I’ve never understood our propensity for defending institutions that actively harm us, but I especially can’t wrap my head around folks wanting others to suffer as well. Those particular people like to preach fairness and personal responsibility without ever questioning the moral failings of a privileged mindset. I may have student loans, but I don’t want anyone else to be strapped with crippling debt for a piece of paper. I may be stuck renting my apartment, but I’d like future generations to own their homes. My job is tiring and under-funded, but I think people in every labour sector deserve a living wage and respect. I don’t think anything I said there is radical. Some folks, however, find it difficult to acknowledge their exploitation and to admit that maybe the system needs to change before it fucks more people over. Instead of empathizing with the needs of others, they instead choose to pedestal themselves on the altar of “hard work” and point fingers at people just for getting a bit of respite. Yes. Many of us had/have it rough and it is sad, but is weaponizing our pain against others really the logical response? No. We should be better than that.

It would be easy for me to simply blame capitalist exploitation here and I’d be mostly correct. I mean we’re being screwed in the housing market, the job market, post-secondary education, and most of us are just going to die with unpaid debts and leftover Quiznos coupons. Remember when toasted bread was a revolutionary idea? Anyway, the systemic problems I addressed previously (like having to rent instead of owning) are a result of capitalism, but our main issue is of a more personal nature. People tend to be jealous and vindictive creatures when we assume someone is getting a “free ride” especially when we weren’t offered one in our time. Maybe we just want it to seem fair, but fairness in a capitalist system is, in essence, the exchange of suffering for suffering. Everyone’s gotta hurt because I did! That doesn’t sound compassionate or even the slightest bit productive so why do we continue to do it?

I feel as though I should clarify what I mean by jealous in this context. Right-wingers and liberals love to claim that anyone who criticizes capitalism or the super wealthy is just jealous of what they have and/or secretly aspires to be them. This isn’t the kind of jealousy I am talking about because that’s utter nonsense. Most people don’t want to be a power hungry parasite. With this piece, I am speaking of a jealousy based on fear. It’s a fear derived from decades of capitalist propaganda showing how social reforms or liberation will inevitably ruin us all. We are inculcated to feel unstable, insecure and these ideas are reinforced through life’s struggles be them in the workforce or in our personal relationships. We are constantly shown just how easy it is for everything to collapse around us with even the tiniest mistake. We could make a bad financial decision and lose our home. We could mess up at work and it’ll cost us our job. We could get the wrong degree and never achieve our goals. This nagging fear of failure makes us angry when society is changing to benefit others and now suddenly people are not required to take the same risks we had to. It is a pathetic (yet understandable) anger born from distrust, but we are directing it at the wrong damn people! The working class people you loathe are merely scapegoats for the banks, corporations, and politicians that profit off your indignation and off their misery.

Breaking free from this mindset isn’t an easy task. Boomers and Gen Xers (and some trust fund Millenials) often rely on it to maintain a sense of superiority for their alleged hard work while ignoring or outright denying how their ease came at the cost of the disenfranchised, the environment, and general human decency. Sorry I can’t buy a home with 3 shit-covered sticks and a part-time gas station job anymore, Uncle Jim, but times are changing for the worse economically and socially. I’d love to be the lazy millennial your favourite conservative pundit writes articles about, but I’m too damn busy working full-time, paying off debts to the government/landlord, and pretending to be happy in photos. What I’m trying to say with all this rambling is that we’re smarter and should be more compassionate as a result. We know how this world works and how difficult it really is for people to survive. Our lives are not built for freedom or comfort unless we’re willing to sell our body or our soul for capital. It’s pretty darn frustrating to put it lightly. With that knowledge, why are we still acting bitter towards the potential liberation of others? Whether that liberation comes in the form of student loan forgiveness, environmental restoration, affordable housing, or land rights, we should be celebrating it as a victory for society as a whole. Indignation does not befit us. The student whose debt is being forgiven is not your enemy. The unhoused person being offered shelter isn’t getting a free ride. You were taught to be angry at them instead of the people and institutions that actually burden you. We break free from such backward thinking by admitting that we were screwed, we deserved more, but now we can use our experience and empathy to make life comfortable for others. I am willing to sacrifice now if my struggle lessens the hardships of others later, but that’s what it means to be a revolutionary thinker. Change doesn’t happen when we maintain the status quo for the sake of “fairness” and anyone who tells you otherwise is either misguided or currently stealing your wallet. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you again. Solidarity, my friends.