Comforting Words

People talk about their finances as being 'Comfortable', they eat 'Comfort food', they enjoy movies like Lord of the Rings, Games like World of Warcraft and television shows like Madmen and Entourage because of the comforting notion of 'escapism'.
We want our homes to be comfortable, and line them with 'creature comforts' one might even purchase that abomination that is the 'snuggie'.
Yet what does 'comfort' mean? what is the true meaning of the word? This struck me last night, after A) reading a set of Harlen Ellison short stories that rotated around the theme of 'Alienation' and B) having spent the weekend with my very good friend that seems very very 'comfortable' in life.

What does it mean? Dictionary.com gives this:

1. to soothe, console, or reassure; bring cheer to: They tried to comfort her after her loss.
2. to make physically comfortable.
3. Obsolete. to aid; support or encourage.

And I begin to wonder of the many implications of this word. I wonder, and think it worth wondering because I see yet another force in this world that is dangerous in its sheer benign perception as held by the public.

A 'What's wrong with being comfortable?' or 'what's wrong with security?' type kneejerk reflex.

See I see nothing wrong with comforting a friend whom you see potential in, and they are suddenly overcome by self doubt. And you comfort them with soothing words and placating excuses as to why they haven't yet succeeded such that they calm down, take stock of themselves and reapply.

So too someone has been dumped or fired or some shit, I see nothing wrong with providing the kind of comfort that is taking them out for lunch or inviting them to a movie or some shit.

But then, take someone who has been dumped now for going on a year, they still wallow in self pity, you'd probably agree that this is where one starts to put their foot down on comforting like a conquistidor puts his foot on the throat of an Aztec child, and start applying the tough love, like a Catholic missionary tossing priceless codex's onto a raging fire.

These examples are obvious, but as stated earlier, I feel the danger is in the benign applications of this concept of comfort.

For example, someone has a stressful day at work, and comes home just wanting to relax in front of 'Two and a Half Men' for an hour or so at night. And so the shape of their private life firms up for 10-20 years. Work under stress, and recuperate infront of the television.

Or someone has a dry spell on the boyfriend/girlfriend front and comforts themselves with a a nice bar of chocolate, KFC etc.

Sure we can say that ultimately there's some balancing act between hedonisism and sadomasochism that is infact healthy, but consider perhaps what has arisen as one of the most benign cum malignant comfort cists in modern society - the comforting notion of retirement.

This notion is just a higher level form of the 'stressful day at work = watching a few hours of television' except it is the populus notion of 'you've worked hard, you've earned a relaxing retirement.' that has been used to sell super, investment property, collatoralised debt obligations, plasma screen televisions, luxury cars and package cruises to the mediterranian.

Except it seems to me that comfort and truth have to walk hand in hand, if comfort is to be truly exercised benignly.

You see we can use Neuro Linguistic Programming to attack the comforting statement 'You've worked hard, you've earned a relaxing retirement' because their are assumed facts in their. 1) that you have actually worked hard. and 2) that this hard work entitles you to a relaxing retirement.

To me it's kind of an affirming the consequent type statement. As in a relaxing retirement should be the natural result of having worked hard at creating genuine value because in my mind, creating value entails profit, profit entails savings, savings entail stored wealth, stored wealth can be exchanged at a later date for a 'relaxing retirement'.

People swallow the statement and it's 2 assumptions though as gospel truth. but it's assumption 2 where comfort starts doing a disservice. Because one can look up the word 'earned' also at dictionary.com and you get this:

1. to gain or get in return for one's labor or service: to earn one's living.
2. to merit as compensation, as for service; deserve: to receive more than one has earned.
3. to acquire through merit: to earn a reputation for honesty.
4. to gain as due return or profit: Savings accounts earn interest.
5. to bring about or cause deservedly: His fair dealing earned our confidence.

and perhaps most enlightining is dictionary.com provides the historical derivation of 'earned':

bef. 900; ME ern(i)en, OE earnian; akin to OHG arnēn to earn, harvest

It's that 'harvest' on the end of the statement that puts me in mind of that 'gospel' truth 'as ye sow, so shall ye reap'.

So if we look at the macro level damage of 'comfort' you get a clue as to where the whole thing comes unstuck:

Baby boomers the largest age segmented demographic on earth, and the wealthiest are coming to the end of their 'working life'. As a result of their 'hard' work, they were paid wages, said wages were what they earned for their labor.

That really is the limitations of the 'work hard = relaxed retirement deal' because for your efforts you are paid wages. You aren't actually entitled to any more than that.

But the comforting notion gets warped and you start to see that money that they had being invested. People then need to realise, that investing your money, is a kind of work, in that you are becoming effectively a personal one-man/woman bank. You are lending money, it's a new business for you. Therefore, you 'work' by picking investment products to allocate your savings to, and you 'earn' a due return on those investments.

Those investments though compete in the marketplace, that's the truth of it, and in this case, instead of the relatively simple 'work = wages' equation of your primary job role, investing is a different business where the market says 'value = return' thus assumption 1. 'you have worked hard' is actually quite debatable to the market. And as per the GFC the market can turn around and say 'actually those investments you made were of very little actual value, infact they were of no value, infact they were completely counter productive, and as such, your return is nothing, we won't be returning the money to you, and beyond that we will actually be selling off the assets to try and recover our losses.'

So you can see that the comforting spiel of 'you've worked hard, you've earned your retirement' is misleading. It should have been 'you've worked hard, you've earned the wages that you were fucking paid, for doing said motherfucking work!' but the comforting statement has extended to the point, that people don't feel this way at all, they don't understand that profit = risk = profit = losses. That in order for you to expose yourself to the chance of gaining a 'self funded retirement' you had to expose yourself to the overlooked risk of a 'non funded retirement' that is unfortunately, the fucking deal, in accordance with the laws of physics, the law of the jungle, basically the laws you just can't make up.

But instead, this tumorous cancer of comfort has born more comfort seeding everywhere throughout our system, it was the bankers fault, it was the fund managers fault, it was anyone's fault but your own. We will go into debt, don't worry we will look after you. Everything will be all right.

Alas I'm not a baby boomer, and neither is much of my readers. Almost none infact, for people of my generation, comfort takes the malignant form of security, and here at long last is where 'alienation' becomes relevant.

Germaine Greer wrote in 'The Female Eunuch' a book that is depressingly relevant not just for feminism, but also for society in general almost 50 years after it's initial print 'until we can acknowledge that insecurity is freedom, we will remain slaves in one form or another' I have to paraphrase, because alas, my copy was destroyed by a leaking roof.

I feel 'Alienated' because I hold several views that are at odds with the comforting notion of 'security' for me, unwinding infront of the television every weeknight, or ordering food in, is not comfort as a reward, but a symptom of your job being exhausting. I used to do it, and I would have said that when I was a full time employee there was much going for the job I had, I loved the people I worked with, at times I was stimulated, I was good at the job, I was learning new things.

But by the end of the day, whatever I had achieved in that work was ultimately not very important to me, the money I recieved was literally 'more than enough' to support both my lifestyle and 30% savings towards travelling around the world for 8 months. Yet most complained of how stingy that employer was with wages.

I ate out most nights in that job. as in 12 out of 14. I watched 'The Biggest Loser' avidly, and then typically whatever happened to be on. My girlfriend lived for much of that time a mere 5 minutes walk away and yet, I often couldn't bear to spend time with her.

Everything in my private life was mere comfort. The wonderful things that happened to me were getting dumped and becoming unemployed. Because both introduced me to 'insecurity as freedom' denied the outward signs that 'everything is okay' I am found I have to actually confront the fact that 'I am a loser' and largely speaking, I have nobody to blame but myself.

But 'failing to succeed' is not the same as 'succeeding at being a failure' though I'm not sure many scholars of english would tell me so.

Here then is the comfort that is not benign as it effects people of my generation. In my 'downtime' I had the chance to play 'Bioshock' again, and one of the first things you encounter in that game is a plaque that reads:

In what country is there a place for people like me?

- Andrew Ryan

Which expresses much of the same alienation I feel. You see (do you see?) for a young person born into this world, the fact is that people older than you actually control everything, even though individually their control may be severelly limited generally between 50-60 a person in this world controls relatively more than most people of other age groups.

Thus it isn't completely viable for one such as myself to notice that my full time work doesn't actually require all the hours that were alloted to it, and that those hours could be alloted back to me in my private time. That was my experience, I enjoyed my work, I was paid well for it, but I needed 1 & 1/2 weeks to do what was given me 4 weeks to do. I could do in 20 hours a week what was allocated 40. It was the truth of my existence.

Most people in my experience, use the surplus time at work to play 'Jewelquest' or Spider Solitaire, or Freecell. Exactly what an unemployed person might do. Yet why does one get paid to do so and another doesn't?

Well what is particularly alienating is that it doesn't seem to be my place to ask such questions, because I don't actually control sufficient resources to do anything about it. This may strike someone as a 'victim mentallity' because it certainly strikes me as a victim mentality, and I do have a plan for what little resources I have.

But for most, instead of excepting the 'alienation' which I contend is the 'opposite' of comfort, they take the comfort.

You go to primary school, then highschool, then university, then you get a job, then you get a house, then you get a mortgage, then you have kids...

then if we can use the wisdom of our elders experience to project a little you have some kind of mid-life crisis.

Because you've just taken the comforting deal of doing what most people are supposed to do. I mean most people I believe are meant to procreate, but what I would point out is that it doesn't necessarily have anythign to do with paying off a house or working full time. We just kind of assume that's the social responsibility.

You have the midlife crisis, during mid-life because as far as I can tell, there's some gap that crops up between having something your actively supposed to be doing, (like having kids or paying off a mortgage) and having to actually look forwards/backwards at what you are wanting to do.

Many look on the 'quarter-life crisis' with disdain, myself included, because people feel that someone is too young to actually regret how they have spent their years. But in Japan the same phenomena is labelled furita, except the social script is stronger and thus, their dilemma isn't as simple as returning to university, or changing jobs or starting their own business, it's literally doing what you were supposed to be doing, or dropping out completely.

I put it to you, and it may be a very 'uncomfortable thought' that what many of my peers and contempories are engaging in what I call 'succeeding at failing' as evidenced, precisely by the midlife crisis. The 'midlife crisis' is a crisis because it is 'uncomfortable' and it is uncomfortable because one is stuck with the revelation that they have failed, specifically failed to be who they wanted to be.

Being dumped for me was a similar crisis, being unemployed is a very real and very similar crisis. But I tried to be something else, I tried to be who I wanted to be and I failed at it, it was overambitious, unviable and moreover poorly timed. But at least if I had succeeded I would have been something I wanted to be, and what little success I had, I have to admit was exhilerating.

It was truly rewarding, and I wish I can convincingly impress that upon you, that it was far better than being told I was excellent at doing a job I didn't care much about, being given a payrise and told that 'if I keep it up, more will be forthcoming' and so on and so fourth.

To me it wasn't as exciting as realising that manager-tools feedback system works in real life, or seeing someone get enthusiastic about doing some process I had taught them. That was rewarding. It just wasn't financially viable. I failed. I hypothesise it could be my lack of credibility, the economic climate, my inability to approach and persuade prospective clients. etc.

At the very least I know, that I failed. I think every failed, dole bludging 50-60 year old hippy is in a way, an unsung hero, because in a way they have at least accepted the harsh, alienating truth (or if not having accepted it, experienced it and stuck with it) that if you work hard at stuff that isn't of value to someone, you don't earn a relaxing retirement. Which does far less damage I think we will find, than those who can't accept that if you malinvest your savings, the savings are gone and you lose your luxurious retirement.

I also think the only reason people need money to travel to Europe, or to have some 'treechange/seachange' retirement is because they aren't satisfied with the way their life is now. They seek comfort because they know something is wrong, comfort is a cure for discomfort, but they don't want to confront the cause, they want to cure the symptoms.

Particularly when comfort is socially endorsed, effectively the alternative to comforting yourself, is alienation. I feel alienated, I don't feel comfortable. I feel like a loser, not a winner. What perplexes me though, is that I'm not sure I would choose any differently, even with the lack of success I'd had.

I hope in some way, you can understand where I'm coming from.