We can, at this point, take it as well-established that men are too often considered “success objects” by society, yes? I don’t need to once again explain how, just as women are judged by their perceived adherence to a largely arbitrary standard of sexual attractiveness, men are judged by their material and financial “success”? Good.
Now, being “successful” financially has never been easy, and has only gotten harder in recent decades. Thing is, the narrative that anyone can get rich is built very deeply into American culture. You might even call it one of our founding myths. And while it’s theoretically true, it’s functionally irrelevant, because the real problems are caused by an unspoken corollary to that myth, one that’s murderously false. If anyone can get rich, this assumption runs, then everyone can get rich, and therefore any person who’s not rich has, in some way, failed.
Nobody ever quite phrases it that bluntly, but that basic model informs a great deal of the way Americans think about wealth and class.
The effect of this pernicious myth is that the majority of the population, those of us who live paycheck to paycheck and bite our lips when the utility bills arrive, are considered losers. Sometimes we’re called that to our face, sometimes we just feel it inside, but that’s the result of that model. If you’re not rich, it’s your own fault, because you’re a loser. Our society is, therefore, made up of an overwhelming majority of losers, though naturally nobody likes to say that out loud.
Now, this myth doesn’t stand up to even five seconds of examination. It is mathematically impossible, in a hierarchical economy, for everyone to be on top. The unspoken promise that everyone can get rich remains unspoken because if you say it out loud, it sounds as stupid as making everyone in the navy an admiral. (It would function about as well, too. Someone’s got to actually do some work.) Nor do fanciful notions of economic meritocracy survive so much as a cursory look at the real world. No, the fact is that if you’re struggling to get by, it’s because you’re in a system designed to keep you that way, and you didn’t win any of the various lotteries available.
The genius of it, though, is that that struggling 90% of the population feel like it’s their own fault they’re struggling. As though all those millions of people could have somehow gotten rich if they were better human beings. That’s internalized victim-blaming on a breathtaking scale, and as works of sociological bastardry go, it’s genuinely impressive.
Now, tie that fact in with the “success object” notion, the idea that financial success is the only source of worth for a man. If you don’t win this rigged game, you are a failure and a loser and an entirely unworthy human being. That takes this problem from a normal level of horrible to hideously toxic.
This isn’t to say that women don’t get the short end of the economic stick just as much, but… I think it’s a bit different, emotionally. Women can more easily feel valued for their looks (if they happened to win that particular lottery) or their family and emotional connections. “She’s struggling, but she’s so good to her family” is a narrative that applies more easily to a woman than a man. A man’s contribution to his family is expected to be as breadwinner, and when they’ve changed the odds in the bread game so you can’t win as much… well, that puts you in a bad position, doesn’t it? Combine that with the widely-accepted lie that “normal” women only like men with a thick, swollen… wallet, and you’ve got a way to make almost every man in the country feel, on some level, inadequate and worthless.
There’s something even creepier, though. Just as the women-as-sex-objects narrative has created the fucked-up mess that is the beauty industry, so has the men-as-success-objects routine gotten together with the rigged game of the American economy to create the success industry. And hot damn, are they both ineffably awful.
Feminists have done a pretty good job breaking down how the essential message of the beauty industry is “You are ugly, and therefore worthless. We can fix you if you give us more money.” It’s a pretty solid business model, and supports an enormous industry of (among others) makeup, spas, fashion, diets, gyms, “corrective” clothing, and even self-esteem counselling. Ka-ching. Not to say men are immune to this industry; I’ve bought my share of diet books and paid my share of gym fees. I think we can agree, however, that the core market of the beauty industry is women who’ve been made to feel worthless if they’re not pretty enough.
The success industry has essentially the same central business model. “You’re not rich enough, and therefore worthless. We can fix you if you give us more money.” Every investment scam, every fake sales position or multi-level marketing scheme, every motivational seminar, every phony trade school, every financial self-help book, every slick con-job that claims to offer a way out, a secret trick, a way to achieve your financial dreams, they’re all part of the success industry. They’re all based on that same lie, that everyone can get rich, but they use the blame as bait. You’re a loser, they agree, but you can stop being a loser. Just pay the admission, give us your student loans, buy the tapes, subscribe to the newsletter, buy ten more cases for Senior Distributor status, and you can get rich. You can succeed. You can be a worthwhile human being. You can be a Real Man. Indeed, an actual line “motivational” speakers like to quote is from Ayn Rand, that your monetary worth is a direct expression of how much value you contribute to society.
They’re all fundamentally scams, of course. If any of these things resulted in more money flowing to the people paying for them than to the people charging for them, that would constitute a broken business model. It would mean that the industry was panning for gold at the wrong point in the stream, if you see what I mean.
That doesn’t matter, though, because what they’re selling isn’t actually success. They’re selling a reinforcement of the fundamental lie, that it’s your own fault you’re not rich. Here you just paid $40 (book) or $400 (seminar) or $40,000 (tuition) for “the tools to succeed” and all it got you was two to five digits poorer. Well, that must be your own fault; they gave sold you the tools, didn’t they?
I think the purest example of these is the motivational speeches and seminars. Check your local listings; there are probably a bunch of these scheduled just today in your city. Speaking as someone who’s paid for both, they remind me a lot of lottery tickets. People joke about lottery tickets as a tax on people who are bad at math, but I don’t think that’s true. Lottery tickets are a carrying charge for hope. Between the time you buy the ticket and the time the drawing reconfirms that you’re a loser, there’s a window where you have this bare edge of hope, this idea that maybe, just maybe, in a few days you won’t have to be afraid or ashamed any more. Sure, rationally you know that one chance in a hundred million isn’t very good, but the sweet taste of that maybe is worth a dollar.
Likewise, motivational speakers provide a dizzying high, the illusion of economic agency. You walk out of a good speech or seminar feeling energized, feeling like you can do anything, feeling like this time, this time, it’s all going to turn around and you’re going to really make it. I’m told that cocaine has much the same effect, but has legal complications and causes nosebleeds. Either way, you’re not paying for the beneficial effect it has on your life, you’re paying for the high. The high always comes with the crash, though, when everything doesn’t turn around, and you compare yourself with that confident world-conquering person who walked out of that hotel conference room and feel like scum. The only cure is another hit of the same stuff, and congratulations, loser, you have a job after all. Your job title is “revenue stream”.
There’s no denying that women are also prey to the success industry, but I feel like men are, again, the core market. Just as the beauty myth damages both sexes but hits women harder, the success myth does the same to men. One of the worst things you can call a man, one of the words that men tend to write in their suicide notes, is “failure”. That word defines, cripples, and destroys untold numbers of men, and if you ask anyone for its antonym, you get the name of the industry that sells it.
Some folks will say that I’m against the free market here, but that’s not so. If anything, the existence of the success industry is a testament to the genius of the free market. Victim-blaming is about as old as victims, sure, but finding a way to charge the victims for the blaming? That’s pretty goddamned impressive.
Capitalism is far and away the best system for maximizing the total wealth of a group of perfectly rational and selfish agents. It is a horrible way of ensuring an egalitarian outcome, and doesn’t function as well when the agents involved are not rational and selfish (though humans are a close enough approximation that it still works). The Rand comment that the amount of money you have measures the amount of value you contribute to society is strictly speaking correct. However, that is because the statement is tautological: value is measured in money. When you say it as “The amount… Read more »
Well expressed. This post reminds me so much of writings by Barbara Ehrenreich. I would highly, greatly recommend several of her books on this very subject, especially Bait and Switch (where she takes on the role of a white-collar worker trying out career coaching and the whole shebang; it’s very sobering). Others are This Land is Their Land and Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America (gallows humour at its best).
@Dominique: I’m enormously flattered by the comparison, as I love Ms. Ehrenreich’s work; we went to the same college, though not at the same time. @AdamaKnowsBest: I appreciate your courtesy. I think you’re falling into an unexamined false dichotomy, though. The world isn’t divided into capitalism and not-capitalism. In practice, successful governments have a mixture of market forces and democratically-based government oversight. Thing is, in practice we see that the best societal outcomes tend to be in nations that have more oversight, and stronger social safety nets, than America presently enjoys. Obviously a completely unregulated market doesn’t produce good outcomes,… Read more »
My apologies to Noah Brand for attributing the authorship of his post incorrectly it was a mistake I should of looked at the byline. Also I wish to extend my apologies Ozymandias42 for using the incorrect pronoun in reference to them I meant no offence I just wasn’t aware they identified as genderqueer. Furthermore I’d just like to say thank you to the moderator for pointing out my pervious errors.
I hate to disagree with the people here, but do so that’s that. In my estimation Capitalism is the most viable and egalitarian economic system that has ever been devised to date by the human race as it is a system which allows anyone to prosper regardless of their creed or ethnicity. Moreover one could argue that the period of unprecedented cultural, scientific and technological advancement currently experienced in the west has at least some of its origins in Capitalism. Now I’m not trying to say that Capitalism is a perfect system of exchange, but neither is it a totally… Read more »
“What can you even say about such people?” That they need to be re-educated on a diet of 400 calories a day unitl they reform? The public is crippled by insisting on seeing and treating these people as fellow citizens. But these are not members of our society, they are globalists, and globalists have no country. That’s fine if they want that, but they need to kow that they have opted out of any claim to our concern for their rights as citizens. Then we can begin to see them for what they are, parasites on rather than participants in… Read more »
Great post.
This is the worst I have seen it in my 54 years, as they now come after the pensions of those close to me. You can work 30 years for peanuts and have even *that tiny benefit* taken from you… as conservative Republican state senators make sure to vote in their OWN pricey pensions, while denying them to others. (check out my blog today)
What can you even say about such people?
“The “free market” works when times are good.’ And it’s half as Darwinian as its boosters claim, and that’s one of the things they claim is so wondeful about it – that it’s nature taking its course, it’s productive and flexible and innovative, etc…. if it weren’t for socialized supports it would fall in on itself. “A system that only works until it’s tested is a poor model indeed. It’s very good at hope, as Noah points out. It’s piss-poor at balance and looking out for everyone.” It doesn’t work at providing balance, but that isn’t everybody’s definition of “works”.… Read more »
The “free market” works when times are good. Times like these, it only serves to slam wide the gap between the mighty rich and the destitute.
A system that only works until it’s tested is a poor model indeed. It’s very good at hope, as Noah points out. It’s piss-poor at balance and looking out for everyone.
@Amanda: You might note that that paragraph is actually a pretty harsh criticism of the so-called free market on moral grounds.
The “free market” is good at some things and terrible at others…
“Some folks will say that I’m against the free market here, but that’s not so. ”
Geezus, man, what else would it take to convince you? I was nodding my head along with you until you hit that speed bump. What keeps you keeping the faith? A healthy does of socialism would keep a good number of people from the desperation that makes them victims of these scams you bemoan here.
Further comments arguing about conscription are being cheerfully moved to the trash.
The sticky issue of universal conscription, with or without associated Mad Max/zombie apocalypse fantasies, is veering way off-topic.
@f., I am familiar with the Prosperity Gospel, particularly the popular and poisonous line that “Whatever you give to God will be returned tenfold!” This is presented as an actual financial strategy. My favorite critique of it, I forget where from, is “That powerful, silent entity that takes two dollars from you in return for giving you twenty is not God. That’s an ATM.”
@BS: “Don’t know about that. In my country we have both “universal conscription” and “universal suffrage” yet the law forces only those labelled men to serve in the military while allowing everyone the right to vote. Most people seem to think that it should remain that way too.” Well, it does a pretty bad job being universal then. Yeah, I went through the same system. Maybe we even lived in the same place. Everyone knows it is unequal as hell, but in the real world, gender-equality is not the most important ideal to follow. The way I see it, (male)… Read more »
@Schala: With civil duties, there usually is no pay or the pay is minimal. And I would not necessarily require mandatory _military_ service, but I would prefer the armed forces to represent the entire people without segregation to a ruling class and to expendable servants and money-abiding mercenaries (what most “voluntary” systems end up being). For example, we could go with mandatory citizen-service and give tax-deductions for members of the active reserve to keep attendance and quality acceptable. It is true, that people come out from the service as different persons. And not always for better. That applies to pretty… Read more »
“Universal conscription as in universal suffrage. You can’t really argue for equal rights without equal responsibilities?”
Don’t know about that. In my country we have both “universal conscription” and “universal suffrage” yet the law forces only those labelled men to serve in the military while allowing everyone the right to vote. Most people seem to think that it should remain that way too.
Also I’m a bit baffled that there has been no post on conscription on this blog. After all it is the biggest equality problem that men have to face in many countries of the world, imo.
You mean mandatory military service probably. And while the pay can be nice, and it’s “something”, it would prevent people from continuing their studies often (because it’s usually at a certain age only). And the other thing that would seriously put me off is how the military likes to kill individuality, and has sex-dependant dress codes, and even if that means trans people can be recognized and placed in the right sex, it’s unfair stereotyping, for no other reason than “but, but, but society says so!”. For example, women serving can keep long hair if tied properly in certain allowed… Read more »
@Kenshiroit:
That has been historically a very popular method for getting rid of excess males, yes. Imprisonment and hazardous enslavement are pretty popular too.
@Brokensystem:
Universal conscription as in universal suffrage. You can’t really argue for equal rights without equal responsibilities?
“That’s a main reason why I rather support universal conscription than say, what you guys have in the US right now.”
Conscription for both men and women or men only?
Fingenieur: doesent the unemployed usually ends up as soldiers in the battlefield as cannon fodder?
True.
But they have the gold and the means to trick the necessary amount of the oppressed to do their dirty work.
That’s a main reason why I rather support universal conscription than say, what you guys have in the US right now.
The unemployed, sick, weak, poor, artists, sociologists, executives, hedge fund managers, CEOs, celebrities, politicians…
Lack of contribution is not entirely limited to the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum.
@Doug: “I don’t have a job, am not looking for one, and am being supported economically by my parents. (I’m 29.) Should I be ashamed of this?” As for a non-politically-correct answer: No, you should not be ashamed, but be aware that you are and will be considered as “excessive load on society” should things go worse from status quo. What you gain in short-term freedom is away from your long term stability and safety. Anyone with experience with mathematics know that exponential functions usually do not last forever. Population growth and resource consumption are among those non-lasting narratives and… Read more »
@Bren My brother. I was like you once. I hated myself. Granted that was because I got a lot of psychological abuse from a bunch of assholes in school, which I may actually talk about to someone one day, but still. I don’t pretend to know the answer. If you have a single penny, you can do something. And being hired by someone else is for suckers. Being afraid to fail is something you have to push through. And it isn’t laziness to not do anything. If you really WANT a job, find something the people need, and sell it… Read more »
First time de-lurker here; I feel compelled to comment because this post spoke to me so much. I used to live in the UK, but my dad didn’t like his boss there and I couldn’t afford to go to uni there, so I had to quit my job when we moved back to the US in late 2008 (I as born in Colorado, but I hadn’t lived in the US since I was 7). When we first got back, we had nowhere to live, so we stayed in a hotel for 3 months, until we finally found a house. I… Read more »