Thread by @AlexandraErin

You ever think about how human adaptability, endurance, and the fact that it takes a long time to completely destroy our bodies and minds makes it possible for literally every single aspect of our society to be unsustainable?

We have a generation of school children who are being traumatized by guns and shellshocked by drills, while being overworked and overwhelmed and taught to the test, normalizing crunch and cram...

... and then we send them to colleges that statistically speaking no one can afford or jobs with wages no one can live on, either track requires working too much, sleeping too little, and eating calorie dense and nutrient poor food when they can.

The paths OUT of those slow motion death traps involve working yourself to death harder and faster.

Nothing about this arrangement works. No part of it. Not one single part. No step makes sense.

But the piece that would break down and cause the whole thing to shut down is... us.

And we fail slowly. So painfully slowly. We die by degrees while our brains make up justifications

If you look anywhere, you see the symptoms of the breakdown. Boomers trying to sell their big empty houses they banked their retirement on and finding no one ready to buy them. Student loan spiraling to infinity and beyond. Three jobs, no benefits.

Parents working extra to be able to afford childcare so they can work. Parents taking children along to job interviews because they can't afford childcare without a job.

Entry level jobs that require years of experience. Unpaid internships dangled as the path to paying jobs.

School hours modeled after the rhythms of a work day that don't begin to approximate the metabolic cycle of a growing body. Developing brains being exposed to white knuckle stress, insomnia, wild adrenaline and endorphin swings.

School is becoming something where if you care about it, the whole thing becomes like the make or break moment of an adult career over and over again in terms of stress and stakes, and if you don't care you get left behind.

This isn't going to work forever, it isn't working now. We are breaking bodies and brains in the constant pursuit of better and more, and the damage is hidden and the harm sold as personal failings and stuff to be overcome.

And when we propose a way to lessen the harm, to relieve the pressure... oh, moral hazard. Oh, socialism. Oh, the cost of doing business.

But we have to get over those objections, because what we are doing now is not sustainable.

When it fails all the way, watch out.