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Musings Report 2019-16 4-20-19 Where Do You Belong?
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Thank You, Contributors and Patrons!
Welcome new subscribers-patrons Michael S., Matt L. and Michael M.
Where Do You Belong?
Feeling that you belong in a certain environment or place is one of those intuitive assessments: you either feel comfortable and at-home in a workplace, locale, neighborhood, city, environment, region, etc., or you feel neutral or that you don't belong.
A place feels like "this is me, I'm at home here" or it doesn't.
These feelings can change, of course. A place that felt forbidding and threatening can with time become "home" or at least familiar, and a place that felt like home from the start can over time become less "like me" as one's sense of belonging is replaced by alienation, detachment and a sense of no longer belonging.
A great many things go into the sense of belonging and feeling at home; an especially simpatico group of co-workers can make a workplace comfortable, for example, or ties and memories from childhood can extend into adulthood, lending a comfort unknown to the newcomer. The excitement of a new city can mellow into "favorite haunts" that continue to feel "like home."
The alignment of our core values with the characteristics of a place have a lot to do with our sense of belonging. For example, if recreational activities are central to our well-being, a place with numerous recreational opportunities is going to feel far more like "home" than an environment with few such opportunities.
As our values change, and the place changes, then our sense of belonging changes, too.
In my own life, I've been surprised and disconcerted to slowly become aware that the San Francisco Bay Area, where I've lived full-time or part-time for 32 years, is feeling less and less "like me." I don't think my values have changed that much, and so I attribute this erosion to changes in the place rather than in myself.
The rapid rise in wealth and income inequality, the soaring costs of living, the sudden ubiquity of homeless encampments near our favorite parks and near our modest home, the massive explosion of new multistory construction, uniformly ugly, uninspiring and cold that dominates urban corridors and downtown--these are real changes that have changed the character of the place in just a few years.
The relentlessness of this gentrification and impoverishment is wearing; no one believes there are real solutions to these trends. Longtime residents shrug their shoulders, fully habituated to the homelessness and inequality, and newcomers accept the squalor and divide as "normal."
The affordable havens for nonconformists and eccentrics have evaporated, as have neighborhood charms: everything is just wonderful if you're already wealthy, less so if you're not, as neighborhood hole-in-the-walls close or are bulldozed and replaced with another boring multistory building with a shiny commercial floor awaiting yet another coffee shop, yoga studio or costly cafe.
More subtly, self-congratulatory hubris is the dominant value system: virtue-signaling is as ever-present as the traffic, while real-world problems fester unaddressed. The source of the hubris is verboten: everyone who bought a house long ago is delighted because we're all getting rich as the housing bubble inflates to absurd levels.
Meanwhile, traffic and congestion that were unbearable a decade ago are beyond unbearable, as a million more residents have jammed into cities bound by water and hills. Infrastructure is falling apart and no matter how many billions are thrown at these systemic problems, nothing seems to actually improve.
The belief that the Bay Area will always be a magnet for all good things because of its weather and technology-education hubs adds to the hubris: no matter how burdensome everyday life gets, talent and capital will pour in regardless of the costs, and every $1 million 100-year old bungalow on a tiny lot will soar to $2 million: it's all good!
Few of these profound changes align with my values, and I feel increasingly alienated from the soaring gentrification-inequality zeitgeist and the hubristic self-congratulation. Perhaps this is just a product of aging; perhaps young people who move here see only opportunities, not erosion, and their values find near-perfect expression with the go-go IPO excitement of newly minted millionaires and the hot new fusion cafe opening down the street.
Beneath the surface of "progress," gentrification is a homogenizing force: soon, everything looks similar. Authenticity and beauty are lost, and few notice or care: that's "progress." Or is it?
Highlights of the Blog This Past Week
How Empires Fall: Moral Decay 4/20/19
The Next Financial Crisis Won't Be Caused by Fraud: This Time Will Be Different 4/18/19
The World's Hypocritical Silence as China Imprisons its Ethnic Muslims En Masse 4/17/19
Notre Dame and the Identity of France 4/16/19
No Fix for Recession: Without a Financial Crisis, There's No Central Bank Policy Fix 4/15/19
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
New crop of lychees are emerging from the tree's flowers; my extensive pruning was successful (whew).
Musings on the Economy: Forced Migration in America
Gordon Long and I discuss the "economically forced migration" underway in America in this YouTube program (36 minutes)
As a general rule that applies to the entire planet, people have been leaving impoverished rural areas and moving to cities for hundreds of years.
People move to cities because that's where the jobs and opportunities are.
But recently, there is another migration pattern emerging: some people are leaving high-cost, high-tax cities because they can no longer afford to live there, or the real-world stresses are higher than the economic benefits.
Here is a quick summary of a complex topic:
Where they're leaving:
1. Regions dominated by "winner take most" economic dynamics that leave the bottom 95% further behind.
2. High-tax states that consume whatever increases in income the household earns with constantly higher taxes and fees.
3. High-stress urban zones where just keeping your head above water is increasingly burdensome.
Where they're going:
1. Smaller, cheaper cities with many of the amenities and fewer of the problems of sprawling metropolises.
2. Anywhere but the costly coastal urban areas.
3. Rust-belt cities that retain their amenities and job markets.
4. States with lower tax burdens and lower costs of government services.
From Left Field
Dozens of Transit employees retire in their 40s. Can the pension fund handle it? (Boston Globe)
What I’ve Learned From Collecting Stories of People Whose Loved Ones Were Transformed by Fox News (via GFB) -- much of the same can be said of those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome via CNN et al.
All Wars Are Bankers' Wars (video) (via Chad D.)
The University Is a Ticking Time Bomb: Treating nearly 75 percent of the professoriate as disposable is not sustainable
How Capitalism’s Productivity Failure Is Driving Debt and Speculation -- an important point that's poorly understood...
System D: 2.5 Billion People Can't Be Wrong: A débrouillard is a resourceful and self-reliant person. A débrouillard figures out how to get what they need regardless of the obstacles. The obstacles are usually the laws or price controls put in place by the state.
Stalker (1979 film) by director Andrei Tarkovsky -- not about "stalkers" in the current meaning; this is a sci-fi film....
Star Trek The Original Series (The Making of Documentary)
The Problem Isn't Robots Taking Our Jobs. It's Oligarchs Taking Our Power: Training for the jobs of the future keeps workers trapped as long as workers can't shape how technology is used and who profits from it. -- Again, an important dynamic that's rarely recognized....
Assange helped teach the people about our tarnished freedom – now we are all he has left to defend him. The panic and fury with which those in power – those who control our digital commons – reacted to Assange, is proof that such activity hits a nerve.
The Five Stages of Collapse of The [Western] Roman Empire
"I am free and that is why I am lost." Franz Kafka
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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