1y ago

Anti-Capitalist Affirmations

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/14891969

ANTI-CAPITALIST AFFIRMATIONS
i am allowed to spend my time creating things, even if they are not beautiful.
there is no such thing as a "real Job". all forms of work are real and vlid.
there is nothing that i need to accomplish to be worthy. i am already worthy.
doing nothing ls good for my soul.
i am not deflined by what I produce.
my worth cannot be measured by my paycheck, my job title, or a list of professional or academic achievements.
i də not need to monetize my hobbles, It is enough to spend time doing something i love.
| will not let society decide what success looks like. I can define what successful life looks like for me.

52 comments

All valid points, however the 'real job' one has a caveat in my book. Someone may perfectly well be happy making pretty things for their own enjoyment, but it won't by default pay the bills. Basic services such as food, housing, and medical could well be supplied by society, but nobody should expect that entitles them to luxury and extravagances by extension.
- nobody should expect that entitles them to luxury and extravagances by extension.
  They're not? I don't know where you got that from. It has nothing to do with the point you claim to be addressing.
  
  There is a segment that would argue the doctor and the florist should have equal accomodations in society, despite the massive disparity in training and skill required. I don't ascribe to that logic is what I'm pointing to.
This is sort of shocking to my system seeing this written down in this format. I didn't realize that I still held some of these beliefs.
doing nothing is good for my soul
yessssssss
I hate that this feels so "you shouldn't live/act conventionally" instead of "you don't need to live/act conventionally". Like, I don't sell things I make because I want the money, I sell things I make because I love things I make being out and about in the world. It helps give me a reason to make them, because I struggle to make things for myself. Doing nothing absolutely kills me, and that's ok. Making things is one of the only things I truly like about myself, of course I'm going to heavily identify with that.
- Hm, maybe that is your own insecurity with the subject speaking? Because the affirmations clearly state that "you don't need to" and not that you shouldn't. Obviously it is fine to capitalize on your passion. But often when you are really interested in any topic or good at something, you get told by all sorts of people that you should make money out of it. So there is a certain societal pressure based on capitalism to do so. And these affirmations just state that you don't need to. But it is with stay at home moms maybe. You sure can stay at home and do the household and care for the kids etc. But you definitely don't need to and it is important to get the message out that these expectations are highly problematic. Same goes for the expectation to capitalize on your interests.
  
  I mean clearly this is through the lens of my own experiences and feelings, that's why I said "I don't like that this feels like" instead of "I don't like that this is".
  I understand "hustle culture" and the things that this is addressing, I just don't like the... absolute? feel of it. And that's fine, I'm not out here demanding all the memes on the internet be made specifically to my tastes. I just felt the desire to put my thoughts out there, and didn't restrain it for once.
- Feel that. Girlfriend made candles as a hobby. I took them to work. Coworkers tried to buy them. Skip ahead a year later and she's got an inventory of nearly 200 candles and a bunch of scents and doing shows and making money. Still in the red overall, but seeing people's eyes light up when they smell them is better than any profit.
  
  Yep. And you know what? If you weren't selling them and just doing it for fun you'd still be in red. So it's not something to worry about.
Alternative to the second point: all jobs are make-believe
There are many jobs which aren't valid. It's just usually not because of the worker, but the world doesn't need active harm causing: cold calling, marketing, etc. Graeber's Bullshit Jobs
I disagree with the "doing nothing is good for the soul" one only for UBI experiments bearing out that even in a vacuum of satisfied needs people will still tend to make project work for themselves just to have something to do to not be bored.
Being able to relax at one's own discretion and necessity is healthy, but having something to say you do for yourself is evidently somewhere in that hierarchy of needs.
- It is definitely healthy to be able to take time and actually do nothing though. Like having a cup of tea in the morning, and just sitting and waking up slowly. That's good for the soul
  
  Yeah but that's not "doing nothing" as much as just relaxing
  To me "doing nothing" means sedentary subsistence living
All forms of work a valid? Even CEOs? What about landlords?
- Being a landlord isn't work, that's being a parasite.
  
  You put it more succinctly than I could haha.
  I would go further and say that anything that people point to as a positive thing that an individual landlord might do like (like, ohh but they go around to this old widow's house to check on her and fix things around the house) are good work, but have nothing to do with extracting rents. You could do that and just let people live on their patches unmolested.
  PS Damn it I did it again. I just went on and on ... I'm going to my partner's family reunion tonight and I'm really nervous about it. Apparently they're kind of bullies, I'm going to get eaten alive lol
  
  I disagree that all landlords are parasites. It used to be boarders were extremely common. It can be a go between jobs or locations or whatever, that was its original intent. Having one or two properties is fine, it's the mega corporations buying up entire cities and then pretending to be small owners renting them as air bnb's and such that are the problem. Slum landlords, across the board, are shit as well.
  
  Not contributing to society yet using what others have worked for. What would you call that?
- Leadership is valid when you're elevated there by the consensus of your peers. That person might have the title of CEO or President. In a lefty organization that's still in a society with currency, they wouldn't have 10,000x the pay of the median worker. They might not even have 10x the pay.
- I got caught up on that one too. I think it could be argued that CEO is a job, and landlord is a title. Neither of those necessarily implies work.
  But there might be some things that these people do which could be considered work.
  So like if you were to hypothetically divorce these from money, you could say that, I dunno: reading tech articles and going to conferences and talking about how your co-workers are implementing the tech, is work; or fixing up a house, or keeping tabs on a block of houses and making sure they're actually maintained, is work.
  Maybe it is a stretch.. I do think there are "bullshit jobs" which would not exist (certainly not in the current form) without capitalism. Like there would be no demand for them outside of accruing capital for people who don't need it
  
  There are different types of CEO’s. I played that role for a startup once, and it was one of the more difficult jobs I’ve ever done. The responsibility takes its toll.
  I’m sure there are fat cats at the top of established businesses that do nothing, but I’m not convinced that it is typical of even 50% of people who do that job.
I love this
| will
i də not
Is this a bot with bad OCR? What's with all of the weird characters?
- just looks like image upscaling to me, presumably the original text was like 5 pixels per letter.
  note how most corners are smoothened out into curves, that's typical of algorithms that try to be smart about upscaling.
  
  I think they were referring to the text (transcription) of the post, not the image. And yes it looks like OCR.
Disagree with point 4. Feel like I probably disagree with a couple more, but they are too vague to tell.
Doing nothing at all is one of the biggest sources of misery in my life. If I can fill the nothing moments with something either productive or enjoyable, then I tend to be a lot happier. True nothing (doom scrolling, pointless grinding, getting stoned enough to be in a state of twilight wakefulness, barely registering the hours go by) is one of the most damaging habits you can form, in my opinion.
- Both extremes are damaging: doing too much or doing too little. From my point of view looking to achieve a flow state in daily life activities is the best way to go.
Step 0 : don't be poor, or you will starve to death on the street.
Why are these considered anti-capitalist?
- A lot of people feel guilty for being lazy instead of productive. The post is making the (in my opinion, fair) claim that in a society where we weren't forced to work ourselves to the bone that we wouldn't have these internalized guilts about pursuing things purely for enjoyment without monetary gain. That we might not feel the urge to work even when we could be enjoying a day off. That these things are the result of capitalist propaganda.
God Wants You to Rest (feat. Sr. Mary Grace, SV)
a list of professional or academic achievements.
i disagree with that. doing academic work for the good of the society should be considered highly valuable.
- The point is it's not a requirement to be worth smth

52 comments