Reading through the latest installment of This is a Newsletter! - A Series on Work gave me some thoughts too big to comment so I wrote a reply. This is but a nibble to That-Guy’s raging river of criticism. I personally don’t have such a passion for making mass reference and scattering the minds of mere mortals. Look upon he who dares capture totality. For those interested in a lazy river you have me.
Small Fries Puttering Through Small Lives
Workers have the shortsightedness of moles because a job is functionally identical to a burrow. There's this basic psychological tendency in everyone to disappear into the ether when you clock off since it’s more preferable to become consumed by personal milestones like boyfriends, home buying and child-rearing than to remain cognizant of the growing sense of societal death. In fact, the worse it gets the better the incentives of the slavemasters look. Parenthood, cars, homes and all the trappings of an ordinary life are the carrot of compromise dangled with an evil smile, “Work for us and you shall have all.”
“Alright! Alright. I’m stomach your shit. Just let me have Sundays off.”
It really does feel like there's a steam engine from hell called the economy plowing towards the cliff and most everybody supporting themselves is strapped in. Me personally…I already jumped ship. There's no way to divert or stop it now. What's even the point of us talking or reading about this, honestly? Is this changing it's course, really? I think this is what’s called bracing for impact. There’s no safe option for saving the day. We’re way past clean solutions. Everything from here on out is dirty, messy and just a real big ol’ can of worms.
I see two options for the little guys: convince people to strike and/or burn more shit down. You have to steal fuel from the fire however you can because politicians aren't motivated to save your hide to the degree that you are. I laugh whenever I remember them raising the drawbridges in Chicago during the BLM riots. "Remember class; the government saves itself. Your interests are not their interests." And, frankly, it's the same in the Capitol riot (just a different and less impoverished demographic).
Those are the only two actions that hold governance accountable for their bullshit. If their domain is literally crumbling from the foundations they have no power. (Refusing to vote is just a really dainty way of doing the same thing. If voter turnout was 30% the elected officials would get laughed at.) But this is tough to hold them to because we're pointing inside their skulls and telling them to rewire their numb-nuts so we might need to apply firm pressure.
This where we have to be careful and remain very economically universal in our arguments because if you don't you’ll trip the alarms of the Law & Order plebs who take pleasure in donning weaponry and cockblocking their fellow peasantry. The targets the rioters take on must be purposeful and exact and the costs must fall on the feet of the big boys up top (not the necks of we little things). Which is my prime evidence for how thoughtless, stupid and unplanned the Capitol riot was and also some of the rioting that looted and took out local business'. The enemy must be known and the sole entity getting culled; a cop is not the state in the same way that an employee is not a corporation. It’s time for surgery. Keep the people; lose the beast.
A Big Bad Unit of Unholy Unity
Basically we’re trying to turn back the clock. The conservative mainstream is now virtue signaling it’s desire to break up large corporations. The WSJ has anti-trust articles running every day so they’re at the least trying to show themselves to be on our side (or maybe it’s just banal service to market forces and that’s what conservatives want to be reading). Either way we need government to do what it can to squeeze these fuckers from above and then we have to do what we can to squeeze them from below.
The truth is that between the government and the populace we have all the power. Corporations aren’t people; they’re a ghost in the machine that gobbles up more and more of existence—strangling us alive. Proof of this is how they get to negotiate down their prices for headquarters and factories by shopping around the country (and the world). When a massive entity gets to play hopscotch on our heads that’s the point where we break it up and we butcher it because it’s not one of us anymore. It’s not accepting the bonds of brotherhood and love.
Corps are like the devil so they enact all their edicts and demands through lawyers and never appear in the flesh. Lawyers, in my opinion, are the most banal evil as banality goes. This gets to the root of how corrupted our system is; the main interface for equality and justice requires mountains of cash. I’m tempted to suggest we put them in chains but then I remember they’re just a link in the chain. Where is the root of this evil? What heart can we strike?
The devil is only a man with bad aims and inside corporations they do congregate and provide each other shade. I want true individualism, meritocracy, boot straps and standing on one’s own. Why not murder the legal recognition of corporations? We could go back to chopping heads. Cash shouldn’t be a buyout and a shield from responsibility. I’m really sorry to all you cool cats out there that figured out how to run your small business through an LLC but we’re dying and it’s the corporate devil that’s sucking our soul. The heart of the devil isn’t writ in stone; it’s penned in blood and it can be stricken.
I get that corps let the world grow this big but we’re gonna be downsizing either way; why not take the graceful path back down? Why not force the sociopaths to eat each other alive? Right now they tolerate each other within the legal confines because it’s profitable but once they’re not legally bound and they can’t muzzle each other anymore they’ll tear each other apart. Corps are straight-jackets for murders; institutions that breed insane killers. Blow their prize possession out of the sky and watch them all die in the scramble. That sounds like more fun than continuing the long march. Is adhd kids running around a shitty apartment fed by a lifetime of D-tier wages with no healthcare really worth it? The American dream is dead and buried below the poverty line. At what point do we just say fuck it? Maybe now?
Which one’s true?
You have to choose. One is a force of consolidation and power for a few and the other is a force of irrelevancy and elbow rubbing with the many. Is it true that those who can win must win greatly or is it true that those who can comprehend must stay their hand? Are we animals or are we men? Are we employees or are we countrymen? Should we accept or should we strive for love? This is a mind to make up. This is the problem in our dipshit head. There is no system. Pick yourself up and choose.
Hell yeah. I'm of the belief that in order to seriously reform (if not abolish altogether) capitalism, we will need a mass change in human consciousness. I think we're in the decline phase of our current political order, this liberal corporate centrism, and it will splinter off into either socialism/anarchism and fascism. Most social problems come from people feeling alienated from both their time and their labor, and it seems like socialism and fascism are the only viable alternatives that offer people some sort of collective purpose (fascism is obviously a facsimile of collectivism and only leads to chud shit and nihilistic destruction).
I am often called a pessimist, and my response to that is asking people, "What is the social goal we're working towards? Where is this great hope that is so undeniable and transcendent, that one would have to be a true nihilistic piece of shit to not recognize?" But as the old saying goes, a pessimist is just a disappointed idealist. Barack Obama, in my opinion, is way more nihilistic than I could ever be: The most insidious aspect of his legacy is he took people's genuine base desires for hope and change and turned them into nothing, then told people that believing in nothing makes you a virtuous and pragmatic person. If you believe neoliberalism is truly the end of history, then there can be no future. There can be no hope, no change, no alternative, no improvement, nothing else to believe in.
I believe we are better than this. I don't have much faith in our economy or our political institutions, but the great hope is that a present that poorly serves so many cannot possibly be the future.
Also, I really vibe with Matt Christman, whose vlogs have been a big influence on my work series. This podcast on spirituality might be of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwkjg_p0XXU