How it Feels to be a Young American in 2014

(Or, How America Fails Us)

by Jordan Bates

When first world problems are actually symptoms of a

deeply dysfunctional culture and society.

Today a person informed me that a good friend of mine is feeling

suicidal. The same person told me that said suicidal friend should
grow up and quit feeling sorry for herself.
Textbook American answer, eh? Be an adult. Grow the hell up.
Make something of yourself. You need to work harder.
These are the sorts of things that American culture tells you during
your totally disorienting and probably depressing formative years
(from maybe 17-23). Or, more aptly, these are the sorts of excuses
American culture makes in order to not have to care about those it
has oppressed, dehumanized, and forgotten. America simply blames
individualsfor not being mature enough, or being too lazy to
get their shit togetherfor the condition in which they find
themselves. Its your own dumb fault, we like to say.
This way of thinking is so deeply embedded in our culture that few
people stop to consider where it comes from or to consider the ways
in which it might not actually be a persons fault that they are
failing within a system that is in many ways best-suited to destroy
them or turn them into an anxious, guilt-ridden, over-worked gogetter who will stop at nothing for a buck, a bit of prestige, and a
sense that others approve of them.

I literally cannot think of a single young, sensitive, intelligent person

in the US who isnt carrying around a significant amount of
psychological baggage from trying to navigate our sociocultural
labyrinth of contradictory and insidious messages/structures. As
Josh Ellis of Zenarchery memorably put it: Everyone I know is
brokenhearted.

Gn Pina detta La Lupa by Ida Panzera.

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons

Miseducation
Young Americans (Gen-Y-ers or thereabouts) were born into a
culture that is paradoxically trying to cling to the moral tenets of
yesteryear (sin-obsessed Judeo-Christian values) while showering its
citizenry in media that glamorizes and fetishizes imprudent sex,
party culture, gangster culture, and gun violence.

Most of us were raised to believe that we are inherently sinful

creatures who must apologize profusely to a God that is always
watching us, lest we be cast for eternity into an inferno of hideous
torture and pain. We must obey Gods commandments precisely,
or we are loathsome sinners who are going to rot for eternity in
Hades. Meanwhile Miley Cyrus is on TV having sex with a
wrecking ball or whatever; and on the next channel a
shiny American movie glorifies guns and violent, greedy men; and
blasting from the background speakers is some pop artist contracted
for big bucks to sing about rampant and irresponsible drug use,
violence, and the objectification of women. This latter strain of
American culture/media seems incessantly to urge, Yes, do it. Do
whatever you want. Seek as much pleasure as possible, indulge your
every impulse. But then when people inevitably do indulge
impulses and experiment with unsafe sex, hard drugs, and violence
(as the media implicitly encouraged them to, and/or as they observed
others doing) and make mistakes, we dont offer sincere
understanding or rehabilitation or admit that their unseemly behavior
is inseparable from an insane culture.
No, we call them bad kids or bad people. We say they havent
worked hard enough, or worse, we lock them up in prisons (even
for trivial, victimless crimes like drug possession) that
aggravate/dehumanize rather than heal. This insistence on total
individual responsibility is also a remnant of Americas JudeoChristian foundationsit comforts people to believe that bad
things happen to bad people or that everyone is responsible for
their own actions (maybe true in a sense, but far too simplistic)
because that gives said people the opportunity to believe that they
are good people who deserve their spot in heaven or their place
in society. But this ideology is little more than a flimsy justification
for judging and condemning people endlessly for indulging the sorts
of activities that are quite obviously portrayed in American pop
culture as The Best Shit Ever. See the inherent contradiction here?

And thats really just the beginning of the story. Making people feel
guilty and sub-human for their (culturally encouraged) selfdestructive behavior is already fucked up, but then theres the matter
of the utterly harmless things that a lot of us do regularly but feel
vaguely guilty abouti.e. masturbating, smoking cannabis, having
responsible (heterosexual or homosexual) sex, having inappropriate
intrusive thoughts, etc.because we were conditioned to see them
as taboo. There are so many harmless things portrayed as evil or
taboo in American culture that its no wonder everyone needs a
therapist and an SSRI prescriptionamong other things, were all
experiencing the neurotic aftermath of being convinced that many
totally innocuous aspects of the human experience are the things of
Satan, and that if we mess around with them, its our own fault
and were bad, rotten, contemptible sinners.
So were given contradictory messages; we invariably hurt ourselves
and are told its our fault; we judge each other constantly; and most
of us feel guilty for things we shouldnt have to feel guilty about.
Cool! America is awesome! But wait! Theres more! Lets
not forget that the feelings of guilt and inadequacy that result from
the taboos of American culture are fueled/layered all the more by the
way in which American culture turns everything into a
competition, worships its winners, and laughs at its losers. It should
be noted that some sort of competition is entailed in a capitalist
economic system, but it seems that the competition in the states is
exacerbated to ferocious extremes by our public school system,
advertisements, consumerist signaling games (I bought this to show
you that Im better than you!), pop culture, and everyday language.
From our earliest years, so many of us are taught the importance of
winning, of beating the other guy, of being the best, of getting
the top score, etc. Our fucking principal national pastimes are
sporting events over which people go absolutely wacky cheering for
someone to win and someone to lose. Even our schoolsour
institutions
of higher educationproudly
display
fierce

anthropomorphic animals or angry marginalized peoples

as mascotsicons of war-like competition that are somehow
supposed to positively represent the institution to the international
community. This is how deeply embedded competitionand the
belief that some people are doomed to be losersis in our culture.
This deeply engrained assumption naturally leads to a mass
tendency to treat life itself as a competition. To treat society as one
big game of King of the Hill in which some of us are good at the
game and some of us suck, and the people who are good get the
big bucks and big respect and throw the shitty people to the bottom
of the hill and chuckle mockingly at them from the top. Competition
metaphors abound in our culture. Whats your current life goal? Is
he going to make the cut? Whats your next milestone? All my
life I was conditioned to think perpetually about the next test, the
next school year, the next birthday milestone, the next level (middle
school, high school, university, employment, retirement, etc.) Were
so utterly conditioned to be constantly thinking about our next
accomplishment or next strategy in this bizarre, farcical game that
most of us cant sit still for five minutes and just soak in a fucking
sunset.
Even when we all but drop out of society and travel/live in Asia for
16 months (as Ive just done), we still deal with that distinct
American restlessnessthat feeling that theres something we
should be doing, some race we should be running, some pursuit we
should be furthering (if you know a reliable way out of this feeling,
please tell me). Many of us succumb to this feeling and become
workaholics, (ironic how addiction to work is codified in a way
that nods at Americas other age-old addiction: alcoholism)
spending our lives chasing desperately after that next job or
promotion or paycheck, hardly realizing that all the while were
living in a state of nebulous desperation and padding somebody
elses pockets. And we never get there. Someone is always
beating us. We never manage to keep up with the Joneses.

This obsession with work for works sake, or with work as merely a
means to Success and Propriety (as narrowly defined by ones
culture), is also rooted in Judeo-Christian values (read about
the Protestant work ethic). It has been entrenched all the more by
our factory-like, pitcher-cup model of educationa system that
dictates that we spend fifteen years disciplining ourselves to
memorize the right answers (culturally biased facts [dispensed
by supposedly all-knowing teachers] that end up being mostly
useless to us) in pursuit of the next grade or the next achievement
(and if kids cant focus on this elaborate series of tasks, we just
feed them ADHD meds so they can be more efficient). As we
navigate this system, we are constantly informed of how were
falling shortof the answers we got wrong, of the tests we failed, of
the classes or colleges we didnt get into.
This gives rise to a culture of perfectionism in which were all trying
so desperately to get it right (or worse, deciding to stop caring
about anything because school feels like bullshit) and to avoid
fucking up that most of us dont do a single risky or original or
unorthodox or self-expressive thing. We buy into the menial work,
go the safe routethe secure job, the mortgage, the kids, the
wifethat classic, beckoning, idyllic-seeming American dream.
(Never mind the fact that if you happen to be born poor [like tens of
millions of Americans], even this dream is a largely unrealistic
aim, due to institutionalized discrimination against the poor; a cycle
of poverty, gang/domestic violence, and drug abuse in poor
neighborhoods; malnutrition due to eating the unreal, processed
foods that constitute 90% of foodstuffs sold stateside; and the vast,
ever-expanding income gap.)
Its hard not to give in and chase this pre-fabricated dream
because of ideological conditioning, economic pressures, and
because, as Ive said (but this point deserves more attention), we
judge the ever-living fuck out of each other, making it socially
calamitous (and guilt-producing; once one deviates, theres a

palpable sense that one has let someone down) to deviate from the
norm. Youre not going to believe who Joyce had sex with.
Guess where Melvin is thinking of moving? Did you hear what
Elmo said to Shauna? We gossip ceaselessly. And we make
infinite unfair assumptions about people based on surface-level
characteristics. We call people gothic, scrody, slutty, fat,
old, nerdy, bitchy, douchey, weird, freak, and countless
other shitty fucking labels that come with a whole set of negative
connotationsthat the person doesnt belong, is to be avoided, is
somehow inferior in quality, is of a lower socioeconomic class, a
different race (a social construct that results in very real
suffering/death/violence), a different gender (another social
construct that results in very real suffering/death/violence), a
different sexual orientation, etc. Why do we do this? Because weve
got to endlessly fucking prove to ourselves that WeOh! High and
mighty Us!are most certainly not that loser. We are winners. We
have to be. We were always told to be. If were not better
than someone elseif there isnt some scapegoat to look down upon
and blame for the problems of Americawe lose our sense of
identity. For the same reason, we throw on that absurd and totally
unfounded American brand of jingoism and make implicitly
discriminatory claims about how we are the greatest country in the
world.
This is what most of our parents did, after allput America on a
pedestal, gossiped about and secretly defamed their family members,
friends, and neighbors. And this is what inescapably surrounded
us in American high schoolsthose steaming cesspools of
cliquiness, exclusion, hate-speech, and alienationand what
bombarded us from the TV screen in the form of shows about some
kind of drama or conflict between people who supposedly care for
each other. From every direction: judging people and labeling
people and fighting with people is the American way! Divisiveness.
Deeply embedded divisiveness. And this ends up hurting some
people? Uh, yeah. And some of us whove seen through this

troubling ruse deal with a peculiar type of guilt (on top of those
other types of guilt I mentioned earlier!)the guilt we feel when we
auto-label someone based on surface-level characteristics or
arbitrary standards of conduct that we were taught to care about. We
still carry around these judgmental inner monologues (theyve been
all but programmed into our brain-CPU) even after weve rejected
them as decidedly at-odds with reality, so we have to be vigilant in
quelling our own impulses to reduce others to dehumanizing
labels (as we were taught to).
And as if all of this werent hellish enough, theres also the
atmosphere of artificiality that results from the whole thing. Because
so many aspects of the human experience are filed away as taboo
and because we know there are so many ways of acting and being
that will lead to our being judged mercilessly by our peers, we
censor our personalities. We edit and filter ourselves to avoid saying
or doing anything that might attract negative attention. We dont
admit our real emotions because it seems like pussy shit (note the
problematic
association
of
female
genitalia
with
weakness/inferiority) to do so, and we need to be tough. We slap
on that quintessential American faux-charisma, make sure to deliver
a firm handshake, smile, and discuss the same old grocery list of
topics that are widely understood (though no one ever really talks
about this) as safe and uncontroversial. This cycle of vapid,
inauthentic social interaction only reinforces our ambiguous sense of
something dissonant that we cant quite place and of something
unfulfilled in ourselves.
And just when you think thats all, people are constantly trying to
sell us things, to the point where we begin to construct our identities
and the identities of others primarily based on what products
we/they purchase (this is great for the people trying to sell us trivial
garbage). Advertisements are everywhere (yes, even on this website,
I need to eat too!), and many of them function by showing us unreal,
perpetually happy, eerily perky people and implying that we too can

find happiness (equated with constant and eternal bliss rather than
an approach to inevitable vicissitudes) like these people if we just
trade hours of our lives for some amazing (insert hyperbolic
adjective here) new product. They implicitly let us know how unhip,
unsexy, overweight, ugly, and shitty we are and how, for just
$19.95!, their product just so happens to contain the perfect,
magical solution for all of our unhip-ness, unsexy-ness, shittiness,
etc. But then the products dont contain that, and were trapped in a
cycle of being made to feel inadequate, buying things that dont
help, still feeling inadequate, ad infinitum. And the ubiquity of these
manipulative signals only furthers a sense of something totally
cold and simulated that lurks all around.

It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety

relievable by purchase.-David Foster Wallace

Consequences
That was ranti-ish, but hopefully Ive at least sketched the
problemor rather, the network of problems that lead to cyclic
feelings of guilt and inadequacy (if not death, disease, or
imprisonment) for many Americans (on top of the periodic
vicissitudes and heartbreaks that life already entails).
A lot of us manage to get through this shitstorm (many dont),
though rarely without our fair share of scars. Really, do all of
us have some kind of anxiety, or depression, or neurosis, or eating
disorder, or insomnia, or addiction, or insecurity, or other emotional
scarring? Im starting to think so. Hell, I definitely do. I feel
tremendous doubt and fear and insecurity and anxiety and
inadequacy sometimes (though Im getting better than ever at seeing
through it). And my circumcised penis is a lingering
physical reminder that I was born into a culture with a bunch of
arbitrary and destructive superstitions that have affected me in ways
I cannot fully reverse.

But many of us make it through. Maybe we leave the country for a

while, or read some anarchist or Eastern texts, or declare
ourselves artists, or follow our favorite band around the country, or
spray paint a train, or do some other vaguely anti-American thing to
cope with and compensate for our growing realization that our
country fucked us in the ass and we dont really know who we are or
what the hell we need to do. But we press on, perhaps with the help
of a psychotherapist or a prescription (which some folks certainly
actually need; Im far from anti-treatment), and try to gather up
some semblance of a life from our shattered vision of America the
Beautiful. And I think it can be done. I think Ive seen folks who
have managed it.
But I think a non-negligible number of people are like my friend
the sensitive, intelligent, fragile, funny, complex, suicidal onewho
isnt managing it. Shes struggling, and Ive seen her screaming on
the inside for years. Ive offered her every feasible piece of help and
advicetold her shes amazing just as she is, that she doesnt need
to prove anything to anyone, that she has so much love to give, that
shes talented, that investing in some kind of hobby might do her
some good, etc. About a week before hearing that shes feeling
suicidal, I had (presciently) sent her a long letter telling her I would
always be there, even if no one else is, and that nothing she could do
would make me stop loving her for who she is.
But Im not sure shes going to be okay. Im not sure shes going to
make it through the maze, going to be able to see American
culturethe Protestant obsession with work for works sake, the
Bad People Burn in Hell theory, the non-stop, tooth-and-nail
competition, the endless judgment and bigotry, the messages to win
the game and be an adult and grow up, the incessant
consumerist propaganda, the institutionalized discrimination, the
violence and pathological feelings of guilt and inadequacy that result
from the aforementionedas the utterly deleterious and

malignant house of mirrors that it is. I fear that it might be too late
for her.
This culture convinced her from a young age to feel despicable and
insufficient, and she cant escape those feelings, though shes tried,
through orthodox methodsChristianity, career pursuits, therapy,
prescriptions, etc.and less orthodox methodsillegal drugs,
travel, reading, etc. There seems to be some fundamental thing with
which she cannot come to terms. If I were to pinpoint this thing, I
might call it this: living in a culture that, on the most basic level,
rejects and demonizes what she really is (human) in an effort to
make her into a well-behaved, productive machine.
She has always been different. Whereas some people can become
the American Success and do the day-in-day-out thing for fifty years
(and find real meaning in that), it seems that has never been in the
cards for her. But while others in her place find alternativesways
to escape the grind for modes of existence that seem more
meaningful (artists, entrepreneurs, off-grid cabin-dwellers, etc.)
she has tried desperately to fit herself into the structures that were
given to her. She is keenly aware of the pressure from all angles to
filter out parts of her personality, to just stop feeling sorry for
herself, and to make something of herself. So she keeps trying to
do thatto conform and be the social and career-oriented success
that everyone seems to want. She feels that deep-down artificiality
of American culture, but shes still living by its terms. Measuring
herself with someone elses yardstick. And therein lies her problem.
Shes trapped, for now at least, and I dont know how to help her.
I feel like someone owes her an eternal-yet-still-totallyinsufficient apology on behalf of that Labyrinth of Bullshit (i.e.
American culture) that I roughly outlined earlier. Because hers is a
case in which first world problems dont seem like the
trivial, giggle-worthy substance of Internet memes about our banal,
comfortable lives. Her first world problems seem psychologically
torturous, unbearable, urgent. And theyre clearly traceable to what

she was taught to expect from life by her culture (though I wont
pretend genetics havent played a role; the nature/nurture dynamic is
of course always there).

Where
But where do we go from here? I wish I could go back in time, meet
all of the American children who will one day feel like my suicidal
friend, and simply give them more genuine, non-judgmental love.
Yeah, seriously, love? What an original fucking idea!
Really though, I would go back in time to meet all of those children
as youngsters and tell them in earnest: you are not inherently sinful,
pathetic creatures; you dont need to do anything to justify or
validate your existence; you dont need to achieve anything beyond
yourself; you are here to do the things you enjoy and for which you
have
natural
talent; you
are
totally
and
unchangeably human, and nothing about that is wrong or evil;
you are beautiful.
And that might just do the trick. That might be the ticket to way less
confusion and suffering. But obviously Im not Marty McFly or a
character in an H.G. Wells novel. If were talking about what to do
moving forward, we might think about doing away with the lifedenying, fear-instilling, divisive aspects of organized religion (that
doesnt mean all religion); and reforming our economic system to
be, like, not dehumanizing and rooted in manipulation and enormous
inequality; and re-imagining education as something that looks less
like corporate bootcamp and more like the pursuit of natural
curiosity; and conceiving health care and immigration legislation
that empathizes with human beings who are suffering; and realizing
the necessity of a pharmaceutical industry not based on profit and
knee-jerk prescriptions; and transforming mainstream media into
something not entirely vapid, glorifying of violence/self-destruction,
and based on deliberate misrepresentation; and re-designing our
prison system as a system of rehabilitation rather than demonization;

and ceasing to arrest/imprison people for victimless crimes; and

stocking grocery store shelves with wholesome, nutritious foods (not
to mention food that doesnt come from environmentally-unfriendly
and animal-abusing factory farms) instead of rubbish; and treating
addiction/drug abuse as a medical condition rather than evidence of
inherent
sinfulness;
and
getting
our
hundreds
of
thousands of homeless people some food and shelter; and making it
more difficult for Joe Briefcase to purchase insanely dangerous,
high-powered killing machines (i.e. guns); and finding ways to deter
police brutality against unarmed citizens and hold violators
accountable; and weighing the possible benefits of a Universal Basic
Income and a shorter work week.
These are huge institutional challenges and will clearly take a
ridiculous amount of time to change, but they dont ever change if
people like you and I dont talk about them and care. I should note
that in some ways, things have changed/are changing in a big way
(think state-level cannabis legislation, receding stigma surrounding
homo/trans people and mental disorders, legislated equality of all
races/genders/sexual orientations [not the same as real equality],
etc.). In these areas, thanks to the activism of countless dedicated
folks, the US is arguably managing to set more tolerant precedents
in the global community.
Apart from structural reform, what I think we really needwhat this
culture and the larger human race (you didnt think your culture was
flawless just because Im admitting mine sucks, right?) has needed
for eons, but what Im not sure were ready to claimis a much,
much greater sense of solidarity, shared humanity, and mutual
understanding. We need to grow up in warm communities in which
people nourish rather than disdain one another; in which all aspects
of the human experience are recognized and countenanced openly
rather than denied and labeled taboo; in which individuals have a
sense of inherent value that has nothing to do with their job or role
in the community; in which people are taught to cooperate rather

than compete, to be compassionate rather than judgmental; in which

people occupy themselves with things that are meaningful or useful
rather than high-paying or prestigious; in which the day, the
moment, is seen as an end in itself.
Lately Ive felt that the very condition of mass society makes it
nearly impossible to manifest this situation. Being constantly
surrounded by hundreds of strangers, as we are in any city,
ironically makes us feel cold and alienated. Other humans become
mere obstacles because we are simply not wired to care for this
many people at once, and neither is everybody else. For most of our
existence, we lived in much smaller, tight-knit groups. So maybe
what we ultimately need to dofor ourselves and (I should
mention) for the planetis return to small agrarian communities in
which its really possible for everyone to care for and
understand everyone else. And maybe the fierce competition
inherent in the current incarnation of capitalism should compel us to
devise an economic system that emphasizes cooperation and sharing
(not necessarily socialism or communism; some kind of hybrid).
But unless youre Russell Brand, you probably dont see that
revolution coming anytime soon. Even Isomeone seriously
interested in living in an intentional community or off-grid
structurestill see a lot of things about living in the city that I
would be reluctant to leave behind. And instating an entirely new
economic system somehow seems like a pipe dream at this point
(though reforms seem feasible). So if cities and capitalism are here
indefinitely, weve got to find ways, in the short term, to bring more
compassion and openness to mass society. Weve got to at
least remember that were dealing with other human beings and
(unless were truly in danger or something) maintain a basic respect
for human life/dignity. Especially in the age of the Internet, weve
got to embrace that there are innumerable ways of thinking and
living and communicating (like, 7 billion+) on this planet, and that
its okay for other people to approach things differently than us.

Weve got to stop teaching our young people to obsess over

the next moment, test, job, milestone, etc. Weve got to live in a way
that demonstrates to youth that every person has inherent value, that
cooperation and tolerance are better for all of us, and that our time is
about more than a dollar-figure someone wants to attach to it.
And when and if we have our own kids, weve got to help them be
better at these things than we were. Weve got to refuse to
indoctrinate them into all-encompassing moral-metaphysical belief
systems that will confuse the fuck out of them for years. Weve got
to explain to them the cold, oppressive logic of consumerismthat
the advertisers and marketers would like very much to play us for
fools and trap us in a cycle of inadequate feelings and compulsive
purchasing. Weve got to tell them about the perennial capacity of
mankind to loathe/harm its own and demonstrate for them a more
compassionate approach. Weve got to show them that our education
system is just one flawed, man-made contraption and that real
education is about curiosity and exploration rather than arbitrary
benchmarks. Weve got to teach them to love and empathize. Weve
got to make the gist of this essay something that kids understand by
the time theyre 9 or 10 years old.
Or not, you know. These are things we would maybe do if we
wanted to rebel against a culture and society that have failed us.
These are things we would maybe do if we felt it possible to create a
global community in which it doesnt suck to function. These are
things that I do/will do because I cant imagine doing anything else.
These are things that I do/will do because a friend of mine died last
year in a drunk-driving accident. Because Ive seen other young
people kill themselves. Because people like you and I and our loved
ones are murdered, tortured, and locked in cages constantly in this
country. Because I cannot stand by apathetically, watching more
peers lose themselves in this poisonous American funhouse.
Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and
think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about,

although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.Kurt Vonnegut
I highly encourage you to read the follow-up to this essay: A Brief
History of the Modern World (Or, How the West Fucked Everything
Up)
P.S.: Much of this undoubtedly applies to older generations of
Americans as well, and a lot of this could be applied to people in
other modern, mass societies. I focused on young Americans
because I am a young American and felt most at liberty to speak
about my own generation in my own country, but my hope is that
this essay points to certain issues which are nearly globally
pervasive circa 2014. In a follow-up essay, I will discuss how/why
this situation extends far beyond the states.
P.P.S.: This essay may have struck some people as terribly
depressing, but generally Im a cynical optimist (paradoxical but
true). I think that, in the final analysis, each person alive today is
faced with an ultimatum: give up on life (commit suicide or fall into
self-destruction), or find a way, via whatever possible means, to
cope with ones cultural baggage and be content in spite of the ways
in which one was abandoned/marginalized/screwed. It seems that
most all of us have, in some way, been done a disservice by the
structures of this outrageous world into which weve been born. We
can curse those structures and see them as reasons to hate ourselves
and everything else, or we can do our best to see through the set of
preconceived values and assumptions into which we were
indoctrinated to perceive something (arguably) magnificent lurking
beneath it allthe opportunity to experience and love and express
ourselves and discover our own way of thinking and being in this
sprawling, wondrous cosmos.

About Jordan Bates

Jordan Bates is a linguistic sign and the post-American writer/artist who created this place.
He has a rapping alter-ego named LOSTBOYEVSKY, writes about 21st-century Asia on
Beacon, and also created the music blog, UBERSOUNDS.