The purpose of this article is to look at the effectiveness of raw stream-of-consciousness rant-type writing, as exemplified in the second half of this article, versus the effectiveness of more carefully constructed academic-type arguments, as exemplified in the first half of this article. The sub-purpose of this article is to discuss how society looks at people who are considered spoiled. My editor asked me to include this.
A Dangerous Lack of Sympathy among the Existentially Spoiled Rampant in our Terrible Culture
You can’t be privileged and discontent without seeming spoiled.
It’s very natural to be born with a huge advantage, possibly with everything you could ever want, and then be extremely and pervasively dissatisfied with life.
It’s very difficult to say this without sounding like a dick, but people who work for everything they have have it easier in this one skewered sense, because they are working constantly towards a goal and they can reap the benefits of the effort they put in as they go along. While their life is physically harder, it is existentially easier. There’s less to think about and more to just do. If they’re unsatisfied, it makes sense; they haven’t gotten what they want yet. But they’re working toward it, which is reassuring. Moving up in life is life affirming, and working keeps you distracted from how arbitrary, meaningless, futile, and fragile human life really is.
You can illustrate this concept by splitting people very simply into two groups: the Privileged and the Workers. The Workers, who worked for everything they have, have no sympathy for the Privileged, who started off already having what the Workers are working for without having worked for it, and the Workers can’t be help but feel downright personally offended when the Privileged then have the nerve to express unhappiness with their life. Which is a very natural reaction on the part of the Workers, to hate whiny whiners who have it easier than you. But if those same people who had to work for everything were born in the Privileged position, there’s a very good chance they would feel the same way as these people they bemoan and dismiss.
The inability to be satisfied with life is an underrated problem because it only affects people who should be totally satisfied with life, which isn’t something you can say for a lot of people. And those people who you can say it for are seen by most with envy, if not scorn.
The straining consequences of this lack of understanding are especially apparent among parents who have worked their whole lives just to be able to send their kids through school and give them a chance at success. These parents can very easily live with themselves, because they’ve sacrificed themselves for their children, so they have a permanent status as good, noble, humble people. But this forces their unwitting offspring into the box of an often flawed and absurd education system, and puts a weight of great expectation on their childrens' shoulders. This noble sacrifice doesn’t let the children have the experience of doing things for themselves, but makes their whole lives subject to the whim of a pre-existing system that their parents bought into for them, and they’re supposed to be not only genuinely grateful but enthusiastic about all this. When instead they are depressed and confused about the point of their stifling education and their assembly line lives, they are dismissed as spoiled by their family, which only exacerbates things.
But what are we to do with this information?
“Jonathon, sweetie”
“Fuck off, mom, I’m in the middle of a level”
“I just want you to know that it’s not your fault that you’re like this”
“Fuck you, mom”
A Dangerous Lack of Sympathy among the Existentially Spoiled Rampant in our Terrible Culture: Revised
mom wont leave me alone about school and says holden caulfield is spoiled when really he’s just sensitive. I mean, look around you. Why should he be happy just because he has a nice suitcase that you can’t afford. I didn’t ask anyone to work so that i could go to school. I didn’t even ask for school. What is a run of the mill essay about plato gonna do for anybody. Plato wanted to ban poetry and thought women were inferior to men. There’s a big problem with people dismissing privileged whiners. I mean if all these rich famous people are complaining, clearly they’re on to something. I mean, life is terrible, and when you get to the point where you have everything you wanted, you can’t ignore it anymore. What now? I guess we could fuck on the stove. We’re just a bunch of intellectuals in a world of meat and plants and dirt. There’s nothing here for us. There’s nothing anywhere else either. We’re alone on a big rock and every rich person can’t be delusional; if they think life sucks then life sucks, they would know, they’re rich. They haven’t been shit on their whole lives, dragged around, working for scraps, arguing with the landlord. They live the prettiest life that can be lived, and it still sucks. And you’re gonna yell at your sad sad daughter for being spoiled because she just doesn’t understand why she has to keep studying triangles. Why should she be passionate about triangles? I mean it’d be great if she was, but she’s not. And you had it easy scraping by and working your ass off. You never had to get passionate about triangles. At least your miserable life made sense the whole time. You break your back to do something for someone and they give you some money for it. Great, I’ll save that so my daughter can go to triangle school and become a triangulist, because I’m such a great guy. I’m so selfless, I’m the best. See, so you make it easy to live with yourself at the expense of your confused daughter who’s forced in a box of absurd rules and expectations and expected to give gratitude for what not only did she never ask for but what doesn’t even make any sense. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that you should go easy on the little dweebs as they’re trying to figure it out. Or maybe you should go harder on em. I don’t know, but at the very least you should know that they’re just trying to figure it all out, which clearly you haven’t done if your only reaction to confusion is anger. Fuckwit. Grow up. We’re only human.
