Holy shit, just fucking :pit: these sociopathic lunatics
Liberals fully embracing the fascist "life is suffering and suffering is life" pseudo-mythological bullshit.
Also very telling about "loss of status and resources". Yeah, I guess you could call starving to death that.
Liberals fully embracing the fascist “life is suffering and suffering is life” pseudo-mythological bullshit.
The writer here is being a massively rude piece of shit, but they are not necessarily an entirely wrong one either. It's 2/3rds the way through the article , but the actual point she's ostensibly trying to get across is summarized in these two paragraphs.
It may be the case that many personal infirmities can only be fully repaired in a repaired world, but this does not obviate the need to pull ourselves together as best we can in this broken one. Any serious attempt to topple capitalism would require more discipline, more courage, more endurance, more capability, not less.
When living “under capitalism” becomes a catch-all explanation for what you can’t manage — whether that’s getting on the metaphorical treadmill or stepping off it — it assumes the nature of a complaint to an adjudicating authority. Since capitalism has impressed such impossible conditions on us, we can’t reasonably be expected to deal with it until they improve. But in fact there is no one to adjudicate between you and capital, no one to say yes, that really is too much, let’s reassign this project. There is no political program that will release you from the necessity of doing more than you should have to or feel capable of doing, in politics as in every other part of life.
Mind you, this is basically also the nature & source of my own melancholy & frustration with engaging with politics (especially on this site). It doesn't matter how much I complain about my own social isolation, or inability to meet a lot of the basic necessities of living independently ("independently") given that I have ASD. Absolutely no-one from this goddamn website, or my personal life is gonna step up to be there if I can't manage "life under capitalism", and that just is the fact of the matter until people start deciding to act differently, and to help take on other people's burdens of their own accord; for the sake of building a fundamentally different world.
Many people on here have admitted exactly as much to me. What you're mad about is that it's being applied to you & your concerns now.
Until then all we can do is operate as the most efficiently optimized individuals that we can be until we are willing to take the time, indulgences, and personal autonomy out of our lives, and exert the discipline necessary to operate as a collective political entity. And even then that's gonna start, and is gonna have to start with those who are already the most materially & socially connected people among us.
One should keep in mind though, that she is not necessarily directing these statements to the Proletariat; she is in fact speaking to her fellows in the Liberal Intelligentsia; whom luckily have been spoken about around here recently.
And of course, there are more sinister possibilities than learned helplessness. Since under capitalism no one is really responsible for their actions, since we’d all be making better choices if the referees would just level the playing field, you can’t be blamed if you build weapons for Raytheon or AI for Facebook or write vacuous propaganda for the Washington Post, or climb to the top by betraying others . You’re not cravenly protecting your own interests at the expense of principle, you’re just participating in society somewhat. The totalizing nature of capital’s domination simultaneously excuses us both from revolutionary action and from an attempt at a life with honor within it.
However it is obvious here also that the Proletariat is, nevertheless, far from exempt from these basic realities.
Any serious attempt to topple capitalism would require more discipline, more courage, more endurance, more capability, not less.
Hard to argue with that point. There has to be a balance between helping people get through the difficulties caused by capitalism and being functional enough to get rid of capitalism altogether.
You are generally correct, but is this person petite bourgeois or a labor aristocrat?
"Yes man" (or woman/person) is a very labor-aristocratic job. It's still based on actually doing something rather than ownership or arranging to extract labor value from others yourself.
Now, that "something" really leans into the "aristocratic" side in this case, it makes econ professors look like normal proles by comparison, but it's still a type of labor.
:jordan-eboy-peterson: I'm smarter than you. I'm better than you. I'm cooler than you. I fuck more than you. :shapiro-gavel:
but you can also turn off your email notifications. You can choose to prioritize the good life over a promotion or pleasing your boss. You can live with the loss of status and resources that this probably will entail
In many professions, in particular ones that are office type jobs (ostensibly who the author is thinking about) this kind of thinking doesn't lead to just a "loss of status". It means your name is at the top of the list for when there's the next bad quarterly results and so the CEO has to make cuts.
Unexamined privilege from a thinkpiece author? I guess there's a first time for everything
You can raise children in a too-small space and with too much debt.
Yeah asshole, you can raise children under those circumstances, but odds are it'll suck shit for everyone involved.
"Things should be better and can be better"
"Stop being so entitled omg"
Choice A: Bitch I'm the fucking boss, you will piss in the plastic bottle and you will not complain.
Choice B: just die lmao
:so-true: OMG CAPITALISM SO MUCH CHOICE!!
The privilege is palpable. The idea that people can just choose to devote themselves to their passion under capitalism without first being rich. Like holy shit people need to eat.
It's clear that the only way people like this will learn is by being forced down a few pegs, and even then some of them will never learn.
:posadist-nuke: The aliens will give us low-yield nuclear devices that can destroy the NYT headquarters without affecting the surrounding structures.
I'm late to the thread (as always) but I wanted to thank you for standing up to that shit. You and others like @quiet, @VILenin, @TrashCompact and others, including the now inexplicably banned Serbian_Milf. The victim-blaming attitude and open display of unrecognized privilege, especially from so called leftists makes my blood boil, and maybe the grossest part was how well couched it was in what seemed like a reasonable stance. Well... It didn't come across as reasonable once the wrecker... chimed in.
It also sucks because it seems like a lot of names I have seen on here over the last 2 years and developed a lot of respect for are suddenly saying shit that strikes me as unsettlingly reactionary. Did I just not have the understanding or wherewithal to see it before? (it's probably that). Or are some of our most vaunted regulars being taken out and replaced by feds? (probably not that.)
Also yeah, wtf, why was A_Serbian_Milf banned? I mean I see the reason given in the modlog but.... bs. I hope they appeal and get restored. Oh just scrolled and saw you made an appeal. I'll add a comment.
Anyway yeah, thank you. Apologies for the mildly drunk weird tangents comment. It's why I usually just lurk.
Terrifying part is how many people apparently actually agree. More terrifying is how it's tolerated. Blaming the downtrodden for being too sad. Lecturing depressed and neurodivergent people about sadness. Guess there's a sizable portion of the userbase that are just sparkling liberals.
Then apparently I am the one who first gets banned over it 😂
Well at least it’s all corrected now, seems the more sensible mods logged on to clean up the other’s mess
:gold-communist:
Yeah I saw that ban and wondered what happened.
Crazy night tonight
Looks like you are so mentally deficient that it is physically impossible for you to accept the reality that is staring you in the face: you are on the losing side of an ideological war. And none of your paranoid delusions are going to change that fact. I guess you'll have to wait for the Kherson offensive.
Last word? Anything that comes out of your mouth can only be described as primal utterances barely resembling human language. I hope the doctors at the mental ward are checking on you and sedate you before you do anything violent to your fellow patients. Good night!
Where in this article does she say to stop complaining about the system?
Petersen is not wrong that anti-human economies tend to make for bad living on the individual scale. The question is whether, if important causality occurs on the macro level, you have any capability or responsibility for dealing with it at the micro.
Capitalism sucks, but if you are serious about fighting it there has to be revolutionary discipline & part of it will have to be self-cultivated.
The great revolutionaries continually fought penury. The critical part is focusing your effort in ways to reduce the alienation of you and those around you rather than trying to turn yourself into a more idealised capitalist subject.
Whenever I catch myself not wanting to go run, I always think to myself "yo thats not revolutionary discipline, Corgi"
Yes, yes, I know, the concept isnt really aimed at things like that, but it does help my head space.
Why was I under the impression that Gawker went under? I thought they got shuttered after the Peter Thiel/Hollywood Hulk Hogan shenanigans. Is this the Mandela Effect? How do I shift into the universe where Gawker no longer exists?
I looked it up. It did shut down in 2016. And it came back in 2021.
If a large amount of people are having mental breakdowns and problems living in your system, it is the people who are wrong for being weak minded. Despite other societies functioning throughout history without this widespread of a problem, it's just the moral fault of the people nothing systemic
oh you're depressed or anxious or unable to cope? Just deal with it and stop being that way. What you need is a good scolding.
Like even if you think widespread mental health crises are individual problems, the correct way to approach them is not belittling and scorn or "inspirational" motivational bullshit. Do they think therapists just cure people by telling them to suck it up or just stop being that way?
Do they think therapists just cure people by telling them to suck it up or just stop being that way?
how do actual therapists do it? :yes-honey-left:
Usually by helping create strategies and habits to assist with coping, helping determine the source of stress or trauma and overcome them, listening to clients and letting them vent
damn, I wish I could just be my own therapist but I don't understand trauma or how to overcome it
Still don't know where they got the idea that we're all arguing that we should give up from. That's what I'm criticizing parts of the article for
Not a fan of this kind of writing. It's taking something simplistic and just drawing it out and complicating it for little reason other than to gussy it up for 'discourse enjoyers.'
like the whole article is explicitly aimed at columnist twitter users, and people here said "oh my god does she mean me??? is she trying to tell me that my problems aren't real and i'm not valid??" so who is really identifying with the New York columnist here
like how exactly am i supposed to be convinced to take you seriously
:debate-me-debate-me:
You're being a huge asshole to random people for no reason and then acting smug about it. I'm sure you're great at organizing.
okay well try doing it again with your brain turned on this time
edit: this was mean and i'm sorry for that
None of us are children anymore. You can and should organize for better working conditions, but you can also turn off your email notifications. You can choose to prioritize the good life over a promotion or pleasing your boss. You can live with the loss of status and resources that this probably will entail. You can leave your job and take on the risks of finding work that does not corrode your self-respect. You can bring new life into the world knowing they will face intolerable danger and suffering, and take a type of comfort in the fact that on an individual level, this has always been the case. You can raise children in a too-small space and with too much debt.
lmao ok
great article, truly amazing. you definitely understood the author's message, which is definitely a call for organization.
/uj
The message is literally that capitalism has nothing to do with mental health, and everyone should just sit down and accept misery as a normal part of daily life. Did we even read the same article?
there's really no reason to be a monstrous asshole like this to everyone here. you should chill the fuck out.
You got some weird responses but
organize or die.
Holy shit, go fuck yourself. Just issuing "organize" as in imperative is a fucking joke of leftist pretense. It makes all of the "read theory" dweebs look reasonable because there is at least some way to viably determine what the theory is oneself. Just saying "organize" without giving the slightest detail on what to do is 100% masturbation.
Do you really organize yourself? You don't come across as though you do given how vague you are about it. If you really do, my suggestion is that you log off forever since you're surely doing some good out there and none in here.
sorry, who are you? i'm not interested in arguing with you
i think you are saying rude things to get a reaction
Does our self-proclaimed smart person have no ability to read anything into my comment other than that? Are you too busy being put off to follow the argument?
If that's the case, maybe you shouldn't be condescending so aggressively to people on the basis that they are supposedly doing exactly that, i.e. failing to comprehend the article's argument because they found elements of the message so off-putting.
I don't want a reaction from you. I want you to either change your tune or shut the fuck up, and I know virtually no one on this website is capable of changing their mind on things.
i’m smarter than you, better than you, cooler than you, and fuck more than you. so are you gonna do something about it or are you just gonna agree with me.
Edit: And now you're jumping at shadows just like Ulysses was. Pure hypocrisy.
Would you agree with following statement: if working class doesn’t organize, it’s barbarism time?
I'm not against reading theory either, but saying "read theory!" instead of teaching people about theory or even giving a goddam recommendation list is not helpful.
I mean broad spectrum organize or die is operating motto for lots of leftists throughout history, it’s not personal attack on exact singular hexbears, be they disabled or unable to organize. It’s not “either you organize or you are piece of shit”, it’s more like “we are fucked if we don’t”.
this is pretty much what i meant to convey. the seriousness of the slogan is commensurate with the seriousness of our situation. i acknowledge it's not, in itself, useful advice, but also i don't think this trash person is interested in having a discussion anyway.
Ah, good I understood correctly then. I meant petty insults were on both sides :trump-anguish: , so I’ve hoped it was miscommunication. Anyway, you seem to be getting some shit, so :meow-hug:
Neither of your comments have addressed my actual point. Lots of other people in this thread have talked about disability and such, I have not. I recommend giving up since apparently I am incapable of adequately explaining what I thought was a very simple concept.
I wish you the best of luck with figuring out those owl-drawing tutorials.
who?
looks like some wrecker that identified your state of agitation and refusal to disengage and is now needling you to induce rage and paranoia
yeah, i agree, which is why i said they're a wrecker.
if you are able to educate, agitate, organize working class organs or even the beginings of a party today, then do that but don't shit on other people who are not ready because honestly the vast majority of the working class, whether disabled or clinically depressed or not is simply not there yet either.
just screaming "organize" at them won't work. it might work for some people who are in a similar headspace as you but being hyper online is hardly the only way to isolate yourself from real people, you might be a in a party organizing and still have zero ability to connect with other workers on a real level, so think about why that might be
also, i didn't read the article, but self care is good, actually. you can't maintain any level of discipline without it. breaking down your ability to do self-care is one of the first things you do when you want to break a human and its something that capitalism does naturally through alienation and overwork and inducing disorders by demanding ways of thinking and living that are not good for us in order to have pliable workers and inducing massive amounts of stress by forcing us to either pretend or otherwise convince ourselves that we can make a broken system work.
revolution doesn't only take disciplined cadres, it also requires conditions where the working class will be ready for the necessary unrest, conflict, violence and discipline. the conditions for revolution will come when the conditions are so bad that the working class in the imperial core can't be lied to anymore and cannot take it anymore and has given up on the defanged unions and is ready for street fights and illegal mass strikes and is aware and ready to fight the counter reaction.
that does take disiplined cadres that will assist and guide in that process and but that sort of cadre work is not for everyone. under those kinds of conditions the little sects that we call "parties" today will either show themselves relevant or not and we'll just have to see if your favorite sect or mine will have any relevance or not or whether its someone else or maybe even the fascists that will win. the profit rate of the imperial core nations keeps dropping and the climate crisis keeps deepening, so we will see those conditions happen in our lifetime
not so much on the self-care is shit part. i think anyone who has been involved in any kind of revolutionary organization has figured out that self-care is an important element of it if you expect to have any longevity. self-care and solidarity (or mutual aid if you wish to use that terminology) strenghten each other. anyway based on the other comments here it seems you have changed your tone so i won't harp on that but if you have had experience with people who have a deep "learned helplessness" due to decades of poverty and the system failing them and have tried to help them you will know that the rhetoric you were using is both ineffective and heartless but i'll stop at that.
i mean self care in the sense used in the article, and in the many liberal discourses it criticizes; that is, ascribing a deep political significance to the individual pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. i'm not advocating for a bootstraps mentality, and i'm not denying the real fact of our collective and individual disempowerment, but if we wish to pull our fellow workers up out of the muck, we need to begin from a place that assumes some degree of agency.
yeah, that particular definition is shit too imo. that said, when it comes to these types of things the amount of agency varies extensively, depending on the conditions you are facing. when i say self care i mean doing what is necessary to secure the bottom rungs of the maslow hierarchy more or less. if you are not able to get food, clothes, shelter, meds, sleep etc your agency even over your own mental state become severely reduced and because most people attempt to acquire those things through selling labor or getting SSI/SSDI checks that may not pay enough for that to happen. capitalism literally robs many people of most of their agency and its a downward spiral from there on and can lead to maladaptive behaviors like drug abuse etc.
liberal outlets that promote hedonism as self care only make this worse. solidarity and mutual aid can help us break through some of that but mostly we are left to fend for ourselves, which is why i am not against a better definition of self care that can be more useful if still very limited in its ability to meaningfully increase agency for many people. much of psychiatry and self-help coaching is similar to be honest, it only works for a small subset of people and is much more likely to work if socioeconomic factors have been guaranteed to begin with, which is not a safe assumption in our system of capitalism
I don't think that's quite what the author is saying, I think they just don't really understand their own argument very well. They seem to say that living within the conditions of modern capitalism can lead to significant disabilities or a disruption of the capacity to interact with society in the nebulous good way, which they assert that we are all trying to live. The problem, is that they are also very, very stupid and not particularly good at understanding the function of the human mind, and thus wrote that... unfortunate essay.
Stripped of all its garbage, it can perhaps be reformatted into a less stupid statement: "Capitalism is almost certainly contributing to your struggle to compete with the material, societal, and personal demands placed on you by yourself and the world around you, but there is a danger of allowing that fact to become an excuse. You may not have the agency or control you should have, but that doesn't excuse not using the agency and control you do have. If the fact that capitalism is causing executive disfunction in you becomes a reason to not use what little agency and control you have, you will inevitably have a less meaningful and full life than you otherwise would."
Still not particularly compassionate, but not entirely stupid, either.
Your version attacks capitalism whereas their version defends it. They wrote it this way because they wanted to defend it, if they wanted to attack capitalism they would have wrote it another way.
No, they also acknowledge the role of capitalism in causing harm, they just try to downplay it via a particularly stupid set of rhetorical games that manage to be both insulting and completely incorrect.
Acknowledging capitalism does harm isn't incompatible with defending capitalism. The capitalists do it everytime they make any kind of "new deal" with the working class to prevent revolution.
It's socdem bullshit.
I don't really see that what I wrote as a summery there was different, I guess. Sure, I cut out the deeply incoherent ramble that may be where she attempts to defend capitalism in the perpetual "I can fix him" of social democrats, but even then, I cut it because it was mostly a bunch of mental gymnastics with no actual structure that didn't seem to have any point whatsoever beyond some attempt at appearing intellectual.
It wasn't different in the actual content per se, but it is framed completely differently.
Well, yes, the point of think-pieces isn't to be useful or wise, it is to give incredibly boring people like me something to talk about other than the weather.
I kinda intended to make that point in what I said, but I guess I didn't: Nothing about most "think"-pieces includes much in the way of thought. They are, almost solely, summations of someone else's thought through the lens of someone who did half the analysis they should have in order to understand it. Their value to PMC society is not in being smart or insightful, it is to either provide a thing which can be agreed upon in order to demonstrate one's moral rectitude or it is to provide a thing which can be disagreed with in order to demonstrate the deep and thoughtful nature of the reader. They serve as an alternative to talking about whichever other cultural artifact is currently widely known and discussed, and in that they also serve as a social semaphore, signaling that the reader is sufficiently cultured or whatever.
The author is incapable of distinguishing between capitalism and the fabric of reality itself. Just PMC ghoul shit
https://muckrack.com/clare-coffey/articles
For anyone with a strong gag reflex, here's some more of this journalist... writer? Opinion-haver?
This can be a tricky topic to talk about. Most people don't understand their personal problems as part of any larger framework: this makes it impossible to understand and address any systematic problems. On the other hand, a deterministic framework that fully predicts behavior and outcomes robs people of their agency. I think the article does a good job of being nuanced on this. I guess people are just upset about the tone? (even though it mainly just criticizes a type of columnist)
I guess I didn't get the same vibe from it. From my perspective it's criticisms are aimed at other columnists, not at regular people. And it doesn't absolve capitalism of blame from personal problems, but criticizes the attitude of blaming everything on capitalism and using that as a reason not to improve yourself
I stand corrected, the article criticizes a certain belief so this could be relevant to working class people who hold this belief. And it criticizes the columnists that perpetuate that belief. Also, what suggestions does it give that are privileged?
On the other hand, a deterministic framework that fully predicts behavior and outcomes robs people of their agency.
Being predictable is not the same as being controlled, but also I've argued about compatiblism a thousand times and don't feel like doing it again so if you disagree then I guess I've been owned.
