This is Not a County Maintained Road

The Hardscrabble Syndrome 2009-Apr-07

Posted by jcentury in Uncategorized.
Tags: arm, bankruptcy, class, consciousness, credit, crisis, depression, hardscrabble, loan, mortgage, recession, schadenfreude
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In recent months, both my employment situation and observation of “recession psychology” has brought into stark relief a phenomenon I am going to refer to as Hardscrabble Syndrome.

This concept applies to many phenomena in our present world, but for the purpose of this article I am going to consider those whose lives are deteriorating as a result of the consumer credit crisis, housing bubble, and unemployment.

For the purpose of clarity, I am first going to describe who I am not talking about.

Billy Bob Spendthrift, who makes $35,000 a year racked up $15,000 in credit card debt and bought a home using an exploitive ARM loan, for the princely sum of $450,000.

His credit debt consists mainly of Best Buy purchases like large television sets and rare sports memorabilia he purchased on ebay. He has no savings or rainy day fund.

Billy Bob Spendthrift is, if you talk to “blame the consumer” faction on Internet message boards, a perfect example of how we got into this mess. To this faction, the credit crisis is mainly a result of Billy Bob Spenthrift and people like him.

Whatever percentage of embattled consumers Billy Bob represents (and that number is highly debatable), I am not talking about his kind.

The typical economically stressed American, in my own estimation, seems to have the following characteristics:

• Did not properly manage their credit debt, nor saved enough for the eventual bust cycle which follows boom cycles.
• Were forced by circumstance to live in places where the real estate bubble had swelled the most, because that tends to be where the jobs are. In order to afford artificially inflated homes, exploitive ARM loans were taken out, or excessive rent was paid which consumed funds which could have been used for saving.
• Was not an expert investor or financial planner. In cases where funds were invested prudently, outright fraud by corporations, banks, and investment houses may have created significant, but possibly unavoidable losses.
• Are diminishing funds which would otherwise go into savings to pay for exorbitant costs of higher education.
• May have unexpected medical bills, including large deductibles, or may not have medical insurance at all, because American health care is stupid.

Now many of these people find themselves unemployed, upside-down on their mortgages, and facing bankruptcy and, in more extreme cases, homelessness due to foreclosure.

The Hardscrabble Syndrome refers to the perverse pleasure certain individuals are taking in the suffering of those facing financial ruin. And if their stories are to be believed, the people who take the most pleasure are people who have been in precisely the same circumstance. It is similar to the phenomenon of hazing in fraternities – because the individual has gone through a painful and difficult time, they feel that they have earned the right to taunt and in fact contribute to the suffering of those now faced with the same ugliness.

This is something I don’t fully understand, except to the extent that I observe it in myself in relation to schoolwork. I hated schoolwork and homework and when my niece complains about it, I start getting fairly haughty about the fact that I had to do it and got through it, and that as a result I “have no sympathy.”

Until, that is, I catch myself doing it. I feel shame when I do. I cannot say most of it made me a better or more knowledgable person. Most of it is drudgery and most of it turned me off to learning.

In internet forums where credit problems are discussed, those who have had problems in the past become absolutely cruel to those who are experiencing the same thing now. Internet threads dissolve into sarcastic infantile sock puppeting: “Waaah waaaah poor me I racked up immense amounts of credit debt, and now I am in trouble!” It is fairly remarkable to watch the delight people take in being cruel to others when they most need support.

Hazing seems to light up the same circuit in the brain: I was humiliated, and suffered, and now I will do the same to you.

I don’t know enough about child abuse to say for certain, but I wonder if that, too, is more of the same: an individual is abused as a child, grows up, and then abuses his own child.

But more than merely observing the behavior itself, I continue to be amazed at the shameless delight people take in it. It is different than plain schadenfreude, because schadenfreude doesn’t require that one go through the same kind of tribulations. The Hardscrabble Syndrome seems to have the psychological payoff of self-aggrandizement – “I am more noble than you because I suffered through what you’re suffering through, and you are complete shit compared to me because you have not yet proven yourself capable of surviving it.” Chests are then beat and bones are thrown into the air.

This has been taken to absurd extremes. I’ve heard countless people refuse to express sympathy for anyone down on their luck not because they themselves went through the same thing, but because their *ancestors* – generally Great Depression survivors – went through the same thing.

I have to wonder how much this contributes to the lack of solidarity among American working people. People really do take pleasure in others becoming unemployed, take pleasure in others losing their homes, and take pleasure in others’ bankruptcy.

This has got to be linked to the demented class consciousness of the average American – that there is specific nobility in being poor, a kind of self-flaggelation that is somehow linked to the Protestant Work Ethic. It is part of the same thing that makes people feel the need to lecture their children about how they had to walk uphill in the snow to school with no shoes when they were growing up, or how politicians to try to claim they were raised in a log cabin with a dirt floor. How many people do you meet who are comfortable saying something like, “I grew up on a cul-de-sac in a middle class housing development. I was comfortable but not rich.”

You never hear that from a politician, even though, presumably, that makes up the bulk of Americans. But then again, there is an obvious explanation:

The last thing comfortable but not rich Americans on cul-de-sacs in middle class housing developments want to hear about themselves is that they are comfortable but not rich Americans on cul-de-sacs in middle class housing developments. Because comfortable but not rich Americans on cul-de-sacs in middle class housing developments FUCKING HATE comfortable but not rich Americans on cul-de-sacs in middle class housing developments. And that’s the last thing they want to see in a leader, either. That would be simply nauseating!

Apparently, to the kind of American who posts on these message boards, there is only honor in suffering and deprivation. This attitude has been a boon to America’s upper classes. What’s good enough for Job, is good enough for the lot of us – just be happy you have roots and bark to eat and get back to work. This is one reason why Americans hate unions and endlessly stereotype union members as featherbedding layabouts. After all, they probably knew one, at some point, or heard a story about one, and so, that must be how it is. How dare people complain about being lower or working class. That’s just…unAmerican. Taking pride in ones poverty, even beating oneself up over it, well, that’s a different story.

American life has always been more about live-to-work, rather than work-to-live, and I believe that this exacerbates this ugly psychological excess.

I wonder how the United States would be different if we felt empathy and compassion for those who had lost everything. That could potentially include some toughlove for those who really did dig their own ditches, but it could provide a sense of togetherness, of being in this weird economic system together, and possibly lead to a voluntary, community-based safety net we all could benefit from.

People are awfully unchristian these days. And not in a good way.

On this note, Four Yorkshiremen is one of Python’s most sturdy sketches: