The Generational Illusion
This video explains the brief history of what led up to this difference of perspective of wealth gap and what has been leading up to this generational animosity between older and younger generations
This is not in reference to the process of heightened prices of housing due to inflation and the growing gap between the upper and lower class. It is more pointed towards the collective social growth of the ideology that has been cultivated that the idea of owning a house is a monument of a step towards the upper class, rather than the idea of owning your own living space. This will be an insight through a commodification and ideological standpoint that is created and subconsciously supported by the masses under this influence. This is also to bring into understanding the inequality of treatment of the newer generations of young adults who may have been given a skewed perspective or expectation of what is considered a successful human in a short span of time after high school or college. This is what shall be called the generational illusion that works for both ends of the generational differences and for their detriment as this creates an unreal insight in the new generations, an illusion that there has been little difference in difficulty to acquire a house, and the animosity that comes from the realization that things have changed for the worse in the newer generations. They make for an argumentative conflict that only creates a distrust in our communities. Therefore through the conflict of these generations' understandings, there is an unnecessary ideology that our community has commodified the idea of home owning.
To start, it is to be understood better that the ideology behind home ownership is turned into a commodity itself within our cultural viewpoint. Though, what appears first to explain is understanding what people are perceiving as commodities and what could be used in these terms as a commodified source. Though some would come to deny such a claim as their perception of what is considered a commodity resource doesn’t fall under a category such as housing or place of stay. What can be identified immediately as a commodity, and if the concept of housing can technically qualify as commodity resource in the American community. Using an example from Marx’s work on commodities, we can identify what our community sees as one. According to Marx’s writing, a commodity is described as its appearance and what their fundamental components are that make up its shine and how they can be categorized as either luxury or commodity itself.
A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labor.
Using what we have learned from Marx’s description, we can see that the idea of a homeowner has made a transformation through the generations as a commodity of its own making. Owning a house is an easily understood concept, yet is surrounded by an abundance of much more confusing things surrounding it upon approach. This while the price of homeowning is on a skyrocketing climb that the concept of homeowning becomes more and more unforeseeable to many Americans making their livelihoods that they will be able to afford having their own house in their community. It becomes more unrealistic to some that it could be argued that the idea of homeownership becomes an idolized and fetishized commodity within the American communities. Thus implementing an ideological standpoint that stands as a statement against the old ideology of “The American Dream” previous generations have grown to believe in. Though this now brings into question how people can believe this ideology whilst the clear decline of the American economy is becoming more translucent to the everyday citizen as the timeline grows closer to the present and the insight into the future becomes more grim as the days come to pass.
Here below, we can see the millennium's increase of shares bought by wealthy investors. Hoarding the new luxury of owning a house from the blossoming generations to come and making the process extremely difficult to find a permanent home for the youth.
Given this from what we see here, how can we not believe in the ideal that the wealthy homeowners are the ones pulling the reins for the current moral and financial future of millennials and growing Gen Z to this day.
The concept of ideology is usually formed around a group belief and indoctrination that is generally accepted as the correct way of “how things should be” and are often not given a second thought unless by minds who are in a call for change. This leads to an almost fetishized ideal from the start that highlights the matter of homeowning as a fetishized commodity. Though how do these two matters of different concepts make up the fundamentals of a change within the American dream? Looking deep into what Marx and Freud have written in tangent made clear by Slavoj Zizek as to what we interpret in the iconic representation of the ideological factors to be.
The answer is that there is a fundamental homology between the interpretative procedure of Marx and Freud - more precisely, between their analysis of commodity and of dreams. In both cases the point is to avoid the properly fetishistic fascination of the 'content' supposedly hidden behind the form: the 'secret' to be unveiled through analysis is not the content hidden by the form (the form of commodities, the form of dreams) but, on the contrary, the secret' of this form itself. The theoretical intelligence of the form of dreams does not consist in penetrating from the manifest content to its 'hidden kernel', to the latent dream- thoughts; it consists in the answer to the question: why have the latent dream-thoughts assumed such a form, why were they transposed into the form of a dream? It is the same with commodities: the real problem is not to penetrate to the 'hidden'.
Through Zizek, we can find the veiled ideology as we perceive the dream of homeowning as a more unrealistic goal in the young adults' near future is what sets the gap between generational belief of homeownership. The generational illusion that follows is the conflicted ideology from older generations where the price of homeowning was a much more affordable cost at the time.
Though what is it about the American dream that has had so many people follow behind it for so long. What is it that makes the ideology more believable and gains such a crowd? Is there breaking free from it? The process of breaking free from an aimed for dream, or goal of deconstructing an illusory fantasy that will end up creating a conflict between two different populations. The formula for bringing an end to this issue, can be theorized as a step-by-step process made by Freud on how to pierce the illusion of something seemingly spectacular and break it down to its bare bones of information. Freud describes his psychological process as such.
First, we must break the appearance according to which a dream is nothing but a simple and meaningless confusion, a disorder caused by physiological processes and as such having nothing whatsoever to do with signification. In other words, we must accomplish a crucial step towards a hermetical approach and conceive the dream as a meaningful phenomenon, as something transmitting a repressed message which has to be discovered by an interpretative procedure; • Then we must get rid of the fascination in this kernel of signification, in the 'hidden meaning' of the dream - that is to say, in the content concealed behind the form of a dream - and center our attention on this form itself, on the dream-work to which the 'latent dream thoughts' were submitted.
We look through the objective of homeowning thus far as a social headbutting between the ideology of two groups of peoples of different age groups with separate perspectives on the whole matter, but the truth to it is that the ideologies themselves are not to blame for this animosity in the working class itself. It is those who are hoarding the homes and land for homes that make the generational finger pointing go one way or another to keep the attention away from them. The problem with the generational illusion between the old and new aspiring homeowners may be just a distraction from the issue of the wealthy landowners making things more difficult to attain such a slice of the American dream as they collect more rights to homes and housing. Though it is not the idea of unequal opportunity of home owning alone that breaks the ideological pothole on the road to progression. It takes more to unlearn what has been learned and accept that what is occurring is an unacceptable form of inequality for the new generations. To also accept at face value whatever price is placed upon something such as a house or even an apartment room. To bolster this factor of ideological belief, Zizek writes something similar in the pursuit of understanding the ideology of what people believe has the proper value in something and what does not.
This does not mean, on the other hand, that everyday 'practical' consciousness, as opposed to the philosophical-theoretical one - the consciousness of the individuals partaking in the act of exchange - is not also subjected to a complementary blindness. During the act of exchange, individuals proceed as 'practical solipsists', they misrecognize the socio-synthetic function of exchange: that is the level of the 'real abstraction' as the form of socialization of private production through the medium of the market: " Such a misrecognition is the sine qua non of the effectuation of an act of exchange - if the participants were to take note of the dimension of what is 'real abstraction', the 'effective' act of exchange itself would no longer be possible.
Zizek challenges the effectiveness of exchange today as something that should be brought into question, and when the wealthy homeowners control the prices of housing, there is no challenging of those prices due to the mass ideological acceptance of what the current state of housing prices are permitted to be. Though can the wealthy homeowners be the ones to blame for this?
It could be argued that these wealthy few are responsible for the developed ideologies that led the aspiring homeowners astray in their expectations of pursuing a new home for themselves. Though can this be true based on the idea of who owns what homes and how many of them? The works of Marx and Engels have been applied to this scenario and there are the interesting similarities to be seen in their writing within the context of the wealthy making ideologies.
The class that has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relations grasped as ideas; hence of the relations which make the one class the ruling class, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar , therefore, as the, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of a historical epoch, it is self evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the ideas of the epoch.
Given the factors that we have uncovered thus far, we can connect the dots between similarities of discussion that each factor of these two different discussions align themselves comfortably with. Imagining the ownership of homes and housing over the less fortunate citizens in a community being treated as the means of material production, and therefore giving the wealthy landowners the control over the means of mental production as well. The pieces start to fall into place after all. If the pieces are put together properly, where the non-wealthy stand separately turns into a place that all of them share together in the pyramid, underneath the wealthy, an unequal opportunity that has been provided for the newer generation that skews their perspective on the future. If the newer generation feels like they can't get a house in the time it took their parents and grandparents to do so, the results could end up in a major blow to a young adult's self-esteem. Though what can be unlearned, or changed within this ideological belief of such high value on housing to the fact that buying a house wouldn't be a reasonable goal by the time someone is even 35. While this will not become the groundbreaking change hopeful to be seen within the realm of homeowning and its unfair pricing to the new generations, It can remain as its call to action to break free from the shackles of ideological belief and indoctrinated prices on youth.
To close, raising awareness of this will hopefully bring the efforts of both ends of the generational spectrum to light on their situations, and that they may look beyond their indoctrinated ideological standpoints, opinions and expectations of the world of homeowning within a reasonable time. That way, their efforts are better off not wasted upon each other but on a call to action to better their future in home owning and finding the real problem within their community that has skewed their beliefs in the ease, or difficulty in the road of getting an affordable house. Bringing this all together, while this may not change the inequality of owning a house in general, the awareness this raises will hopefully create a larger crowd of awareness of the issue. After all, few are immune to the influence of ideology, and even fewer can be made aware of the influence over them.
