chat

One of the things that clicked in my head the other day was with this “look maxing” business. It’s like it’s some sign of how far the kids have given up that they think their value can only be maximized based on physical appearance. Then there’s the gambling. These are like the pathways that they think they can manage. These are the tiny rivulets where they think their boat will be tiny enough that they’ll be the captain of it. They’ve settled for some really small dreams here.

It’s utterly hopeless and that weirdly gives me hope because this can’t continue, it’s gonna break, you can’t eat the youth like this and not break something so deep that the slow simmering infection is fatal.

Another vibe I’m feeling is that a lot of people are experiencing what I must call a spiritual anguish. The last thing colonized by late capitalism is the self, the soul, we are the last frontier being exploited and this anguish is the natural reaction as it envelops us. This is just a fever, a symptom, of a deeper thing going on in our souls, as even our human ability to adapt is being outpaced by our consequences. That’s causing an unbalancing of a scale that has very rarely or never tipped against us and I think we can feel that.

It's like watching someone in an abusive relationship.

I've noticed this a lot too. Capitalism is like an abusive relationship on a society wide scale, using methods of control like "I don't want to make them mad" or "This is the best I could ever hope for, I should try and be grateful" not to mention love bombing, with showering people with endless slop and garbage to distract people.

I've been working through this in my head recently. I feel such a need to be seen as useful by a society that would have me ground down to nothing for the sake of profit. Even as much as I hate capitalism, I don't want to lose the game of capitalism and not be a good worker drone. Working makes me feel like less of a human.

I've certainly struggled with a sense of sense worth my whole life, never really fitting in anywhere, never really finding another person that understands me, always very susceptible to nihilism and defeatism and isolation. Even being communist/ML its so much easier to just give up and let the world pass you by, after all im just one man what could i possibly change?

I dont like being that way, its of no use and it just further isolates me from literally everyone i know and anyone i could ever meet. I am working, so so very hard, to change how i act. to fight for what i believe. to be a real, whole human for possibly the first time in my life.

I dont know what im doing but im doing something at least; im trying.

The worst part is that while i try to improve i see the few people left in my life stuck in the same mindset (although not as severe as mine was) that while these things are worth fighting for it is ultimately pointless so why try. I can get them to agree, conceptually, that the fight is worth it but, practically, they still would rather rot on their phones (or another such unproductive activity) than try to do something

💚

Good picture for the post, fulfillment is a very ironic name for the work. I remember working in a fulfillment center a few years back and the owner describing it as fully automated to the media. In reality at all time a headcount above 100 working at conveyors. The worker is nothing but a replaceable tool indistinguishable from the equipment looking from the top down. Having value as a person regularly slipped out of mind, being preoccupied with not being thrown away while metrics are only shown at request or when used as carrot / stick.

You have owners. They OWN you!

One thing I've noticed when discussing the topic of working hours reduction, even with progressive people, is how their framing is almost universally "studies show it's more productive to work 34h". Like, why do you care what's productive? Riot and burn things until you get the working hours you want and deserve, not the "equally productive" ones.

yeah its pretty sad seeing some people believe all of this is human nature and that we are genetically wired to be pieces of shit when its all sistemic

Fuck you, I'm valuable cattle. My boss told me so.

Having described the partner who abused me as an "emotional capitalist", this tracks. The idea that you could have something better outside of the system that you exist in right now is dangerous and has to be shut down.

I'd never experienced anything like it in my life until I was neck-deep in it. The way you wind up suffocating your own dreams, your own capacity to imagine something better - that's just capitalist realism. And the abuse I was getting at home happened to mimic the dynamic at my workplace pretty much one-to-one. Shrink yourself down. Your only value is what you can provide, what can be extracted from you. Expecting anything is dangerous. Any day, any time, I might be getting written up for something banal that happened months ago. Everything you do is surveilled, fuel for discipline. There really was no escape. I forgot how to engage with people without being prepared to get hurt in the process.

Since I got out I've been relearning how to interact with people in a healthy way. I keep noticing ways I've internalized that garbage that I didn't even consider so long as I was in it. That this same dynamic has been normalized at a societal level has some really unsettling ramifications for What Is To Be Done.

There's so much to say about this. Maybe an effortpost sometime.