Improving Ourselves to Death: Self-Help in The Age of Unraveling
It's gone too far.
My upstairs neighbors were banging again to stay warm. They always watched Family Guy afterward. It was 2 or 3 degrees outside, and we didn’t have heat or insulation. The wind chill could fall all the way down to -20.
Our landlord told us, “Stop complaining. You have heat.” You know how that goes. It was all theoretical. With a power bill sliding in at $400, you don’t use your heat. You put on thermal underwear and tough it out.
Sometimes, the water in our toilet froze.
That was life after finishing my Ph.D. I had a doctorate, but I couldn’t afford to frame my diploma. I skipped my hooding ceremony, because I couldn’t afford the regalia. I had a tenure-track job, but I could barely afford gas and groceries. It didn’t bother me too much back then. It was the path I’d chosen.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one:
Psychologists at the University of California ran this little experiment. They asked students to play Monopoly. They broke everyone up into pairs. They gave one player twice as muc…