We have a really big problem when it comes to self-evaluation. We tend to expect way too much of ourselves. For the most part we tend to accept the Darwinist shark tank we are living in as something normal and healthy. We don't even know that we are living in a shark tank. And Darwinist? What the hell does that mean?
Just to refresh your memory, Gentle Reader, and if this simple and basic concept is something of which you still profess ignorance then I'm a-gonna send you back to school, eh? Of course you remember Charles Darwin. That British guy who went sailing around the world for two years during the 1830's collecting fossils and looking at weird birds in the Galapagos Islands as he came up with the theory of evolution through natural selection, to the horror of church people and the delight of industrialist capitalists everywhere.
It's really chicken-and-egg about which came first: Darwin's theory of evolution or proto-Darwinism brought on by the rapacious entrepreneurs and architects of the Industrial Revolution. Or it could be that both concepts spawned each other in the ruthless winner-take-all zeitgeist of the nineteenth century. Nature without God turned out to be nasty, cruel and brutish, permitting only the survival of the fittest, anything inferior contributing to the global fossil record. Industrialism without humanistic restraints turned out also to be nasty, cruel and brutish, permitting only the survival of the fittest. If you didn't survive and find a way to flourish you deserved to perish. Natural Selection.
So, this is the water that has been slowly being heated to boiling point and we are the gormless little froggies dozing in our metaphorical Jacuzzi until we end up happily cooking to death. I guess the sharks don't prefer their meat raw.
So, we live in a culture based on competition, high achievement, superior survival skills and luck. The familiar supports of extended family as well as social service supports have been well-eroded and quite simply it has gotten very scary out there. Everyone is still expected to not only do well but to excel and flourish. Any success that isn't a ringing endorsement for the kind of uber-individualism that Ayn Rand endorsed is nothing but failure by default.
For this reason we are all under increasing pressure to market ourselves, to be continually marketing, branding and rebranding ourselves, all in the name of selling ourselves to, maybe not the highest bidder, but to whomever will accept our paltry offerings. This means research, network, groom and modify ourselves, join the gym and get Botox and a dye job if we are really starting to show our years, listen to music we don't like, watch TV programs that bore us, plug into Facebook, Twitter feeds and other social media that really don't interest us, all in the name of never losing our sense of relevance, era and place, while maintaining that competitive edge. Keeping ourselves marketable and chronically and perpetually reinventing ourselves in order to stay marketable.
Who could ever be expected to live up to such a tall order? Expected we are.
I am one of the lucky ones. I am already too old to either care or to matter. In four years I hit retirement age, then I can carry on working part time if I wish but I at least will no longer have to go on kissing my employer's ungrateful ass in order to keep a roof over my head.
Meanwhile, the cracks are widening and there are increasing numbers of losers falling through them. By losers, I simply mean those who have not won the game, since the ethos of global capitalism has transformed human life as we know it into a very high stakes competitive game. A blood sport, so to speak. This rather brings to mind the ancient Mayan sport of handball. The losers were made human sacrifices to the gods, and, it has been supposed, their severed heads went on to serve as balls in future games.
And we still go on blaming ourselves, we the victims, the human sacrifices languishing at the cold rejecting stone feet of the gods of global capitalism.
In this kind of highly competitive, uncertain and combative marketplace, only the very strong are going to do well. As the stakes get higher and fewer people are able to make the grade, the fallout is going to increase. In the meantime we go on blaming ourselves for not making it, for not being able to compete well, for not being independent or strong enough, for not being able to stand on our own two feet. We don't even realize that the bar is being raised to unreachable heights while the rug is being pulled from under our feet.
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