Sophie Sweatman

More countries seem to be in lockstep ignoring what people want – Image by kalhh from Pixabay

If continual obstacles keep appearing no matter what you do, life. today can seem like a steep mountain where we cannot see the top or we cannot see the end of the tunnel. We all do our best so are governments failing us?

Having just seen the phrase ‘learned helplessness‘ today I realise it describes that feeling of defeat, which demotivates me. I remember this feeling from the mid-noughties when I described it as a steep climb.

In the 1990s, it seemed that people began to become more lethargic. Was it due to the Criminal Justice Act 1994, which stopped people meeting to dance, create and listen to innovative new music and have substance enhanced experiences? Was it due to the introduction of alcopops, encouraging young people onto alcohol in the debauched 1990s?

I believe we all need to make our own choices or decisions. After 14 years of Tory cuts, where public and local services ranging from social activities through to libraries and transport have lost funding, our lives have become narrower.

Also wages have stagnated with zero hours contracts, which has fuelled hatred towards cheap overseas labour being brought in by corporations. Unfortunately this has caused misplaced rifts in communities between demographics.

Many families face spiralling costs of basic living, rent, mortgages, eating, schooling and healthcare. There are no enterprise grants for young people to set up new businesses, as Soul II Soul did in the late 1980s. There is no support for start-ups or entrepreneurs. There is no one to ask, no one objective, experienced and knowledgable to speak to about anything despite the growing routes that exist to contact someone.

There is a minefield of pitfalls online when you ask a question, get legal advice, do a quiz, pay for parking or look up a company. You could be chargd 78p then find a company has used Authorised Push Payments to take hundreds of pounds from your account with no email or account set up.

Administrative mistakes can mean a company can take over your energy supply and it is up to you to talk to the right person, say the right thing, use the right act of parliament to rectify the situation, stealing hours of your time and attention.

Changes to reduce pollution are not designed to benefit the individual. If the government invesrted £22billion into innovations in renewable energy to get solar panels onto as many private rooves as possible and to improve use of electricity, wind, water and sun, this could ‘trickle down’ to all income levels through increased access to renewable energy.

As we grow older, our minds are a cornocopeia of experiences, solutions and learned behaviours. If we have family members and friends adding to that with their criticisms and judgments, it removes power and autonomy if we are then going against what other people say. We need the power to make our own mistakes and learn from them to find our way.

Life today can become a series of carpet pulls from under our feet to the point where we are demotivated and give up. To a greater or lesser extent, we might be proactive in some areas and treat others like dog mess on the pavement. Excuse the mental picture.

With hindsight, I feel as if I have been lucky. I have pursued various things and what I planned might have failed but unexpected opportunities have turned out to be better than I could have wished for. The one ingredient to these life improvements have been actions where I haven’t over thought it.

In areas where I have learned to feel helpless, I realise as I write (and am now making a note to write a poem about it), I don’t take action even when opportunities present themselves. Sometimes I don’t immediately see myself in things but in someone else. Then it transpires that I recognise it in myself. I realise I might be projecting. I think this is a natural way to see ourselves reflected in others but we need to recognise it.

In the area of starting a business, I have learned helplessness. Who do I ask? Where do I start? I have only recently asked family to not try and direct my affairs, judge my actions or critique my ideas. This would be like doing a egg and spoon three legged race blindfolded. We need to see our own way and use our own heads to progress along the track adjusting our movements as we learn and experience hitting obstacles.

Increasingly, governments try to take decisions away from us. Young people are kept in education – or indoctrination depending on how compliant they are to what they’re told – until 18 or even encouraged to take a loan to pay university fees, which have risen from £3290 to £9,000 a year.

Therefore young people start working life under a mountain of debt. This only adds to the rigidity of action they can then take. Independence comes at a cost as housing benefit is subject to a benefits cap for working age adults over 16 years of age. According to this website, the benefit cap for couples with or without children is the same, which means that families are hit hardest.

In 2024, this means that people on benefits have nowhere near enough to live on after nine months of signing on to pay their rent, bills, food costs, clothing and travel to find work. After experiencing life on benefits in my 20s, this reduces the confidence and presentation someone needs to succeed in a recruitment application as well as distracting us from the work by sheer desperacy to survive.

At least communicating with people out of work respectfully and providing them with information can make a difference and this is also free to do.

Therefore, as I have always said, the biggest difference to the general public could be made through communication. When tackling new and unfamiliar processes, we need people to answer questions. Many services use AI and bots cannot answer questions. If people made themselves available to answer questions, provide information or point people onwards as best as they can it would only be good for the economy.

If there is no one to ask and the risk of being tricked out of money always present online, with people in our lives always expressing their opinion instead of being there and available to soundboard or support us with our actions, it is no wonder people are getting stuck.

Learned helplessness can lead to depression and we cannot medicate our way out of this one. We need to communicate our way out or try at least.