The Toxic Myth at the Heart of Capitalism

Hint: It’s the pseudoscientific belief that all struggle makes you stronger

A friend of mine recently posted about the toxic nature of hereditary wealth, which I absolutely agree with, and then noted that society believes struggle makes people stronger, which I have some issues with (the philosophical stance, not the fact that society is all too ready to crush individuals in the name of intangible profits), for a variety of reasons we’ll get to in a few minutes. But first, an hypothetical: What if there was some alternate universe in which, in response to complaints about corruption, the Catholic Church actually made broad-based, effective reforms to stem the corruption? It’s likely we’d still have some forms of Protestant Christianity, but, like the Eastern Orthodox Church or Egyptian Coptic Church (BTW, they have a Pope, too, so even the Pope isn’t always Catholic), they’d probably look like weird, generic brand versions of Catholicism (not to bash those religions or their followers, but, as an agnostic, I’d be hard-pressed to distinguish between them without Wikipedia and a theology seminar). In this universe, the Puritans and their psychotic work ethic withered on the vine before being subsumed by the Anglican Orthodox Church, and their virulent devotion to labor would be a minor foot-note in the pages of history. In this universe, both Elon Musk and noted real estate mogul Rupert Hoit inherited a fuck-ton of money, and then spent the rest of their lives lounging by a pool and drinking themselves to death, instead of destroying America and/or the very concept of fiat currency. Half a million Americans would be alive. Bitcoin would still be a wobbly, developing currency that tech bro executives treated as an experiment.

But no; we’re trapped in a weird, dark world in which rich kids are told to go out there and d̶e̶s̶t̶r̶o̶y̶ ̶s̶o̶c̶i̶e̶t̶y̶ make their own money. I actually went to grad school with a trust-fund kid, and, although she was clever, she was hardly the sharpest tool in the shed. My main memories of her were that she absolutely could not stand not being the center of every human interaction she was a part of, and her parents told her to go out and make something of herself. Again, if her Mom had just told her that day drinking was forbidden; I never would have met her. I don’t know if anyone’s life would have been better, although I would’ve enjoyed my pathophysiology course much more. I’m submitting the, “Rich, entitled kids destroy the planet more-reliably than asteroids, so maybe encouraging them to drink themselves to death isn’t such a bad idea” because it’s a more-humane, palatable suggestion than, “Everyone related to someone worth $100 million or more gets on a rocket to Mars today, right now; we’ll colonize the planet later.”

But, all of this “Get Jay Robert Rutherford IV into a career on Wall Street and out of the family margarita pool” stems from that initial, critically-flawed ideal that struggle is good, and struggle breeds success. Under some conditions, yeah, struggle gets good results — in the gym, or studying. Sometimes, even in those exact same conditions, struggling is pointless — if you lift with improper form, you’ll injure yourself or won’t see results; studying for hours is great if you can predict which ten pages of the text (out of 200) are important to the professor (I’ve taken four different physiology courses taught by four different professors, allegedly at roughly the same level of difficulty and specificity; it’s been a completely different experience every time). And recall all of those hard-working Americans who saved and bought homes or invested in the real estate market in 2007. All of that hard work didn’t really pay dividends. We love to point out that successful people work hard, which may or may not be true, but we ignore the fact that working class and BIPOC folx probably work harder and never have anything to show for it.

Also, personally, as a cripple, I’m a little insulted by the notion that struggle improves you — in my case, it did make me who I am, but it also robbed me of who I could have been. I’ve undergone 41 truly brutal experimental chemo infusions, three neurosurgeries, and 100-ish days on chemo (not consecutively), and, although I’m sort of in remission (the medical definitions, terminology, and qualifications surrounding brain cancer are murky and ever-changing), I have a limp and am probably weaker due to the entire experience. And I’m hardly alone — tell a sexual assault survivor or grieving parent that their trauma made them stronger, and then, please, kill yourself, because that’s a truly callous thing to tell someone who’s survived a life-defining tragedy. Bones heal, but the bone is weaker. Sometimes struggle simply makes one exhausted.

I could go down the list of objectively quantifiable cases in which struggle is actually counter-productive for weeks on end, but this whole “struggle and conflict is good under all circumstances” myth is probably responsible for an administrative class that feels misery is directly correlated with productivity. Back on Earth 616, in which Christian Fundamentalism looks more like a two-drink maximum and less like xenophobia with a Crucifix, that entire administrative class of cruel, incompetent, micromanaging nitwits is largely in charge of office supplies and payroll forms, as it should be. When we hear about a friend or neighbor experiencing tragedy, we simply tell them, “Hey, that really sucks, do you want to get lunch and talk about it?” instead of this, “You’ll emerge from this stronger” psychopathic crap we heap upon the very victims of that school of thought.

TLDR: Even though suffering and struggle can, occasionally, under the right conditions, improve people or organizations, the belief that struggle for the sake of struggling is a good thing is much like throwing a drowning person a barbell — counterproductive, dangerous, and cruel. It’s time to admit that struggle may be necessary, but unnecessary struggle is a form of masochism (or sadism, depending on whether you’re under the boot heel, or wearing the boot). Yes, wolves and other predators thin the herd of the weakest members, making the species stronger, but that situation sucks for the individual caribou, and assuming we’re still at the mercy of saber-toothed cats is a truly idiotic notion. We form groups — flocks, clans, societies, nations, etc — to reduce the severity and danger of that struggle. Anyone claiming otherwise likely has a pet tiger they want to feed.