Another week, another story of a bright young thing, burdened by a degree and a mountain of debt, retreating to the parental nest. The BBC, in its unending quest for relatable content, offers us a live diary: a graduate back at home, sharing her ‘financial survival guide’ for the rent crisis. I suppose we must be grateful. At least she is not comparing herself to a Victorian orphan or invoking the fall of Rome. Yet.
Let us set aside, for a moment, the fact that the phrase ‘financial survival guide’ now implies not thrift or ingenuity, but a slow, grinding acceptance of diminished expectations. This young woman, let us call her the Symbolic Graduate, has done what any sensible creature does when the cost of living exceeds the wage of a barista: she has fled. And we are meant to applaud her resourcefulness.
But what does this story really tell us? It tells us that the grand contract between the generations has been torn up. The implicit promise that a degree from a respectable institution would grant you a foothold into adulthood, a flat of your own, perhaps even a future, is now a historical curiosity. We live in an era of intellectual decadence, where the cult of the individual has collapsed into a cult of mere endurance. The Symbolic Graduate is not a pioneer; she is a symptom.
Is this not the very pattern we see in late Rome? The curial class, burdened by taxes and civic obligations, retreated to their country villas, abandoning the cities to rot. The difference is that our modern villa is not a sun-drenched estate in Tuscany, but a cramped bedroom in a suburban semi, with a parent rattling the door at 11 AM to ask about plans for the weekend. The state, our version of the imperial bureaucracy, offers little more than a nod and a student loan repayment schedule.
But let us not be entirely dour. There is, I suppose, a certain virtue in acknowledging failure. The graduate’s guide is full of practical tips: live with your parents, batch-cook lentils, avoid any social activity that costs money. It is a stoicism worthy of Marcus Aurelius, though I suspect he did not have to worry about the Wi-Fi password.
The real tragedy here is not the rent crisis, though it is a calamity. The real tragedy is the death of ambition. We have raised a generation that expects to be poor, that sees no shame in retreat. The Symbolic Graduate does not dream of a house of her own; she dreams of a flat share that does not require a guarantor. She does not yearn for a career; she hopes for a side hustle. This is the intellectual and spiritual decadence I speak of: a society that has lowered its expectations so far that mere survival feels like victory.
And what of the parents? They are complicit, of course. They have raised a child who sees failure as normal. But then again, they were sold the same lie. They paid for the degree, the accommodation, the ‘experience’, and now they are paying again, with their spare room and their refrigerator.
So read the guide if you must. Clip coupons. Move back home. But do not pretend this is a triumph. This is a capitulation. And if you want to compare it to the fall of Rome, I will not stop you. Just remember: even in the twilight of empire, the clever ones found a way to thrive. The rest, I suppose, wrote survival guides.
