friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
I'm going to pm you. thanks
Combating hopelessness
- Thread starter friendofdorothy
- Start date
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Also i highly recommend if you've ever felt that you're shit at your job or that you struggle in dealing with people, to read The Art of The Deal by a certain Donald J. Trump. It's very good at reassuring the Project 2025 worries as well. The guy is batshit. Utterly unhinged.
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
as i think i've said elsewhere on here, i have a bit of a
with the mindfulness stuff i have seen - seems to be very much 'stay in your lane, accept your station in life, put up with the shit the establishment throws at you, don't make waves'although it's possible it's random platitude generator like the 'astrology' in the tabloids and may not bear any resemblance to what mindfulness was meant to be.
having said that, yes, there's a limit to just how many battles any individual can fight.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
IMO that certainly is how employers increasingly use it.as i think i've said elsewhere on here, i have a bit of a
There's a mental health and safety issue in this area - take a stress risk assessment and do some wellbeing exercises.
Rather than the responsibility being on the employer to fix the root cause of the problem, the responsibility of looking after mental health becomes that of individual employees.
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
and in general, i'm not doing all that well with the hopelessness thing.
(conscious this isn't in k+s) so on a personal level will just say that national / local political circumstances means redundancy may be coming next year
bits of social media from the US consist of a mix of people frightened about the next 4 years (or longer) and trying to come up with options for moving to a (hopefully) better state, or leaving the country altogether, or wanting to rush to sort out medical or legal situations, e.g. entering in to same sex marriages before they are banned (although i have an idea that s-s marriages in some states got annulled once before) and noticing that people are taking rainbow (etc) flags down from being visible on their homes and so on.
and other people offering what help they can to people in those situations. i'm not convinced it's going to be enough.
and the idea that if it's not a complete disaster (from the view of the republicans' polling, rather than for people on the receiving end of it) can see the tories / refuck going for the same sort of line in 2028 / 29 when it comes to challenging an uninspiring centrist incumbent party that hasn't delivered much at ground level.
at the moment, i don't feel like i've got the energy to join the resistance movement...
(conscious this isn't in k+s) so on a personal level will just say that national / local political circumstances means redundancy may be coming next year
bits of social media from the US consist of a mix of people frightened about the next 4 years (or longer) and trying to come up with options for moving to a (hopefully) better state, or leaving the country altogether, or wanting to rush to sort out medical or legal situations, e.g. entering in to same sex marriages before they are banned (although i have an idea that s-s marriages in some states got annulled once before) and noticing that people are taking rainbow (etc) flags down from being visible on their homes and so on.
and other people offering what help they can to people in those situations. i'm not convinced it's going to be enough.
and the idea that if it's not a complete disaster (from the view of the republicans' polling, rather than for people on the receiving end of it) can see the tories / refuck going for the same sort of line in 2028 / 29 when it comes to challenging an uninspiring centrist incumbent party that hasn't delivered much at ground level.
at the moment, i don't feel like i've got the energy to join the resistance movement...
BigMoaner
What A Load of Old Bollocks
Stopping social media can help i find. of course it;s not the only solution. but if you're largely powerless to affect things, then what's the point in reading about things you are powerless over? for all that i want to help people, i cannot do that without looking out for myself, managing my own mental and emotional life. thing is, what iwth the average human spending about 5 hours a day on their phone, we are so immeshed, so pulled around by this stuff. it's not just tut tut social media rolls eyes, this stuff kind of is reality now. we buy into so many narratives. exhausting.
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
i'm not on social media a lot (i regard urban as more anti-social media
) but it's the only way of keeping contact with some people / circles
Eivets Rednow
Member
My take on combating hopelessness is that for me, becoming a truer version of myself is helping. I try to take intentional actions wherever I go, and connect with people. I can’t say that it is easy as sometimes we all feel hopeless, however I think I have found a path to walk through to make the changes to the world around me. Education and career combined, leading to better, more complex decision making and strategies.
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
Welcome. Thanks for your reply. I have a few questions:
What do you mean by a truer version of yourself?
How do you find your path to walk through the changes?
Tell me more about your complex decision making.
Eivets Rednow
Member
Hello, thank you for your interest.
I spent a long time hiding away, pretending to be someone else. This morphed into pretending to be someone’s wife. I wasn’t happy. I also wasn’t aware of how much I was faking it until it started to slip out in tells when I was out and about talking to people in certain contexts. To my own surprise, I ended things really quickly when I couldn’t ignore the flood of feelings that had overwhelmed me. I’ve decided to follow my feelings now, and see what that brings. I had already started the process of following my feelings and not pretending in my professional life, so my personal life just needed to catch up. And thankfully it has.
The path is a fantasy. It exists in my mind. I’ve built alternative universes which are a shadow world of reality which have been helping me to understand reality differently. These fantasy paths could take me anywhere, even outer space. It means I look at the mundane world with its tarmac and kerbs with a renewed sense of wonder. Magic in the everyday… I also like to follow trails, that’s fun. Like trying to catch pixies or trolls, except these are people doing weird things. Then I make changes along these paths, wherever I spot an opportunity.
My decision making has improved over time. Learning about project management helped. I read a lot of different things in non-judgemental way. I’m trying to understand how things work. The more I learn, and connect that learning to my previous learning, I’m able to make better decisions. Some of the things I do might look like they defy logic, but that is just another thing that I find hilarious.
brixtonscot
Well-Known Member
I haven’t been out here for a while , so just catching up with some posts now.
I think that video on The Compulsion of Happiness and the uses and abuses of “pain” is intriguing and has a lot of good points, if a bit “deep”…..
Here is another video , The Burnout Society from Tony Chamas at 1Dime , which also based partly on the work of Byung Chul Han , which I find a bit more accessible and pragmatic.
- A Documentary about how Hustle Culture, Workaholism, Toxic Productivity, Self Improvement, and Self-Help gurus like Gary Vaynerchuk function as a form of Social Control, which the Philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls Psychopolitics.
Psychopolitics is a form of smart power that governs our Neoliberal Society of Control.
Hustle Culture and Positive Psychology (Toxic Positivity) are just some of its many manifestations.
It is leading to burnout, depression, and anxiety.
35 mins
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BigMoaner
What A Load of Old Bollocks
Did you listen to the second half of hte Compulsion one - that's the half where he really heats up. He's incredible. There's a sort of cult like following around him, but by some seriously clever people too in the philosophy world - he's rose to a giant in philosophy. There are some simple key concepts in his work - that we have, since the 80s, moved from external-punishment, to internal ones. that we have moved from "Must" to "Can" and that "can" exhausts the human, cuts him off, makes him believe that he is just a atomised dot floating around making right and wrong decisions - forget society. He takes the modern internal monologue, to an almost comphrehensive degree, stretching out to love, ambition, fear, dread, hopelessness, and links it so effortlessly to neoliberalism, and, as a kind of angry reaction, the solution he proposes is a kind of powerful nihilism. A retreat by way of Heidegger and Zen buddhism. A refusal of compulsive achievement, whether it be in the realm of politics, progress, sex, relationships. The power of negative thinking. Instead of I can, I can't. Because, well, we quite often can't. A giving up. And then seeing what happens.
The problem for him is not the disciplined, controlled subject (foucoult) but the modern (largely-absent-behind-a load of well-being, theraputic language) but the neoliberal "achievement subject", never ever settled, never drifting in peace, constantly harrased by the master-slave dialectic that is now internalised, often from teh moment we wake to when we sleep. His books are a guidebook in walking in the complete opposite way of capitalism and neoliberalsim. He sees social media as 'capture' of the subject. that there are no real spaces left for emotional and mental experience and processing, even simple thinking, even simple contemplation, both slowly vanishing. that we flit from one distraction to the other, compulsively - hyper attention. To think through something., to be alone and untinterupted with ones thoughts. He uses heideggers "humans are held by thought" for this, and that we should be extemely careful of highly addictive, attention-capturing capitalist machines like tic tok, and the like. if they are not used as tools, they will, and do, use us as tools. there's little free about compulsively doing one thing over. The doom scroll in this regard is fascinating - a sort of search without aim, search without meaning, a shallow and compulsive fix that rarely satisfises, that now is such a massive part of human capitalist consumption.
i'm a total fan boy, i have to admit. each book removes so many veils. people have described his works as more helpful than a 100 self help books, that's why i have had some rants on this thread. people might read him and find him useful - i did.
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brixtonscot
Well-Known Member
I did watch all of Compulsion of Happiness video , and while agreeing with what I understood of it , I also found it a bit “heavy going” ….particularly with thinking of how to get that over to as many people as possible.
If I remember and understood correctly …..that deep internal ( psychological?) pain within us all is being manipulated and exploited in order to keep us subjugated by means of self-exploitation.
I don’t disagree…..but how can that be exposed and dealt with in a practical way to as many people as possible ?
brixtonscot
Well-Known Member
I think this interview with Grace Blakeley , author of Vulture Capitalism , makes a good point about how the liberation movements from the 1960’s ( eg. Black , Women’s , Gays ) which started out with collective aims mainly as part of a wider progressive emancipatory movement , as “means-to-an-end” , got co-opted by the emerging hyper-individualism of neo-liberalist middle classes from the 70’s onwards , as “ends-in-themselves” - alongside major attacks on trade unions.
“As well as the central importance of revitalizing working-class power, Blakeley wraps up the interview by exploring a few other visions for strong, democratic, and worker-led economies”
The Neoliberal Takeover Was More Insidious Than You Realize
“As well as the central importance of revitalizing working-class power, Blakeley wraps up the interview by exploring a few other visions for strong, democratic, and worker-led economies”
The Neoliberal Takeover Was More Insidious Than You Realize
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brixtonscot
Well-Known Member
I shared the following quote by Maya Angelou on Facebook , and I was quite surprised by the number of “likes” it received , including from parents/grandparents….
-"I am convinced that most people do not grow up.
We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards.
We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up.
I think what we do is mostly grow old.
We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces,
but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias."
Maya Angelou- Letter to my Daughter
-"I am convinced that most people do not grow up.
We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards.
We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up.
I think what we do is mostly grow old.
We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces,
but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias."
Maya Angelou- Letter to my Daughter
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
Care to say more?
Humberto
talk to the hand
People can believe that life ain't worth living even when they can defy it even if the strong take from the weak.
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
Not sure what that has to do with Halle Salasi? Or hopefulness? Am I missing something?
Humberto
talk to the hand
I don't know, the bit about defying it maybe. A person's innate worthiness. Just something that came to me during the day.
brixtonscot
Well-Known Member
How significant is the following on the psycho-social perceptions , understandings and consequent behaviours between the generations who grew up before the internet and those who have grown up constantly “online”….?
Did most of us commenting on this thread grow up pre-internet ? ( I did )
( eta : following text is from video below )
- “ Lifting the veil of technology and helping us to understand what lies underneath - on the work of Byung-Chal Han.
He is telling the stories that need to be told today about modern technology and where we are as a society and where we are heading.
If there is an overall thesis in Han’s recent works it's this -
we are living in a shallow achievement society where all negativity has been erased , edges smoothed and filters applied.
We are showing more of ourselves , often in close-up , and seeing less of the other in a constant pressure for achievement , success and self-gratification.
We are becoming isolated and mentally ill , detached from nature , authentic experience and other people .
In his most famous work the Burnout Society , Han lays out the key framework for his argument -
In the 20th century we lived in a disciplinary society ,
- in the 21st century we live in an achievement society , we have moved from being obedient subjects to achievement subjects , or in other words ,
entrepreneurs of the self.
What has remained consistent is the pressure to produce more.
What has changed is the language - instead of being subjected to an order that we should do something , we are being subjected to an imperative that we can do something -
but ‘can’ is much more effective than the negativity of ‘should’ - therefore the social unconscious switches from ‘should’ to ‘can’.
The achievement subject is faster and more productive than the obedience subject.
However the ‘can’ does not revoke the ‘should’ -
The obedient subject remains disciplined in our constant drive for achievement , for achieving anything we can do.
We get sick and burned-out ; the achievement subject works manically to maximize achievement , leading to self-exploitation.
We start fighting ourselves -
“ The depressed individual is unable to measure up - he is tired of becoming himself “ ( A.Ehrenberg )
We have to constantly keep achieving more and more , leading to further exhaustion and burnout , because our achievement is performative ,
we lose touch with other people and start indulging in narcissism and self-love.
The more common idea is someone's imperfections that make them beautiful ,
in a digital world without imperfection , with just a screen with no past or future -only now there is no beauty.
Today , instagram with its perfect images or television , with its make-up laden news presenters , according to Han , all digital media has this smooth quality ,
It turns even nature into a window of itself.
What else do we see on our instagram feed , but a recursive look at ourselves ?
The entire globe is developing into a panopticon - there is no outside space.
The panopticon is becoming total , no wall separates inside from outside ,
google and social networks which present themselves as spaces of freedom
are assuming panoptic forms today.
Surveillance is not occurring as an attack on freedom as is normally assumed. Instead people are voluntarily surrendering to the panoptic gaze , they deliberately collaborate in the digital panopticon by denuding and exhibiting themselves.
The prisoner of the digital panopticon is a perpetrator and a victim at the same time.
Herein lies the dialectic of freedom -
freedom turns out to be a form of control.
In the society of achievement we end up exhibiting various aspects of ourselves, to the extent that every subject is also its own advertising object.
We become our own commodity , while at the same time selling ourselves as entrepreneurs.
Han reinforces the idea , this is essential to be free.
We need to let go of achievement , the imperative to be positive at all times.
We must just be us with the negativity and imperfections that come with that.
It would sound banal if it weren't so difficult.”
- Video 10mins. ( thanks BigMoaner )
Did most of us commenting on this thread grow up pre-internet ? ( I did )
( eta : following text is from video below )
- “ Lifting the veil of technology and helping us to understand what lies underneath - on the work of Byung-Chal Han.
He is telling the stories that need to be told today about modern technology and where we are as a society and where we are heading.
If there is an overall thesis in Han’s recent works it's this -
we are living in a shallow achievement society where all negativity has been erased , edges smoothed and filters applied.
We are showing more of ourselves , often in close-up , and seeing less of the other in a constant pressure for achievement , success and self-gratification.
We are becoming isolated and mentally ill , detached from nature , authentic experience and other people .
In his most famous work the Burnout Society , Han lays out the key framework for his argument -
In the 20th century we lived in a disciplinary society ,
- in the 21st century we live in an achievement society , we have moved from being obedient subjects to achievement subjects , or in other words ,
entrepreneurs of the self.
What has remained consistent is the pressure to produce more.
What has changed is the language - instead of being subjected to an order that we should do something , we are being subjected to an imperative that we can do something -
but ‘can’ is much more effective than the negativity of ‘should’ - therefore the social unconscious switches from ‘should’ to ‘can’.
The achievement subject is faster and more productive than the obedience subject.
However the ‘can’ does not revoke the ‘should’ -
The obedient subject remains disciplined in our constant drive for achievement , for achieving anything we can do.
We get sick and burned-out ; the achievement subject works manically to maximize achievement , leading to self-exploitation.
We start fighting ourselves -
“ The depressed individual is unable to measure up - he is tired of becoming himself “ ( A.Ehrenberg )
We have to constantly keep achieving more and more , leading to further exhaustion and burnout , because our achievement is performative ,
we lose touch with other people and start indulging in narcissism and self-love.
The more common idea is someone's imperfections that make them beautiful ,
in a digital world without imperfection , with just a screen with no past or future -only now there is no beauty.
Today , instagram with its perfect images or television , with its make-up laden news presenters , according to Han , all digital media has this smooth quality ,
It turns even nature into a window of itself.
What else do we see on our instagram feed , but a recursive look at ourselves ?
The entire globe is developing into a panopticon - there is no outside space.
The panopticon is becoming total , no wall separates inside from outside ,
google and social networks which present themselves as spaces of freedom
are assuming panoptic forms today.
Surveillance is not occurring as an attack on freedom as is normally assumed. Instead people are voluntarily surrendering to the panoptic gaze , they deliberately collaborate in the digital panopticon by denuding and exhibiting themselves.
The prisoner of the digital panopticon is a perpetrator and a victim at the same time.
Herein lies the dialectic of freedom -
freedom turns out to be a form of control.
In the society of achievement we end up exhibiting various aspects of ourselves, to the extent that every subject is also its own advertising object.
We become our own commodity , while at the same time selling ourselves as entrepreneurs.
Han reinforces the idea , this is essential to be free.
We need to let go of achievement , the imperative to be positive at all times.
We must just be us with the negativity and imperfections that come with that.
It would sound banal if it weren't so difficult.”
- Video 10mins. ( thanks BigMoaner )
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friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
I don't really understand about building or maintaining relationships only online. I don't understand why / how people choose to live their live via the medium of social media.
Much the same as my gran never got the point of using a phone.
So many of my communication and social skills depend on personal interaction. So much nuance disappears online.
Social media seems to be the ultimate capitalist tool for keeping us isolated and feeling inadequate in order to sell us shit.
Much the same as my gran never got the point of using a phone.
So many of my communication and social skills depend on personal interaction. So much nuance disappears online.
Social media seems to be the ultimate capitalist tool for keeping us isolated and feeling inadequate in order to sell us shit.
BigMoaner
What A Load of Old Bollocks
that video is excellent btw and fleshes out this well
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
Will have to watch video later. Thanks
brixtonscot well said. True that about 'achievement society' Makes me ask what are we achieving?
brixtonscot well said. True that about 'achievement society' Makes me ask what are we achieving?
brixtonscot
Well-Known Member
Most of what I posted is the text from the video
I guess what it is proposing that is being “achieved” in many cases is “self-exploitation”….?
BigMoaner
What A Load of Old Bollocks
Most of what I posted is the text from the video
I guess what it is proposing that is being “achieved” in many cases is “self-exploitation”….?
there's nothing wrong in the playing the game - capitalism can be great fun. having nice shit is, well, nice. Tech is great when it's great, etc. What doesn't want to climb a career, etc. i've never been one to say that it's all awful. i think what he looks at though is a certain strain, a certain nervous hyper-attention, propelled by a need to be positive, to resist and heal and resolve any sort of negativity. The move from 'should' to 'can'. Because there's a certain (seeming) freedom in western lives, we get swallowed by all the options, all the things we have the potential to be/do/see.
His insights into boredom are compelling (and always remember that lurking in his thinking is Heidegger, the complete mystical master of many human states of being) - i paraphrase BCH "in distraction (say scrolling tic tok), the past and future evaporate, the subject becomes fused with the object, the self vanishes. and to resist is to be bored. therefore boredom is profound."
and in regard self exploitation - this is where the modern - and it is modern, contemporary - internal monologue - is looked at by him...that awful strain of needing to be better, more friendly, more loving, a better parent, a better colleague, a better project manager, etc. now this is all okay to an extent, we all want to grow, but when it makes you cut off, isolated, afraid, nervous, compliant. taht's somethign else entirely. and, and this is where his buddhist ideas come, he would say...what if you give up on all those ideas of improvement? Waht happens if you thoroughly and utterly give up on the need to improve all the time? what happens then? heidegger might say you enter into a new realm of being, a new world.
And of course he applies a general left wing need for change, for revolution. he wants, and i seriously don't think he takes himself seriously in this regard (strains of nihilism), to transform his readers and transform society. What that new society looks like he doesn't say. he is in general a descriptive rather that proscrptive philosopher. and he's up there with your baudrillard, foucaults, adornos, etc. definitely of the time. and it helps that his books are mere 90 pages a time (shame about the tenner price though). enjoy!
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brixtonscot
Well-Known Member
yes , having nice shit is nice and Tech can be great when it’s great - But ….I disagree that capitalism itself can be great fun.
CAPITALism is based on the private greed of a few making capital/profit from the exploitation of the labour of the many.
brixtonscot
Well-Known Member
Some extracts from Psycho-politics: Neoliberalism And New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han -
Neoliberal psychopolitics is a technology of domination that stabilizes and perpetuates the prevailing system by means of psychological programing and steering.
Todays neoliberal regime leads to utter isolation; as such, it does not really free us at all.
Accordingly, the question now is whether we need to redefine freedom - to reinvent it - in order to escape from the fatal dialectic that is changing freedom into coercion.
Neoliberalism represents a highly efficient, indeed intelligent, system for exploiting freedom.
Everything that belongs to practices and expressive forms of liberty -
emotion, play and communication - comes to be exploited.
It is inefficient to exploit people against their will.
Allo-exploitation yields scant returns.
Only when freedom is exploited are returns maximized.
It is interesting to note that Marx also defines freedom in terms of a successful relationship to others:
'Only in community [with others does each] individual [have] the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible."
From this perspective, being free means nothing other than self-realization with others.
Freedom is synonymous with a working community (i.e., a successful one).
For Marx, individual freedom represents a ruse - a trick of capital.
'Free competition', which is based on the idea of individual freedom, simply amounts to the 'relation of capital to itself as another capital,
i.e., the real conduct of capital as capital'?
Capital reproduces by entering into relations with itself as another form of Capital: through free competition.
It copulates with the Other of itself by way of individual freedom.
Capital grows inasmuch as people engage in free competition.
Hereby, individual freedom amounts to servitude inasmuch as Capital lays hold of it and uses it for its own propagation.
That is, Capital exploits individual freedom in order to breed:
‘ It is not the individuals who are set free by free competition; it is,
rather, capital which is set free.'
The freedom of Capital achieves self-realization by way of individual freedom.
In the process, individuals degrade into the genital organs of Capital.
Individual freedom lends it an 'automatic' subjectivity of its own, which spurs it to reproduce actively.
In this way, Capital continuously 'brings forth living offspring'.
Today, individual freedom is taking on excessive forms; ultimately, this amounts to nothing other than the excess of Capital itself.
Short video on Psycho-Politics 9mins
Neoliberal psychopolitics is a technology of domination that stabilizes and perpetuates the prevailing system by means of psychological programing and steering.
Todays neoliberal regime leads to utter isolation; as such, it does not really free us at all.
Accordingly, the question now is whether we need to redefine freedom - to reinvent it - in order to escape from the fatal dialectic that is changing freedom into coercion.
Neoliberalism represents a highly efficient, indeed intelligent, system for exploiting freedom.
Everything that belongs to practices and expressive forms of liberty -
emotion, play and communication - comes to be exploited.
It is inefficient to exploit people against their will.
Allo-exploitation yields scant returns.
Only when freedom is exploited are returns maximized.
It is interesting to note that Marx also defines freedom in terms of a successful relationship to others:
'Only in community [with others does each] individual [have] the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible."
From this perspective, being free means nothing other than self-realization with others.
Freedom is synonymous with a working community (i.e., a successful one).
For Marx, individual freedom represents a ruse - a trick of capital.
'Free competition', which is based on the idea of individual freedom, simply amounts to the 'relation of capital to itself as another capital,
i.e., the real conduct of capital as capital'?
Capital reproduces by entering into relations with itself as another form of Capital: through free competition.
It copulates with the Other of itself by way of individual freedom.
Capital grows inasmuch as people engage in free competition.
Hereby, individual freedom amounts to servitude inasmuch as Capital lays hold of it and uses it for its own propagation.
That is, Capital exploits individual freedom in order to breed:
‘ It is not the individuals who are set free by free competition; it is,
rather, capital which is set free.'
The freedom of Capital achieves self-realization by way of individual freedom.
In the process, individuals degrade into the genital organs of Capital.
Individual freedom lends it an 'automatic' subjectivity of its own, which spurs it to reproduce actively.
In this way, Capital continuously 'brings forth living offspring'.
Today, individual freedom is taking on excessive forms; ultimately, this amounts to nothing other than the excess of Capital itself.
Short video on Psycho-Politics 9mins
BigMoaner
What A Load of Old Bollocks
An example of this is watching my kids relationship to tech. Often, when working from home and they are sick, all screen time rules go out hte window to allow me to work - so, often they will get the screen at say 7.30 am and, no exageration, other than stopping for lunch, they do not put them down. Ever. A constant exchange of attention and monitisation. Human attention and focus turned into capital.
We do limit it, a few hours a day, just because we know that all of their leisure time it will be consumed by it - and this is kids who have interests such as fishing, football, drawing, reading. But how many parents set limits? Not as many as you would think, I suspect. So whole childhoods turned over to the market.
And he would say - that is what it is, so what? Well he would say - what is lost in that process? People sneer at "the go climb some trees with your friends" boomer-type argument, but there is nothing wrong at all in saying if you are doing tic tok hour after hour because you are compelled to by addictive algorithyms, instead of climbing trees with your friends, then yes, things are lost. lost to capital. He uses a kind of phenomenlogical approach to this things and gets rid of the conceptial game of "progress" - so he would ask you to look at the actual experience - in the senses, smells, the body, the mind, thought tiself, the field of vision - of what it is like to climb trees with your friends rather than watch endless tic tok reals. Yes, as you probably ahve clocked, a sort of conservative argument. But I don't care. There's nothign wrong with looking back.
It's all very dystopian. It's best with a writer like that to "put on the lenses" for a bit and then take them off again.
We do limit it, a few hours a day, just because we know that all of their leisure time it will be consumed by it - and this is kids who have interests such as fishing, football, drawing, reading. But how many parents set limits? Not as many as you would think, I suspect. So whole childhoods turned over to the market.
And he would say - that is what it is, so what? Well he would say - what is lost in that process? People sneer at "the go climb some trees with your friends" boomer-type argument, but there is nothing wrong at all in saying if you are doing tic tok hour after hour because you are compelled to by addictive algorithyms, instead of climbing trees with your friends, then yes, things are lost. lost to capital. He uses a kind of phenomenlogical approach to this things and gets rid of the conceptial game of "progress" - so he would ask you to look at the actual experience - in the senses, smells, the body, the mind, thought tiself, the field of vision - of what it is like to climb trees with your friends rather than watch endless tic tok reals. Yes, as you probably ahve clocked, a sort of conservative argument. But I don't care. There's nothign wrong with looking back.
It's all very dystopian. It's best with a writer like that to "put on the lenses" for a bit and then take them off again.
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BigMoaner
What A Load of Old Bollocks
great vid. good overview with plenty of insights.