The Middle Class Trap
Watching your parents growing old is a pain to many. Sitting in front of the television each evening with a beer in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other, they quietly study the outside world from the view of a person that's given up on life. For aged parents, there is no real hope or future, only a slow waiting on death. Commercials, elections, environmental breakdowns, political corruption, fame, entertainment; all flash by before the strained eyes that have seen it all.
When they were young, they were free and full of idealism. While the US marched into Vietnam, they were a part of the revolutionary youth who believed in good-sounding principles like "freedom," "equality" and "green future." There was a call to disarm the nuclear nations, rebel against the capitalist elite and improve the social and economic conditions for the worker, as well as giving full citizen rights to women and help to fight the sexist power. The future looked bright. Generation after generation embarked on a new age, where the individual finally was free from totalitarianism and oppression.
Then slowly, step by step, as they grew older - and wiser - things started to cool down. The cries for revolution were exchanged with a quiet "yes" to the lifestyle that awaited: 8-hour working days, two children, a nice villa somewhere in a safe neighbourhood, and the regular voting during election time.  Suddenly the youthful strength was fading away. The "new age" turned out to repeat the historical disasters: new wars to "create freedom," new environmental catastrophes of an even larger nature, an increasing exploitation of the worker, and growing studies pointing to the hidden inequality between man and woman, rich and poor, white and black.
What followed was that your parents gave up on their dreams and hopes, because they turned out to be unrealistic. Swallowed up by the same commercial forces that they once tried to rebel against, the revolutionary generations were swept away, quietly silenced by the every day life. The political idealism was no longer the goal, but the mere attempt to secure a stable home with decent economic backing, so that you and your siblings at least could graduate high school and get a good job. Your father was no longer interested in seeing you becoming the new leader of Greenpeace; more likely, he'd be glad if you managed to take a PhD in something, create a family and live happily.
Your parents fell into the middle class trap; the trap set out by a system that knew how to manipulate resistance into uniformity. Now you stand here today and think to yourself "God, please don't let me become like my parents." You see their passive outlook to everything, you see their indifference to the horror and corruption of today's society, you see their worn out look on their faces, and wish that you were different. Wish that you never become like them, wish that you never give up on the idea of a better world.
Generation after generation today walk in the same footsteps as their parents. They join the leftist movements that rail against racism, inequality and poverty, without knowing that the corporate machinery will also swallow them up in 10 to 15 years. By then their political motivations are lukewarm at most, moderately giving a vote to whatever party that promise them more money in the pocket. The 70's hippie "revolutionaries" failed and the modern leftist "revolutionaries" will also fail. So will the liberals and so will the conservatives, or what's left of them anyway.
Why? Because these groups fail to uphold new values that successfully could replace the old ones. The hippies cried for nuclear disarming, and were probably right in that, but the concept of world peace is a silly thought that will never become reality. Through conflict we see change. Wars will always exist. When they tried to save nature, they were also right, but had no idea how to do it, and since they wanted to increase the wealth for the common people, they also signed the death contract to whatever green space that was left. Likewise, they were also right in the exploitation of the worker, but letting these take full control over society and try to end economic competition by chasing out the bourgeois class, wasn't a very thought out plan. We saw what happened in Soviet Russia, Pol-Pot, Taiwan, China and wherever the communist ideas spread: the supposed "equality" became a way for sneaky leaders to manipulate the workers and bring home the cash to a small wealthy elite, while people were either mass-murdered or starved to death. Talk about freedom!
The modern feminism gave women free access to any working field, but also helped to de-stabilize our families, create gender conflicts and spur a series of identity crisis. Suddenly womanhood was a social construction and people were identical clones that had to serve the Capital,  to "escape" the sexist power structure. No one was keen on pointing out that this was another way of putting ruthless capitalism into power; the new revolution was beginning to take form. Or was it?
Today, we, the children to the lost generations who fought for things they didn't understand, can witness the remnants of a West that is slowly decaying from within, and bringing everything in its way with it. The new generations are not just misdirected or disillusioned; they're actively depressed and see only an inevitable end drawing closer and closer. Others have given up by pretending nothing is wrong and that we all, somehow in a magical stroke with the finger, will fix everything and return to the glory values of our parents. The same people we promised ourselves never to follow, knowing their mistakes.
This is also the answer to how we possibly can escape the middle class trap, which our beloved but clueless parents fell into. We need to uphold a new system of values that replace the modern mishmash of liberal democracy, materialist capitalism and individualist humanism, and bravely aim for transcendence. Our parents failed this, because they upheld the same values of the system they claimed to revolt against, hence why they were brought back into the status quo. We need to break free from that status quo, if we are to build for a new future. Then, and only then, may we leave the misdirected generations behind and avoid becoming useless couch sitters like our parents; avoid stepping into the middle class trap and instead fight for future historical glory.
by Alex Birch
August 12, 2007
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