Binging Hell of Presidents, Matt (the largest of the chapos, who should be able to eat the smaller ones) said something that resonated with me- the idea that our connection with class is so disassociated and immaterial that the only way we can express ourselves is through consumption.
I realised he was 100% right, but sadly realised I couldn't figure out alternatives. Is there any answer apart from getting off our damn iphone? (it's community connection right? But we still have to consume food and culture to do so...- or am I taking it too literally?)
But how often do you just buy a guitar? Everything comes with add ons and upgrades that are all in their own right rent seeking services themselves. Like if I bought a guitar presumably google will know and will change my ad content which will then shove services like a tuning app or some dumb website called thinkly that’s supposed to teach you guitar in 100 days and all of these are paid services or worse free with a deluge of ads for other shitty services. We’ve commodified not just the item but the experience of using the item which in turn alienates us from the joy of using said item. And it’s hard not to give into that shit because it’s purpose built to tap into some dopamine signal center in the back of your brain. I’m learning German on duolingo more as an act of boredom and because I wanted a fun new game than any attempt at genuine self-betterment regardless of what I tell myself. We’re deep in the shit man. At this point capitalism has had the time to deterritorialize and commodify virtually everything (or destroyed it if it couldn’t) and is now just eating new cultural outputs as they come into existence. The capitalist realism is hard to escape because everything we encounter is dripping wet with the ideological logic of capitalism
“Consuming” guitar lessons is in itself a start of creative activity. Sure everything costs money, and some :porky-happy: profits from it, instead of petit-bougie tutor you get some app or school with ceo, but the act of learning and interacting creatively with the world doesn’t change :shrug-outta-hecks:
Learning language out of boredom is also not consumption, cmon, it’s learning You can’t consume(tm) a learned skill, you learn, you rewire your brain, you act in learning.
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I think it’s a distinguishing line of alienation wherein I am alienated from my own learning because it is controlled by a capitalist and sold to me as a commodity rather than existing as an action that I control and pursue to my own interest’s extent. Because yes I am learning, but it doesn’t feel like I own that knowledge on some level and I know that because I’ve done this loop where I’ll pick up a new skill as a hobby for a period of time and then walk away from it for the next thing feeling like I haven’t actually embodied any of the gained knowledge. Sure I know a bit of guitar and have picked up a decent amount of German and Spanish but because these things feel transactional I don’t feel ownership over them which is to say I don’t recognize them as skill sets I actually have. Idk there’s a point here I’m trying to make but I’m not finding quite the right wording for it. Something along the lines of the ‘great reset’ nonsense where we no longer own anything we just rent it but it’s for aspects of our personality and mind. The capitalist realism of feeling like you’re just renting out your own experiences from the people that actually own them rather than feeling ownership yourself. It’s a very disempowering place to be but I think that mindset is what’s actually at the core of consumerist ideology
Maybe you think if skills are not usable in a job they are not real :puzzled: idk, i don’t fell this way, I like knowing useless shit that brings me some joy
But like there's a difference between paying a recurring app fee versus buying a used text book and possessing it in perpetuity.
What I see more often is not buying 1 guitar but constantly shopping for new guitars that supposedly fill some niche. Then buying 500 pedals to get the perfect tone.
It's easier to get endorphins from purchases (which feel like an accomplishment) rather than actually learning, building skill and achieving accomplishment. It's a mental 🪤 to waste our hard earned money on products.
You really don't need much to survive and be happy. For the vast majority of history, people possessed almost nothing on comparison to our 1st world expectations.
Agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment but c'mon... my pedals all do something different.... :kitty-cri-screm: