The 'Great Resignation'

This is one of my "old-dude" postings, repeating a point I've previously flogged to death, out of the hornery conviction that nobody fully grokked it the last x times.

The repetitiveness of old people is not entirely innocent, though they hope you'll keep thinking so. They know they're doing it, but are too lazy, self-indulgent, and entitled to throttle the impulse because they think they've earned the right. Consider my favorite anecdote about old age (originally posted here):

My favorite aunt had a favorite story. Her mother's mother was a piece of work; a hard-assed, uncompromising, raging bucket of unreasonable impossibleness. My aunt's besieged, haggard mom had pleaded with her, as a child, "If I ever become anything like my mother when I'm old, please let me know!" When the day finally arrived and my aunt let her mother know, her feisty, pugnacious response was "She was right!!!"

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A much-discussed Forbes article from last week titled "The 'Great Resignation' Is A Workers’ Revolution" started off like this:

We’re entering a new post-pandemic paradigm. The old-school management style of dictating terms to workers is ending. An ongoing war for talent pushed businesses, such as Target and Walmart, to offer free tuition for their workers. Many companies are providing sizable sign-on bonuses and higher wages to attract and retain people.

The "Great Resignation” is a sort of workers’ revolution and uprising against bad bosses and tone-deaf companies that refuse to pay well and take advantage of their staff. Millions of workers voted with their feet and walked out of their jobs—many without having another position already lined up. They no longer want to feel like victims. The quitters are making a powerful, positive and self-affirming statement saying that they won’t take the abusive behavior any longer.

Nope. Absolutely the wrong take.

It's not that we're fed up or beaten down or unfairly treated. It's that we're aristocrats. We've reached a point where we're piqued at the prospect of being directed or held accountable in any way.

As I argued here, the missing factor in the Fermi Paradox (explaining the mysterious lack of evidence of intelligent life in the Universe, which mathematically should be teeming with it) is comfort and wealth.

Intelligent organisms are not built for comfort and wealth. Mrs. Howell is not a happy, grateful, satisfied person, and we're all Mrs. Howell now; princesses increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas. And that's why it's all unwinding.

This article describes a milestone in societal disintegration. If we grow much more coddled, our immensely expanded sense of rage and victimization will lead us to blow up the world. And this is the x factor explaining the Fermi Paradox.