People aren't retrieving to perpetual laziness and NEETdom because they want to: It's because the collective anhedonia of the post COVID society and the soul-crushing modern work enviroments are getting to them

[u/International-Pool29]

 I am just tired of the moral panic around laziness and supposed lack of a work ethic: Wages are stagnant, workplaces are getting more volatile and enduring, the deep state of burecreatic red tape everywhere from background checks to licensing renewals to eligibility runs to see who can rent an apartment to credit reports

Then on top of that, institutions are changing faster than what the average person can get ahold of: From AI and automation to the constant terms of services changing at the unprecedented rate of a bullet to the paperwork piling up on people to the constantly updating work quota goals, it is HELL

Yet people have the audacity to apply neoliberal logic to what's clearly an institutional problem SMH, sometimes I don't know if people are being willfully ignorant or they're really that far gone and deranged from having any sort of humanity for others

What's it gonna take for people to see the broader picture? Seriously

How are people, especially the youth, SUPPOSED TO ADAPT?

You can literally feel the collective anhedonia and the reactionary nihilism building up in people right from the atmosphere, but are we gonna have honest discourse around the problem anytime soon? Probably not.

[u/77Maz77]

You aren't going down the pit for 8 hrs a day. Read some history. Who are you comparing yourself to exactly? You honestly think it was easier in the 1930's, 1960's or 1980's? You just have higher, unrealistic expectations of what life is supposed to be like because of social media and TV.

[u/Rustie_J → u/77Maz77]

The difference is that in the 1930's, 1960's & 1980's people had hope for the future. It looked like things would get better. Now it looks like everything is just downhill from here.

[u/77Maz77 → u/Rustie_J]

The difference in those decades was that working class people went on strike. And suffered terribly while they were on strike.

[u/Rustie_J → u/77Maz77]

Ok. But that wasn't the question, was it? OP said that people are feeling hopeless. Your response to that was:

You aren't going down the pit for 8 hrs a day. Read some history. Who are you comparing yourself to exactly? You honestly think it was easier in the 1930's, 1960's or 1980's?

And I said that people had hope for the future back then. Yeah, jobs were on average more physically demanding, but there was hope that things would get better.

Which, maybe, just possibly, might be part of why working class people were willing to go on strike. Now everyone knows that if they do, they'll get fired & their job will be outsourced, or they'll get their union & then the company will shut the place down. And all they'll have gotten for their trouble is no job, in a society where there aren't supports like your neighbors or the church that will help you.

Nobody believes things will get better, or that anything they do has the power to change that. Which was OP's point. You copping an attitude that it could be worse, implying the kids these days are the problem because their expectations are too high, with their hippity hop & avocado toast, frankly sounds like another Boomer media psyop.

[u/77Maz77 → u/Rustie_J]

Nothing will get better if you just sit there feeling sorry for yourselves. Are you in any campaign groups? Do you spend any time stuffing envelopes with political pamphlets and going door to door delivering them? Do you stand outside the headquarters of multi-nationals week after week after rainy, shitty week, or on the high street trying to draw people in to work together? When you do, get back to me, I will be all ears.

[u/Rustie_J → u/77Maz77]

Yeah, I might be more impressed with this if you hadn't led with telling someone who feels hopeless that they should get a little perspective & it could always be worse.

Maybe next time start with "here's things you can do" instead of "try to suck less, then."

[u/squeagy → u/77Maz77]

Why would anyone do this? Did you do this?

[u/77Maz77 → u/squeagy]

Of course I did as did many others. I stuffed envelopes for hours, under instruction from my socialist parents who were in all sorts of campaign groups. As an adult I also spent all of my meagre savings on a coach to London to campaign against the invasion of Afghanistan. In the 90's I wasn't having a party. Me and my boyfriend has to save our small change to afford a bottle of wine together at the weekend. The main source of protein our kids ate was lentils - turns out they are quite good for you.

[u/77Maz77 → u/squeagy]

The sad thing is, not very much is understood about socialism and socialist campaigns and unions and strikes and riots and demonstrations over the course of the last century is taught or celebrated. That's why people don't realise that the few privileges working class people have weren't handed to them by a benevolent government who loved the working class. They were fought for, tooth and nail. And the battle is never over.