Scary and Dangerous

Yesterday's post was obviously written a bit humorously, though that doesn't really make anything that I said untrue.

I started thinking about it while reading The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 by Philipp Blom. In addition to describing financially better off people who were very neurotic, he described social unrest and some of the places where it came from.

This is from the diary of a middle-class Russian woman:

I do not have the preparation, the zeal, or the perseverance for serious study. And now I am old it is too late. You do not begin studying at twenty-five. I have neither the talent nor the calling for independent artistic creation. I am unmusical and understand nothing about it. As for painting, I have done no more than study a few years as a schoolgirl. And literature? I have never written a thing except for this diary. So only civic activity remains. But what kind? Fashionable philanthropy which is held up to ridicule in all the satirical journals? Establishing cheap dining rooms? That's like trying to patch up a piece of crumbling, rotting flesh. Opening up literacy schools when it is universities that we need? I myself have jeered at these attempts to empty the sea with a teaspoon. Or perhaps I should turn to revolution? But to do that, one has to believe. I have no faith, no direction, no spiritual energy. What is left for me to do?

Again, that is the ennui of someone who doesn't have to work. It reminds me of "the problem with no name" as described in The Feminine Mystique.

Around the same time period you had factory girls in England, and women who were having to support families, and in addition to being empowering, it opened their eyes to the problems in the system. Suffragists had been around for years, but now there were more people who understood why women should have the vote (thought it still took some time).

People with money could be conservative, but people who were struggling could not. The people on the bottom have a much different view than the people on the top.

That's always been the case, but it was interesting to me that part of the change in the movement was brought about by women going to work. Going back to The Feminine Mystique, the push to get women more in the home and less involved anywhere else seemed to be largely a reaction to World War II, where women had filled in many jobs, and gotten different experiences there, which seemed to threaten the men.

I'm tying together a few disparate threads here for that overall question of how do you effect change? How do you make the world a better place?

I know that my sisters and I are considerably more dynamic and independent than many of our peers from school days. I believe at least part of that was due to us starting to work early. Suddenly you have responsibilities that you fill, you are interacting with adults who are not relations, you have money of your own, and while there are downsides there are definite perks.

So imagine it happening with a bunch of young women at once, and it is happening because there are changes already going on in society that make their labor necessary. That can have a big effect, and at this same time they start seeing all of the ways in which the structure is flawed. They don't have children yet, they are still relatively young and energetic, and they are too young to be really set in their ways, even if their lives weren't changing radically already.

Thinking about that led to me thinking about other groups where movements tend to start. College students often organize and campaign. They are young, energetic, and being exposed to new people and ideas. Unions work together and create better conditions. Maybe they are older, but by banding together they gain the skills and power they need. And over and over again, as women get more power and more money it doesn't just improve their lives, or the lives of their families, but goes beyond that affecting their communities and countries. (Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl Wu Dunn is a good starting point if you are interested in more on that.)

So, what does our society do?

Unions were aggressively attacked and weakened, especially during the Reagan years, from which they have not recovered. With that working conditions and wages have declined. People may cite other factors, but other countries with strong unions manage and living wages manage.

College has become a worse and worse bargain for students. The prices go up, the value for when you enter the workforce has gone down, and while young people are deciding whether or not to saddle themselves with debt, it's very hard to avoid being saddled with fear. That independence that they should be having now, and that energy, has been seriously hampered.

And what do we do with women? A girl who advocates for education in Pakistan gets shot in the head, girls studying in Nigeria get kidnapped , and sure, that's other countries but here a woman whose primary offense is pointing out that a lot of the common imagery in video games is misogynistic gets death threats, rape threats, and has to move from her home.

Remember, when the women do well it benefits the entire country. And some people still can't stand it.

But some girls have escaped Boko Haram. Malala survived and is a Nobel Peace Prize Winner. Anita may have canceled her Utah State address, but she is still speaking out.

When you care about such things, there is a lot of frustration, but I'll take what good news I can get. For now, I think the larger point, and a good question to ask, is why we make some of the choices we make. Why do we think corporate welfare is more important than higher education? Why do we think obscene corporate profits and people who work full-time on food stamps is preferable to moderate corporate profits and employees making living wages.

If you idealize the '50s as early '60s as good times of strong families and peaceful communities, well, you are probably overlooking some things, but it was a time when there were strong unions, education was affordable and expanding, and one job could support a family. Why did we let that go?