Art by Rachel A Rosen,who also designs amazing covers for books (HINT!)

This essay is not about Taylor Swift – or at least, it’s gotfar less to do with Taylor Swift than my last essay. But there is a connection.

It’s pretty hard to deny that even though it’s made adequatebank, Life of a Showgirl has had – at least on parts of the internet I’veseen, i.e. my Discord channels and my Youtube and Substack algorithms – a prettynegative reaction from fans and a lot of critics. The line between “fan” and “critic”is blurrier than it’s ever been, in this current era of accessible content creationand platforming. You don’t need to be an expert for your opinion to matter; youjust need to catch the algorithm at the right or wrong time.

Regardless, some people are treating the album, and Swift,as a laughingstock, and not for the first time.

Now, in my own life, I mentioned in my last essay that I wasrunning for the local public school board, and while I managed to get over 2900votes, from a voting turnout of about 18% and about 20k voters or so, I didn’tget a spot on the school board.

 (My shitshow of a provincialgovernment apparently is floating the idea of just abolishing school boardsanyway. If you’re Albertan, this is a reminder to make a fuss and do your bestto piss off the UCP. Operation TotalRecall is underway, and please check it out, because this government isattacking our democratic rights and everyone’s interests, regardless of preferredpolitical affiliation.)

Now – my personal failure here was a disappointment, but I’vehad a much kinder reaction from people. Partly, I don’t have the expectationsplaced on me that, you know, a seasoned political candidate or a world-famouscelebrity like Swift does. And while I’m proud that I made the attempt, there’sstill a certain shadow over any effort that doesn’t bear fruit.

It got me thinking: what does failure mean?

There’s something really interesting about failing thesedays. Now, maybe it’s a modern problem, or maybe there’s a historical precedenthere, but at least in my own English-speaking, Western cultural context, it seemsto me like failure has developed this moral weight to it.

A Quick, Dirty History of Success

I’ve alluded to the basic concepts of Calvinism and gesturedat the Protestant work ethic and its resulting trauma before. In a quick, dirtyoverview, a prominent strain of Christianity held that some people were chosenfor Heaven and others simply aren’t, and the seats are limited: predestination.However, and here’s the extra nasty bit, people thought that God would hint atwho was destined for eternal salvation by favouring them with success in theirearthly life.

So of course, people who belonged to Calvinist strains ofChristianity ended up working as hard as possible to try and demonstrate their stateof blessedness. Mix that into the cultural soup of the Industrial Revolution,and you have an extremely toxic recipe for the future.

This whole belief system has kind of evolved into what’s nowcalled the Prosperity Gospel, which is a more aggressive focus specifically onthe idea that God will reward you in not only Heaven, but your earthly life,with actual riches. Immortality in a paradise of fellowship amongst loved ones anda divine parental figure is no longer enough to satisfy people who are scrapingto make ends meet.

John Steinbeckdid not actually say, “Socialism never took root in America because thepoor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarilyembarrassed millionaires.” The thing that this popular misquote gets wrong is atleast partly its attribution of blame. It has this implication that damn it,these poor people are just stupid and stubborn, or ignorant – if only they’dsee what’s gone wrong!

That perspective glides over the extremely intensivepropaganda efforts that have gone into making people believe that poverty istheir own fault. After all, if you just work hard enough, you can be abillionaire too, right? Ignore the widening legal loopholes for transference ofwealth, avoidance of taxation, and the inheritance chains of property, wealth,and privileged advantages that directly tie into chattel slavery and Europeanaristocratic families, of course. It’s just about luck and working hard! Get onthat grindset, girl!

Back to Failure

The thing about focusing on success and The Power ofPositive Thinking, and other similar late-Victorian and early 20thcentury self-help texts, is that it doesn’t really account for what the fuckhappens if…you just fail. In The Secret, one of the more recent anddeeply influential permutations of modern prosperity gospel, there’s a wholething about “The Universe” wanting to reward you by giving you whatever youthink about most. Of course, that means that worrying about failure willactually result in failure…because the universe is kind of stupid and bad atconsent, I guess.

Perhaps, dear reader, you can see the direction I’m pullingyou in. The logical corollary of the axiom that success = favour from God orthe Universe…is that failure means God, or the Universe, is disappointed in you.

I haven’t seen this discussed much, but the idea lurks likean urban legend intruder beneath the bed, breathing and panting damply, evidentbut too terrifying to confront directly.

“BadThings That Happen to You Are Your Own Fault”

People don’t say this out loud in exactly these words, butthe implication sits there, and turns up constantly, just like that urbanlegend slasher. Even after #MeToo in the late 2010s, people still say and implythat one’s clothing or behaviour could have been responsible for sexual assaultand harassment.

Not attaining the success you expected at work, missy? Clearlythe problem is that feminism has failed, and it’s time to Retvrn to the(imagined) past mode of life. Be more…traditional. You want a family, don’tyou? Wouldn’t it be relaxing to just spend time with your children at homewhile your husband takes care of things? All you have to do is the chores, andyou already do those! Why work in addition to that?

This particular message is all over social media, popping upin different forms like mutating toxic mushrooms around the earthen cellar doorwhere fascism dwells.

Never in this line of propaganda is there a discussion of,say, fertility problems. Despite the wide accessibility of fertility treatmentsin our current era, having any kind of trouble, say, getting pregnant orimpregnating someone, still carries the sting of humiliation. Never mind thequestion of what happens if you find out that you can’t crack it as a parent*after* you have children, or the constant, pervasive fear every parent has offailing their child.

As mentioned, the dominant cultural milieu in the West is flavouredby both capitalism and Christanity. Both the wealthy and the super-wealthybenefit from having the broad working class focused on aspiration rather thanjustice. If people are trying to grind their way to the top, and fighting eachother for scraps, they won’t target the people actually holding the reins ofpower and wealth. Furthermore, if people see wealth as a blessing from God or theUniverse, poverty indicates either withholding of a blessing, or failure.

Failure and poverty are thus made uncomfortable housemates,necessary to each other. Any type of failure risks the danger of poverty, andpoverty itself is a form of implied failure.

Let’s Make It Worse

So, this is pretty bad, right? Like if you take apart theidea that failure is always your own fault *and* a result of not being goodenough for the Divine Parent (whether that’s God or the Universe), it’s prettyscary and daunting. It’s a damn hard standard to meet.

Now put that in the context of our panopticon society. Speakingof 19th century morality that’s stabbing us in the ass, the panopticonwas a prison design meant to allow constant surveillance of prisoners, to makesure they were reforming properly. Constant scrutiny and an absolutedestruction of privacy is clearly the way to stop someone from hurting people,right? Of course, if we’re talking about people breaking the law, we shouldprobably allude to that whole “poor people commit crimes because they’re poor”thing that tends to happen. So basically, if you surveil and shame peopleadequately, it should be possible to fix their unfortunate moral defect ofpoverty.

The best part is, now we have the thing where userinterfaces on social media treat every person like a content creator, peoplefeel both social pressure and algorithmic pressure to post regularly. Betweenthe data exposure required for social media and actually posting stuff about one’spersonal life, we’ve developed a societal system of self-exposure and peersurveillance.

Now, peer surveillance has always been kind of a thing –people have been up in each other’s business for as long as we’ve been socialanimals, and in fact, other animals are nosy, too. But the current mode of peersurveillance transcends previous social models. Before, you’d have to be seen orheard doing something you weren’t supposed to; your thoughts, at least, were sacrosanct.

But now we share our thoughts as well, and present the worldwith an entirely new path of judgement.

And, in a world where the middle and lower class arecollapsing together, rather than forging class solidarity and focusing on ourmutual opposition, we resort to cannibalism, in hopes of temporary catharsisand relief. After all, if we can root out the class traitors, the “Treatlers”who still order snacks from food delivery services, surely we’ll be able todefeat our enemies, right? Somehow, people bullying each other on social mediaplatforms has failed to trigger the revolution.

How the fuck do we fix this?  

The thing is, this situation isn’t unfixable. In addition toplain compassion and critical thinking and asking ourselves questions – should I*really* repeat this or engage with this content? Am I being too harsh on otherpeople? – we need to practice both self-compassion and compassion towardsothers.

This sounds extremely boring and un-fun, so if you findyourself with superfluous hostile or mischievous energy, direct it towards thereal targets: people in power. You have a right to be angry for what they’redoing to us, so write angry, ferocious letters, make art, or find othercreative outlets to express your anger. People in power are so much morefragile than we think they are. We should make them scared again. For legalreasons, I am not directly advocating violent action, but I am advocating protestsand strikes, and whatever forms of disruption you can manage.

Harass politicians and political figures who are trying tostrip your rights away. Cover for your coworkers when they’re sick or “quiet quitting”.Ignore shoplifting customers, especially if you’re a fellow customer. Buy foodfor homeless people (and also just give them money). Find out what yourneighbours’ names are and actually say hi to them. Be nice to random people onthe internet, especially when you don’t want to. And above all else, reframehow you see failure.

What failure really means

Not everything we try to do is going to succeed, but insteadof seeing failure as the end of a story, see it as part of a cycle. We can’t learnwhat works without failures along the way. Like death, failure is aninevitability. Also like death, it tends to be terrifying until you actuallyencounter it, and realise that it’s an essential part of living. In variousways, we will fail over and over – so the trick is to see how long one can keepgoing before the next failure; as well as to stop treating failure itself as amoral judgement on everything about us in our lives.

This is hard, slow work, and sometimes being nice toyourself is harder than being nice to other people – so turn your compassionoutward; towards friends, family, and strangers, even celebrities.

(Compassion doesn’t mean blind defense, but if you don’tknow the difference, maybe go spend some time sitting with that before you yellat me. There’s your first lesson: stop wasting your time yelling at randompeople on the internet when you could be trolling and harassing CEOs of largecorporations.)

With practice at turning compassion outward, it gets easierto ask, “Would I say this to my partner? My best friend?” when dealing withnegative thoughts and judgements rooted in the Christian/capitalist paradigm.

The other thing to do with failure is to see the freedom init. If you’ve already failed, you’re already “a sinner”, and “damned” – so whatcomes next?

Well, actually, anything you want. If you’re already lost,why not go further? Modify your approach. Find a new goal. Instead of waitingfor happiness later, find small happinesses now.  Instead of longing to be a billionaire, orwaiting for heaven, ask yourself – what were you hoping for from those thingsanyway? To help your friends? You don’t need a billion dollars to do that. Lifeonly gets better when you realise that the metrics of success were impossibleanyway. To quote a song I like, “we’llnever get to Heaven ‘cause we don’t know how.”

Now, do I actually succeed in living by all of theseprecepts? It’s a work in progress. But hey, the more I fail, the more I have achance to try again.

***

A writer and artist, Michelle Browne lives in southern ABwith xer family and their cats. She is currently working on the next books inher series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinkingas much tea as humanly possible. Find xer all over the internet: *Website * Amazon * Substack * Patreon * Ko-fi * Instagram * Bluesky* Mastodon * Tumblr * Medium * OG Blog * Facebook