Middle-Class Ignorance: How Did We Get Here and Where Do We Go Now?
There is a staggering, unsettling reality that has been allowed to fester and grow at exceedingly high rates over the past hundred or so years. It exists in the habitats of newspaper articles, televised news stories, clips on social media, and even in the city of Ann Arbor.
It is the annual Forbes 400 list being published on September 9th, the same day that Al Jazeera published an article by Eman Murtaja titled “In Gaza City, death seems easier than
displacement.”
It's the Met Gala happening in the same city where over 350,000 people are without a home.
It's the release of the Epstein Files getting vastly more media coverage than the over two year long civil war in Sudan and the mass, ethnic cleansing of non-Arab Sudanese in the Darfur region.
It's the U-M students who wear $1,000 Canada Goose winter jackets and carry designer
handbags as their backpacks, while walking past multiple unhoused people on State Street.
Ignorance fuels the wealth divide when pictures of human beings starving can’t tamp it down.
However, there’s another part to the story. Fortunately, maybe optimistically, it is my opinion that the vast majority of humans, and their creations, find a place in this part of the narrative.
This narrative houses the students who were so excited to get into the University of Michigan
that they immediately bought a U-M t-shirt, but are now grappling with paying tens of thousands of dollars to an institution that invests in global atrocities.
It houses the parents who used to ride their bikes to work, but now have to drive because of
school drop off.
There’s the vegetarians and people who only buy their meat locally or infrequently in an effort to lower their carbon footprint, who simultaneously know that shopping at Meijer or Kroger, or any supermarket, means investing in the meat industry anyway.
There’s also the college students who don’t know what to study or which career to go into, but the one thing they do know is that they want to do real, irreproachably virtuous and blameless work.
There’s those same young adults who have realized that 100% ethical jobs, even lives, don’t exist and each year lived feels like one more loan repayment after another in an effort to stave off moral bankruptcy.
This part of our narrative houses the people who are blamed every day for their complicity in
global violence and decay, yet feel, rightfully, powerless in facilitating the huge changes that they know need to happen.
The reality that I want to put on display involves over-indulgence, over-consumption, and a level of ignorance that comes with being a middle class individual in the United States during the 21st century. The systems of power that affect our everyday lives seemingly exacerbate these qualities in the people who strive to decorate their lives rather than settle for monotony.
So, the question is: how do we reckon our desires to be someone – someone who creates,
someone who has unparalleled experiences with the world, someone who is educated, someone who expresses themself through fashion, someone who cooks or crochets, someone who loves puzzles and legos and music, with the knowledge that in attending to our souls we sacrifice our ethics to capitalist-driven consumption, environmental degradation, class divisions, racial inequalities and numerous other social injustices at the same time?
As someone who thrives off of getting to pick my outfit out in the morning, this question digs
deep. Every day is all we have and, for me, playing with patterns, clashing colors, and expressing my emotions day-to-day are activities that I never want to take for granted. I know other clothing lovers feel similarly and I can only hope that they share my desire to deconstruct fashion’s more deleterious qualities.
What I don’t want to do is tell you the same story that we’ve all heard over and over and over
again. Yes, fast fashion is extraordinarily unethical and harmful to global ecology. Yes, thrifting is a great alternative to buying items new; the world needs to do more reusing. However, this approach doesn’t work for everyone's needs and accessibilities all the time and it doesn’t change the overarching problem: our culture of overconsumption.
Capitalism tells us that we need to spend money in exchange for material items in order to feel gratification and be a successful member of society. It says that the more we buy, the better we will feel about our socioeconomic status. Capitalist mindsets came up with individualism through material consumption and, from there, the fashion industry (among many others) was born! We fuel the wealth divide with our purchasing power yet, ironically, we are relatively powerless to stop.
Even though I’m not here to claim a solution or pitch an idea for the next American culture, I
don’t think it's fair to lay out so many negatives and then not offer some consolation. So, my best advice is to slow down.
Go shopping in your closet and try on the clothes that you don’t wear very often. Do it on a
Sunday afternoon while you drink tea and watch a TV show. Fall in love again with a top you
brush past every day or a skirt you haven’t worn since high school.
Don’t guilt trip yourself if you browse Urban Outfitters online. Just wait a week or two and if
you’re still thinking about those clothes, days later, buy them!
If you want a new sweater, but can’t decide what type, don’t go buy multiple secondhand
because they’re cheap. Instead, go to the thrift store, find a sweater that has a color and yarn texture that you love, unwind the yarn at home, and pick a crochet or knitting pattern online that shows you how to make your ideal sweater. You’ll make it slowly, because life is busy, so by the time it's done, you could’ve bought 5 sweaters that weren’t quite right, but instead, you’ve made yourself the sweater that beats all sweaters.
The American middle class cannot continue to take on a “let them eat cake” attitude by solely
blaming the uber wealthy for the world’s suffering. We are accountable for our own decisions, no matter who resides at the helm of power. If “ignorance is bliss” then “bliss” is complicit and guilty.
It seems to me that in fueling the wealth divide, middle class Americans see two sides to the
story and many are actively choosing to align themselves with those at the top, such as
celebrities and large business owners, in an effort to distance themselves from the working class. The irony in this is that it creates a positive feedback loop in which the rich get richer, working class conditions get worse, and the middle class continues to fall subject to privilege and, therefore, discontent.
I urge people to break the cycle. Live so slowly and purposefully that you see the way out. Don’t continue to let power and corruption win over a peaceful way of life. Do it for the people who don’t possess the liberties that make awareness and action possible.
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