Go to the ‘Lifestyle’ section of a broadsheet and they paint a picture that we are all struggling to deal with stress and overwhelm. This is portrayed as an unavoidable feature of modern life.
A few things make it hard to believe –
- Firstly, it just doesn’t square with my daily experiences. I’m not stressed out and overwhelmed, while living a pretty normal lifestyle with full-time work plus childcare and sports etc.
- The stats don’t bear it out. Working time has gone way down – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_hours_per_worker – it’s below 35 hours a week most places, 46.25 in the highest in that table. Yes when I worked 80 hours a week I was exhausted, but that’s not the norm, and the papers talk about it like it’s some inescapable trend.
- Then there’s the stats on TV-watching. How can it be true that modern life is hectic AND people watch telly for three hours a day?
I know this is coming across as a rant diguised as an AskLemmy question, but I have real curiosity about it… am I the exception for not feeling busy? Is there some explanation I am missing for why people in a society with 35-hour workweeks feel busy? Do you find the ‘hectic modern life’ narrative relatable? Do you think people are lying about being busy for some reason, e.g. to avoid being asked to do things?
analyses like these make it clear to me that class consciousness is gonna appear in the anglosphere long after it appears everywhere else, because it gets so close to the mark but never quite reaches it.
you’re 100% right that there’s a disconnect between how people feel about their current situation and how much they’re struggling with stress or feeling overwhelmed. the popular narratives in the west – especially the united states – leave people unable to see the relationship between global economic and geopolitical movements and the impacts they have on their own lives. instead, these manufactured narratives lead them to believe their failed coping efforts are just an unavoidable feature of modern life, as you described it.
for the moment, i’m like you – my life isn’t that stressful, but that’s because i’ve intentionally made it as non-stressful as possible through trial & error, and i know things will change again for me, like they have before. my life as an autistic & queer poc who descends from the kind of immigrants ice is currently rounding up has forced me to experience, witness, and acknowledge the casual fascism that’s intrinsic to western cultures in ways that non-stressed, non-overwhelmed americans never will – that is, until capitalism gets late stage enough to force it on them.
and even under such a reality, i fully expect the anglosphere to continue resisting to accept reality for an absurdly long time. you need to look at the responses you’re getting regarding health to a small taste of this; none acknowledge how much additional stress that affording healthcare while affording life at the same time is adding to their woes.