"How Am I Different": A Bachelorette Manifesto

Road racing season is upon us. It would probably be more appropriate to call them "fun runs." But they're timed, and a lot of people take them seriously. The last two weeks I have completed 5Ks in times that are some of my poorer efforts in the last four years. It's my lack of training due to an onerous daily work commute.

I'm maintaining a minimal level of fitness, which I consider to be the ability to run three miles in eight-minute-per-mile pace. But since the last two weekends I've been running 5Ks, I haven't been able to work in my baseline 8-mile Lake Union Loop. This morning was my first time running the loop in three weeks. It started well. But after the outward-bound half, I became quite meek. Then on the final steep climb up Capitol Hill back home, I found myself resorting to the old-man shuffle. Fortunately, I received a sonic boost from Bettye LaVette. Her cover of Aimee Mann's "How Am I Different" shuffled on the iPod, giving me the physical courage to finish with a little bit of dignity.

What a manifesto this song is!

I've got one more question
                  Before I pack
When you fuck it up later
                  Do I get my money back?

I wish every bachelorette would listen to LaVette's I've Got My Own Hell To Raise (2005). I think she would be more confident in her solitariness.

Post-Familialism

A couple Thursdays back David Brooks had a column devoted to a significant demographic shift underway in developed countries. 

More people are living alone.  "The number of Americans who are living alone has shot up from 9 percent in 1950 to 28 percent today."  Brooks says "This is not a phenomenon particular to the United States.  In Scandinavia, 40 percent to 45 percent of people live alone."

The bachelor and the bachelorette are a burgeoning demographic, what Brooks calls post-familialism, after a research report -- "The Rise of Post-Familialism: Humanity's Future?" -- prepared by Joel Kotkin.

Brooks asks "Why is this happening?  The report offers many explanations.  People are less religious.  People in many parts of the world are more pessimistic and feeling greater economic stress.  Global capitalism also seems to be playing a role, especially, it seems, in Asia."

So there you have it.  The system has been named, capitalism, although with two "seems" in the same sentence.

But for the rest of the column Brooks does what a crafty, formidable rhetorician toiling in defense of concentrated wealth does -- he turns the discussion away from the political economy to a manichean morality tale.

According to Brooks it is the self-indulgent, petulant urban single, the one who voted for Obama, who is spurring this collapse of the two-parent family.  If she would just buck up and take on a little responsibility and get married and make a baby then all would be well and good and the nation would be stronger.

As a bachelor with a string of wrecked relationships behind me I see the rise of post-familialism as a rational response to the increasing stresses accompanying whatever stage capitalism (finance monopoly) we are now living under.

For what it is worth, Brooks' columns of the last couple of years have been interesting.  Since the Republican Party has become overtly Birchite he has had to rely more on indirection, sleight of hand, to support his conservative worldview, and he has done this by writing about recent social science research.