heh
They absolutely do identify with their bosses, and they absorb all sorts of "our company's values" nonsense as their brains desperately but unconsciously cling on to any sense of meaning they can find for their lives, PMC types are the most broken-brained people I've ever associated with
I’ve associated with a tonne of PMC types and they are all exactly the same person.
Core to this is that they have mainlined ideology (schniff) since birth and lead completely unexamined lives. They have absolutely no goals or dreams of their own, they’ve just absorbed the goals that society has set for them – office job and rise through the ranks, buy car, find stable and “sensible” partner, do travel, get married, purchase house, have children, have a successful career, die slightly ahead on points compared to your contemporaries.
There is an absolutely hollow core at the centre of their lives, and they have never considered for a second “what would actually make me happy?”. They certainly haven’t ever considered anything beyond themselves (or at most their social circle), except maybe some safe volunteering because it looks good on a CV and instagram. They are absolutely starved of meaning and they are completely oblivious to this, and their brains grasp on to whatever arbitrary meaning they can find.
So they grasp on to appearing successful, for moulding the perfect facebook/instagram image of your life. None of it is actually even for enjoyment or happiness, even the "fun" bits. I went travelling with a bunch of them once, we went to one of the most stunning lookout spots imaginable and not one of them actually looked and took in the view, it was just constant selfies and the second they got back into wifi range it was a competition to get the pictures onto Instagram (one of them no joke posted them with #mylifeisbetterthanyours). On the way back when I mentioned a protest, one of them asked “why would you protest?”, not to antagonise but as if the concept of caring about anything outside your personal circle was so foreign and alien that it had never even crossed their mind.
And forefront in all their minds is just “progressing my career” for the sake of progressing their career. I honestly think it’s not even for the money, it’s that they literally have no conception of what else to do. Even when they’re already burnt-out into lifeless husks, they still keep trying to climb the ladder to jobs that will burn them out even more, knowing absolutely that it will hurt them but doing it anyway because that’s success baby. And because their jobs and lives are so meaningless, their brains subconsciously absorb bullshit about the corporate mission and they assume that it must be a great company with great people because it would be devastating for their little bubble world if it wasn’t. So they love their bosses and the corporate culture and all the other bullshit even as it sucks them dry. And they scoff with disdain at the receptionists and janitors and admin etc who just do what they're paid for in their 8 hours and no more, then go home and focus their energies on enjoying the rest of their lives with their families and friends, because who would possibly live like that?
In amongst all the conversations about fucking mortgages and shit, you can occasionally see their brains desperately trying to rebel, little jokes about wanting to give it all up to become a yoga instructor hohoho how delightfully absurd, but they know full well that they’re never gonna do anything but keep climbing that shitty fucking ladder forever.
Yeah it’s really fucking sad
I work a PMC job and while there is truth to what you're saying I haven't ever encountered soulless husks like that.
I live in Europe where I'd say most people have their head on straight when it comes to the most basic things at least, for example I very rarely see people significantly sacrifice their family life for their careers, politically they're all absolute brainwashed morons of course but they're not completely lobotomized. That said I think it's getting worse with the younger generations. But also the younger generations tend to be more politically active so it's a mixed bag overall.
Yeah that sounds like hell, my country is part of a decomposing corpse of a dead socialist country but I'll take that over what you guys have.
I can see my country looking like that in 20 years if nothing changes though.
This is the experience I've had from Australia, which is supposed to be the "laid-back" country. It's definitely not that they completely sacrifice the other aspects of their life for their career - a vitally-important part of the whole affair is that they have the house and the partner and the overseas holidays, and they work overtime but not 24/7 like lots of American PMCs do, and they take time for their brunches and fancy dinners (they have an absolutely encyclopaedic fucking knowledge of every trendy overpriced new restaurant). The meetings with friends are all about their travels and their mortgages and wedding plans and shit and it's all this exhausting fucking one-upmanship about their "successes" in each of the checkbox items, like they're Patrick Bateman with a new business card.
The essence of it is that it's all about "doing what you're supposed to" and doing it better than your peers, and never examining why you're doing any of it or whether it makes you happy or fulfilled. And it just happens that climbing the career ladder is a core part of doing what you're supposed to, so therefore it must be good, right? And the managers must be good because that's where I am going to be in 2-4 years in this psychotically-detailed map of how every aspect of my life is going to unfold. It's just the same old Keeping Up With The Joneses shit, it's just sad to see it first-hand in so many people.
EDIT: I've got a good friend from old lab nerd days who's only half in to the PMC bullshit but she's gone to work for big pharma and they have absolutely drained her dry with overwork and bullshit, like she looks like a shell of the person she once was and she knows it's killing her inside, and I can see she's not quite indoctrinated enough to uncritically believe all this bullshit. But she can't fight it, she's excited about the workplace opportunities and the career progression and can't fight this pressure even though she knows it's gonna be even more work and bullshit and draining, it's just What You Do. And the bosses are so supportive and lovely in giving her career progression opportunities (ie throwing even more fucking work at her and pretending like it's a favour). And I can see my objections to this craziness go in and even connect, but then they get washed away again because "my career progression". It's sadder to see in someone who wasn't a lost cause from the very start.
Can you elaborate on mainlined ideology? I know what ideology is but what’s mainlined?
Mainline, verb (slang) - to inject a narcotic, especially heroin, directly into a vein
As per my sister. Yes. But because it's almost their entire life and have nothing really besides it. It's actually pretty sad.
Yep.
Sometimes you can actually form friendship through solidarity to a certain degree, depending on who your clients are, sort of. But most of the time it's just because they can expense the lunch (and drinks they have during it) as part of those meetings.
i'm white collar. my mental health has been absolutely fucked this past year. isolation and loneliness is making life so fucked. at times i feel like all i do is eat and sleep for the sole purpose of being able to work.
white collar is still working class so not sure wtf op is going for in his post
Leftists like OP don't have any understanding of class beyond class signifiers. It is no different from Republicans thinking you're working class cause you wear flannel and listen to country music.
This is true, PMC are working class but in practice those class signifiers often add up to having a drastically different life experience than your "typical" working class. A lot of PMC live no less of a cushy life than a lot of petite bougies and they often don't really have any immediate material reason to identify as the working class.
I might be talking out of my ass though, I welcome some 2nd coming of Marx theorylord putting me in my place.
this site is excessively antagonistic towards PMC/petit-bourgeois people and i don't really get it. yeah, a lot of PMC people are soulless ghouls but they are still workers and most great revolutionaries throughout history have been petit-bourgeois. just because they can afford a couple of luxury items doesn't make it so the labor and living conditions under capitalism are any more bearable.
Mao's father was one of the wealthiest farmers in his town (sure, you could say he wasn't petit-bourgeois because China hadn't reached capitalist development, but he was still privileged socioeconomically), Fidel came from a relatively well off family (his father being Spanish and Fidel having studied Law in what probably is the most prominent Cuban university), Che came from an upper-middle class family and was a medical doctor in Argentina in the 50s, Ho Chi Minh's dad was a scholar and a government official, etc.
i'm not saying we should focus on radicalizing petit-bourgeois people (we really shouldn't) but it's clear that some of them can be great comrades and we shouldn't shoo them off simply based off their class status.
Forcing people to endure rush-hour traffic daily without paying them for the time spent in it is a goddamn crime against humanity. Gonna have to begin commuting again in a week or so and I'm dreading it.
Same. I get to fuck around on my home machine while sometimes doing my job? Getting to easily access my own kitchen? Not having to deal with my coworker that can't shut up???
I ain't going back.
If it became law that companies had to pay employees for commute time, we would get high-speed rail everywhere in the country so fast that train gang would cum its pants.
This is actually terrible. It’s a privilege and a curse being able to work from home while actually taking the pandemic seriously.
as someone who has been both WFH forever AND have to work outside during the pandemic....
aww poor baby, cant stand working inside your shoebox apartments, getting seamless all the time, and your amazon deliveries, with your shitty kids who cant sit still at all in front of a computer. how horrible.
I had to work with no human contact in a 6 by 6 foot apartment for 3 months and It was legitimately terrible and also screw you
by the way when I say no human contact I mean the only outside connection I had was a computer telling me orders
They miss going to the office 5 days a week and pretending to work
butt humour
please, reopen the economy, i have pretended that i work from home while playing video games on the toilet for a year now, my haemorrhoids are the size of golf balls
