You’re being exploited the same exact way we see as inhumane for animals. You’re simply performing tricks to make your bosses money while you get the “reward” of scraping by with no opportunity in life for self fulfillment. They’re tossing you fish to survive while they live like kings.
Capitalism has dehumanized us. We witness intelligent animals commit suicide in captivity and it sparks such outrage that the practice is (rightfully) under immense scrutiny. We witness other people kill themselves, while billions of others have anxiety and depression stemming directly from how we live our lives and we consider that NORMAL. I know this post is a block of text but it’s honestly really important to remind yourself from time to time how desensitized people have been forced to become to not be constantly outraged at life under capitalism.
It really is disgusting how much social and cultural reconstruction has had to take place to make it feel normal. The captive animal analogy was the only one that came to mind when I read that tweet
Oh ok thanks I just posted a link to it over there instead but I’ll keep this in mind next time
:pog-dolphin: Same struggle, same fight! :pseudorca:
I've been dissociating all day because of this exact thing. I'm actually pretty successful at "the game", but it just fills me with nausea at this point. This cannot be why we're here. Humans are capable of so much more than producing and consuming and possibly passing down our DNA. Why do we stand for this?
I consider myself extremely lucky to have known what I’ve wanted to do for a career since I was very young, and even I feel like there’s so much more I can do and want to do despite my extremely fulfilling career. Life isn’t and shouldn’t just be work
Why should they when it makes no difference? Does it matter how happy a dolphin in a dolphin show is if you can just replace it?
I agree to a point, but these systems are unsustainable without exploitation.
Baby boomers, for example, were given relatively lavish lifestyles for their servitude. When global exploitation is no longer enough to sustain the artificial growth in an inherently unstable system, domestic exploitation must also eventually increase in order to appease the need for growth by that (now significantly stronger) demographic. Gen X, Millenials, and Gen Z are all now reeling in the aftermath of austerity measures taken to lessen the impact of natural instability under capitalism. You CANT give the generations after boomers the same quality of life because capitalism has already acquired access to the lowest global costs needed for production. Short of making these people work more, to keep the lavish lifestyles of the few intact value has to start coming from somewhere else. The system is unsustainable, it inevitably is a slow burn to slavery. If there is not a promise of growth (which in this case, growth is based off of exploitation) the bottom of the system falls out.
The capitalists actually can't choose to maintain their power indefinitely because theirs is a fundamentally unstable economic system. The rate of profit declines until some of them start to feel the pinch and begin advocating for the reassertion of class control, which is one of the reasons we saw a global turn to neoliberalism around the 80s.
there is probably wide agreement on buying off the proles, but the problem is deciding who has to pay for it amongst the factions of capital. it is normally the function of the state (executive committee of the bourgeois) to resolve something like this, but as the institutions decay they are no longer capable of forcing concessions or even making policy
I often think about what life would look like if aliens abducted me and attempted to provide me with a high quality life, like provided me with all things the human animal needs. Would some fruit and berries be enough, with some sex and reading material thrown in? Or would they have to do a whole Truman Show on me, and give me a "career"?
This article is a cool piece on hunter gatherer life too. Also, I recently saw these clips of the Hadza people talking about their life and their impression of America, made me very envious. A good story at the bottom of the thread too about some Papua New Guineans.
Definitely feel like a properly kept human would need to be in a group of around 100 or so.
You know this reminds of the thesis of Bookchin's Ecology of Freedom that 'the idea of the domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human.' It has been a while since I've read it but the book always gave me a vague hopeful impression. Highly recommend IMO.
I really like early Bookchin, real "An-Prims on a Culture Orbital" vibes
Had a similar conversation with a co-worker who straight up said that she hated capitalism. It was refreshing to be able to talk to someone about how the daily routine we've been programmed to go through. Refreshing, but depressing too. Honestly I had already been feeling down about being at work at the time (this was just after the peak of COVID cases where I live) and that conversation fucked me up for a couple weeks.
Isn't it absolutely absurd how much power some people get over arbitrary data? Like they can dictate the lives of millions because some numbers in a database are in their favor. Its mind bendingly dystopian, and the worst part is that those very same people are convinced its the law of nature.
Humans aren't really smart as much as they are good a deluding themselves with complex systems
I've been feeling like this recently... like just looking around and thinking something is horribly wrong here, but not being able to put it into words.
I was sitting in the car in this huge garage, looking at the florescent lights illuminating the garage with their awful sickly white light, just taking it all in and feeling done with society, just thinking "fuck this shit" over and over again. Just an unbearable sense of dread that's impossible to describe. This is all there is to expect in my future until I keel over.
It’s so fucking grim but we have the noblest of causes to help us carry on. You can leave a mark on this world that benefits every other human being for the rest of history by simply fighting for what you believe in
I think honestly education about why it is actually capitalism and not an intrapersonal issue is so important. When you learn that it’s not you who is necessarily fucked up but the world you live in things feel slightly more inspiring. It’s nice knowing you’re not a total piece of shit and there is a method to at least one day help people in the future with your ideology in the present
And if you try to point this out to most people, they'll just call you lazy.
I decided to stay with my lib boomer parents over quarantine and I feel so blackpilled now. They asked me about high-school-appropriate resources for learning to code, because a friend's kid is keen to go into game dev, and I ended up having a rant about the exploitive labour practises and crunch culture in the industry (friends have been hurt by it, so it's a personal outrage for me).
My dad was like "ya, but all work environments are stressful, x at my job thinks she got cancer because of the blah blah project..." And like... What the fuck??? How is somebody ending up in hospital for the sake of a fucking retailer okay? And back to game dev, how the fuck are similar 'stress casualties' considered a normal, accepted part of producing fancy toys?
The craziest thing is that he, himself is a really fit, healthy guy who's rightly convinced that he would never have had a heart attack if it wasn't for an insanely badly-managed project he was on for the last few years before he retired. So, he's accepted that the system he believes literally nearly killed him is just the way shit has to be, and that it's even worth defending from criticism. It's just... DEATH CULT. That's all I can say. How do you even get through to somebody at that point?
I'm so depressed.
Completely agree but I'd also kill for a cubicle. Open plan is even worse.
I think about this a lot. Maybe it's just misery liking company but I have a strong belief that it's entirely bullshit to label depression as a mental illness in the world we live in. If you aren't at least a little depressed that indicates that you are detached from reality.
