Thread by @jelenajansson

I hate utiopian “world could be like this if we only did or didn’t do this” thinking that doesn’t help people with now.
Major changes take centuries, we need to enable people to deal with now & move up the ladder to earn more money now, to buy back their freedom.

Money matters
In western world your health, livelyhood, social currency and all else depends on your access to money. Your access to money and thus freedom from the system is limited based on many factors, some spoken about and some not.

Freedom from the system depends on (spoken):
1. Birth place
2. Parents class (and if they are divorced, what they do & do you have both of them,how much money they had and social currency)
3. What neighborhood you lived in
4. What schools you went to
5. First job

Freedom from the system depends on (unspoken):
1. Race
2. Height
3. Weight
4. Gender
5. How you dress
6. How you speak
7. Are you a parent
8. Your Partner (their class & journey, as well as influence on you)
9. School & other debt
10. Disabilities
11. Immigrantion status
Etc.

Freedom from the system depends on (unspoken but most important):
12. Personal access to other people with money.

This works on all levels of “money” we talk about. Social class system exists in every single country in the world. If someone wants to move up from unemployment to becoming a CEO of a large global company they will need to do many many steps and transitions.

Your skillset matters to some degree, but what will actually affect your social class travel is all of the things listed above (and some more). Yet, we constantly signal to people that #meritocracy is what matters and will give people freedom from suffering.

No, work can help only if you can get work. Many people can’t even get meaningful jobs due to being born in a wrong country, where economy is f-ed.What would benefit is to help people visualise path easier to freedom with what we already have, not what would could be in 300 years

I talk simply about monetary freedom. Love can be found at any layer of the socio economic classes. But also, finding partners that motivate you can influence your journey.

Work can help only if you are enabled to travel up. Working your whole life at same salary struggling to meet ends in more and more expensive world will not cut it. Pensions are gone, we can’t buy flats due to prices, recession left most of us in 30s well f-ed, especially balkans

What would have helped me the most was that in my 20s someone told me that instead of my arts farts utiopianism of “I need to be me & true to my personality”, I actually put on a suit, got a corp job, met those people half way & worked on shedding some things that stopped me.

What I used to think was my personality was an outcome of lack of education at a certain socio-class level unavailable in my country. I travelled my class in last 10 year and it meant shedding & learning more about myself. Primarily that no matter what change will happen.

I wish I knew about these steps earlier. I would have been able to fill in the gaps earlier. Instead, in my 30s I need to catch up. Also, to be clear, if I knew the system earlier I would have been more ok with change as I would know the outcome & why things were so hard so far

We only have one life. I want to lead mine as a free individual, where my life doesn’t depend on money from 9-5 employment, always at a hand of someone elses ruling. Two ways to achieve it is: 1. Lower needs or 2. Learn what the system is and how to hack it

Lowering needs puts one in dangerous position as health and longevity is so closely tied to money in western society. So option 2 is to try to become financially independant - through projects, investments & building companies that bring value.

I wish we spoke more about enabling people in the now to achieve #financialfreedom, be it through industries like tech or just by fine-tuning ourselves to a socio-class level that we aim for in whatever industry and set goals to be in the right places, fill the gaps.

There is nothing wrong in wanting to change socio economic class, talking about it or admitting it exists. It does. Racism, sexism, many -isms are closely tied to socio classess. The way to change it is to trojan horse the damn thing one person at the time & trickle down wealth.

So yes, how you dress matters, how you speak matters, how you look matters, how much money you have matters - in this crappy system of ours it still does, no matter how mad it makes us or makes you put your fist to the sky.

And sadly, money matters much more than what we do or our skill set - which is why teachers make nothing comparing to let’s say football players. So my dear fellow capitalists, in the world that has boundaries & limits, I won’t wait for it to change, because it won’t in my life.

For example women get 2% investments year after year after year and barely 10% are in leadership positions. It won’t change in my lifetime. What I can change is how I exist within the system that I am in now and how I can adapt to gain freedom.

I was unemployed for a period of my life due to economic issues in my home country and it was horrible. Later when I moved to Scandinavia, I was faced with under-employment due to bias & frankly xenophobia. Life with closed doors is fucking hard.

So don’t tell me to ignore the doors or pretend like doors don’t matter. They matter and only certain type of keys open them. I want us to talk much more about what that means, what is the key to socio-class movement & how to empower people to accept their situation & hack it.

Looking at your own journey doesn’t mean you are not looking for the future as well. As doors open for you, you can choose to leave them open for others, lower the bar to enter. But to do so, one first needs to enter. Another way is by gathering a revolution,those are far & apart

As someone who grew up in a war, I can tell you even after a revolution, a new class system comes into place. New rules, but there are still rules.

To be frank, one needs to choose what is their end goal, from the context they are in. Example, an average non-immigrant Swede with full stability will have a hard time understanding my want for freedom, as they simply will not have fears I do.

This takes me back to a story when I moved abroad to work for a swedish company & my boss took me out to dinner with co-workers. He knew I had no money as salaries in Croatia were much lower than Sweden, & yet he proceeded to make an open joke that I will pick up the bill for all

He knew my circumstances, and it was an absolute dick move to play with someone who literally had 40
euros in their bank account & this job was their way out of poverty, new to a new country, no friends or family there.

But that’s the power of privilage and security for you. He and likes of him will never understand this & why freedom through money matters.
I really want us to talk more about freedom and what it means for us to get it NOW versus in the future, and how that journey happens.

@threadreaderapp compile