It is amazing how the random events of the day can create the perfect alchemy for a new blogpost. This has happened again today. I woke up a bit on the early side and slightly under slept and devoted the morning to laundry, breakfast, reading and mending a pair of jeans. I found the process of sewing a bit frustrating and found myself readily cursing my cheapskate employers. They still haven't given us a raise and after paying a whopping tax bill this year just a little shy of two thousand dollars let's just say that I am really having to budget carefully. So, I will not be buying new clothes, much as I need them, any time soon, but will be mending everything with needle and thread till my fingers fall of my hands or the clothes fall off my body, which ever occurs first.
I work at a low wage job because I am unable to compete for anything that pays a living wage or better, like many older workers who didn't finish their post-education degree (who weren't able because of chronic financial difficulties). The whole sad and miserable history here has of course been a contributing factor to my experience of trauma.
Economic inequality. Don't let it happen in your country.
Hoping to beat the heat, since we are in the middle of a heat wave, I dragged my butt outside for a lengthy walk over the bridge and through the wealthy neighbourhoods where all is green, leafy, spacious and quiet. I decided not to stop anywhere for coffee or a cold drink, because I have to budget carefully.
I did walk all the way to Granville Island to the fair trade store, Ten Thousand Villages to buy two tins of fairly traded cocoa. If they were paying me a living wage, probably all my shopping would be fair trade, but because fairly produced and marketed products cost extra, the working and other poor generally cannot afford the luxury of ethical shopping.
Of course, it would be more convenient for me to buy my fair trade cocoa at one of the pricey creative class grocery stores in my neighbourhood but it costs three bucks more in those places and I still want to be able to eat other food even if I am shopping ethically. This makes it more of a pain, but I like to feel that I can contribute somehow to fairer working conditions in Latin America even if they don't really exist here in my own workplace here in just and socially progressive Canada.
On the bus home I got into a pleasant chat with a visiting Australian who had been here only for twelve hours. Wanting to be a good host I double checked that he was okay and knew how to get to his destination okay.
Back at home I used some of what was already left of my remaining fair trade cocoa to make a lovely batch of Mexican style cold iced chocolate. Unable to do anything to slake my considerable thirst during my seven to eight mile hike this morning, because I didn't remember to bring water with me and couldn't afford to buy a cold beverage, I also happily consumed three glasses of ice water. While on my walk in the wealthy neighbourhoods today I did happen to remember the location of a grape vine near Thirty-Sixth and Pine with fruit overhanging the sidewalk. I'd first seen it over a month ago and, hoping that this being early September that there might be some ripe grapes for the picking I discovered some very sweet and juicy green grapes, some of the best I've ever tasted, and they did help quench my thirst a little.
I dedicated the next couple of hours to resting in my easy chair, intermittently dozing while listening to a call-in radio program on the CBC. The subject was interesting, about how much automation is taking away a lot of traditional working class jobs. I really took interest when people were talking about the new digital economy and the necessity of everyone becoming their own boss, entrepreneurs and the importance of continual training and upgrading of skills and how essential this is expected to be in order to keep pace with the ever expanding, ever changing and ever demanding global economy.
This was when it really occurred to me just how short we are selling ourselves in the name of the marketplace. I began to think of the anxiety, depression and trauma that is beginning to be experienced widespread because the pressures to remain professionally competitive are becoming so brutal and so unforgiving.
This is also causing me to think of how we are more or less being blackmailed into sacrificing some of our most essential human values, all the best features of being human, in order to be competitive. So, down the toilet goes kindness, empathy, care for our communities, care for the environment, appreciation of culture and beauty, all of it flushed down to the sewer so we can survive and make the rich richer.
What also makes this particularly damaging is that it is happening so fast. Our human species has evolved over the millions of years as a social communitarian entity. Now we are being forced to throw that all away and to live in a socially fragmented state where we are constantly flailing and struggling to advance ourselves and learn new techniques of remaining competitive. Those that we love, as indicated in an ad (featuring a photo of daddy, mommy and their little girl) I saw for the city of Prince George, will be confined to those we are sleeping with and the children (if any) that result. Everyone else is a stranger, to be feared as a threat, or at least distrusted as competition.
By choosing our immediate professional and monetary interests over the values of community we are further contributing to our own and others' dehumanization. Kindness, concern for others and graciousness are supplanted by competiveness and accruing wealth. Moreover, not everyone is going to do well in our struggle to adapt to the rapidly changing global economy. There will be winners and losers and as we are already seeing in our growing populations of homeless people, there is going to be a huge human fallout. This will further entrench an economically based caste system that serves well those with the social status and family stability and other advantages to get ahead, while trampling on those unable to keep up. Darwinian Dysphoria 101.
I will conclude here with a brief account of my late afternoon outing today. I took a walk in the West End, ending up at the Food Dollar-rama, also known as No Frills, the budget grocery store in my search for fruit. I did say that I am on a very tight budget, all because of my crappy low wage, so I can't just go to the local Choices or Urban Fair and buy whatever I want without making the food bank a necessary option later in the month. But I'm not complaining. I got a decent deal on bananas and oranges then took the bus home. Passengers, all of us clearly low income, were being friendly and kind to one another, even to strangers. An apparently homeless young indigenous woman was even insisting on giving her seat to a rather reluctant elderly white man who must have been over eighty. With affectionate bullying from all of us he finally accepted her offer of a seat.
The imperatives of the new global economy are doing absolute squat to teach or encourage this sort of kindness, and it's never going to happen because any system based on greed and selfishness is only going to end up traumatizing and further dehumanizing us. I think that we can still enjoy a decent economy without sacrificing our most essential human values, but we are really going to have to tone down on the greed and selfishness, and accept that we can do a lot better on a little bit less if everything is justly shared among us and the value of our humanity takes its rightful place, way ahead of our pathetic and adoring worship of the almighty dollar.
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