh had no idea what he wanted to do with himself.  He only sold one painting in his whole life and had about four careers.  But he didn’t mind –  he at last found his true vocation and pursued it.  School seldom discovers all your talents, and in most families parents seldom do either.  Actually, over the course of, say, fifty years you change, mature and recognize for yourself interests and abilities you never dreamed of when you were young.   You have a duty to yourself to experiment with all sorts of activities until you find something you are competent in and feel passionate about.

Everything I have mentioned above is consonant with an Epicurean life: the rejection of consumerism and reckless spending, the saving for old age and unemployment, the lifetime learning and acquisition of new skills, the pride in a job well done.  Most of all, Epicurus would want you to enjoy life, have many friends, use your brain and intelligence to discuss and debate, and to find by trial and error, if you can, that special interest or skill that excites you and makes life worth living. (Robert Hanrott)

 

 

Dismantling the nation’s publicly funded schools.

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It is common knowledge that the Education Department is run by a multi-millionaire devotee of scrapping everything to do with government if she has the power to do it.  This includes privatizing the public school system, and de facto making education even more of a distant prospect than ever for minorities.  By the way, she is apparently a devoted christian!  (which is relevant because of the curious definition of Christianity and  words of Jesus used by some – not all – christians.  I went to chapel while at school, every day of my life, so I am familiar with what Jesus actually preached).

In Tennessee parents and community member in Memphis and Nashville protested furiously when a voucher law was passed by a single vote, diverting taxpayers money to private schools.  It is no small deal:  in 2020-2021 it would divert $7,500 per student, or over $375 million over the first five years, to private schools and away from schools in Nashville and Memphis. The private schools are what they say they are – private. They are not held to the same educational standards as Tennessee public schools, as required by the state constitution, and most importantly in view of current events, are not bound by the same anti-discrimination statutes.

The creeping coup keeps creeping onward!

(The Humanist, May/June 2020)

The meaning of life in lockdown: an exchange of views

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To The Times ( London)

The most lamentable thing about the epidemic is the almost uncontested surrender to the idea that the only meaning of human life lies with preserving human life. In the name of “keeping people safe”, the moribund die alone and the dead are buried without proper ceremony.

Meanwhile, mothers give birth without husbands, children cannot learn and the futures of young people are suspended. In addition, new friendships are thwarted, potential lovers denied and the rituals of religious faith and remembrance are set aside. This seemingly produces not a hiccup of queasiness. Instead we are happy to accede to the state-sponsored notion that we are all profoundly heroic simply by virtue of taking measures to keep ourselves alive.

Jolyon Fenwick, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

To The Times  ( Reply to above)

Mr Fenwick’s argument is powerful and stirring but he unfairly castigates those of us whom he regards as meekly acceding to the lockdown measures. We are not doing so “to keep ourselves alive”, we are doing so to keep others alive.

Dr David Bogod, Nottingham.     ( Reported in The Week, 6 June 2020)

My comment: Here we go again.  I am astonished that some people are so self- centered that they cannot be bothered to wear masks to protect other people, and so uncaring that they flock out in thousands to seaside beaches, ignoring social distancing.  I support Dr. Bogod – the point is that you could be covid positive and not  know it.  It is humane and decent not to take that risk and infect others.  This is Epicurus 101.

Taking advantage of the crisis

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Foreign cities are taking advantage of the crisis to re- think their cities.  Mayors from Bogota to Budapest are exploiting the lack of parked cars by installing bike lanes in every likely spot.  Athens is widening its sidewalks, enlarging public squares and  banning traffic beneath the Acropolis. Melbourne is trying to put shopping , leisure and work within twenty minutes of the residents’ homes.  Paris is transforming itself so that everything in the center is just 15 minutes from the homes of all Parisians. New Zealand is discussing four day working weeks and other flexible working options

What are American cities doing, if anything? Washington DC, for instance, has a dismal public transport system, and can’t even bestir itself to renovate the  canal which should be an important public amenity, and which is becoming instead a sewer.

Businesses that used to be attractions may never reopen.  If cities are engines of economic growth then this is the moment for those with any vision to reimagine what feels like quite the opposite of an exciting metropolis .

A re- think is needed because there was a drift away from big cities happening before the virus arrived, not to mention the effects on office space of business-by-Zoom. Cities have to be made attractive to keep their populations and their businesses.  It is convenient to live in a busy city, rather than have to get into a car every time you want a bottle of milk.  But what happens when bottles of milk are no longer so available?  Cue for massive falls in house values, probably avoidable had we energetic and imaginative leaders.

P.S: We have just had local council elections, and it looks as if just such an energetic, young and imaginative candidate might have won. A drop in an ocean, but I voted for her in any case.

Deaths in care homes

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Across Europe coronavirus is shining a harsh light on how we, as societies, treat our most vulnerable groups. In Spain, the army found abandoned old people dead in their care home beds. In France a former minister said residents in some care establishments had been shut in their rooms for six weeks after family visits were banned.

Now academics have revealed that in Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and Belgium, an average of 50% of Covid-19 deaths are taking place in care homes. In the UK, which is predicted to have the worst coronavirus outcome in Europe, people who die with coronavirus symptoms in care homes are not even counted in the daily virus death tallies. But the estimates are shocking.

Is ageism the reason that care home staff are often the least trained and lowest paid, when their skills should make them among the most valued? Is the virus sweeping through these homes precisely because of low pay, lack of testing and protective equipment? And are older people’s rights better guaranteed in some parts of Europe than others?

As European governments edge towards easing restrictions, has quarantine been more tolerable in Europe’s more equal societies? (Katherine Butler, The Guardian)

My take:  I recently posted a piece on the resentment felt by young people for the baby boomers as a generation.  I happen to sympathise, but in sympathizing I can’t condone the attitude of some who apparently are reported to shrug and say, “The Covid 19 deaths are mainly among old boomers. Why should I care?”.  This may be apocryphal, but wouldn’t surprise me.

Actually, I have personal experience of a certain number of care homes near London, going back twenty years.  There is truly nothing new about the terrible conditions in some of these homes, and it has nothing to do with millennials and everything to do with local authorities doing their job for the elderly on the cheap, and drugging the inmates to keep them quiet. I had at the time an elderly relative with a serious lifelong health condition.  My wife and I decided under no circumstances to submit Mary to what looked like living death. It was a moral issue.

Care homes anger

Toronto, Canada

Canada has been shaken by a disturbing report detailing the conditions found in long-term care homes ravaged by Covid-19 in Ontario and Quebec. In Canada, around 80% of all Covid deaths – those of more than 6,000 residents – have been in care homes, a much higher proportion than in the US or Europe. Some 1,400 soldiers were deployed to homes last month to help cope with the crisis – and the military has now detailed what they found there: overwhelmed staff, unsanitary conditions and desperate patients whose cries for help were ignored for hours on end. The PM, Justin Trudeau, said Canada’s “failure” to protect its elderly has left him with feelings of “anger, of sadness, of grief”. As of Wednesday, the Covid-19 death toll in Canada stood at 7,395 (a rate of 196 per million of population, compared with 327 in the US).