‘Quick, look busy.’
March 1, 2018 3:47 PM Subscribe
"One-dimensional thinking relies on subtle oppression, on convincing people that they are free, on the provision of sufficient goods and services to distract them, on stultified civic discourse, and on the masses identifying with elites."
I'm trying to eliminate the computer games in favour of reading philosophy. Proletarians have to learn to discipline themselves intellectually/spiritually. Once they do, emancipation will inevitably follow.
I'd suggest starting your reading in philosophy with some Marx, Althusser and Debord (or indeed Marcuse, as the article suggests); the idea that social change originates in the spontaneous self-transformation of individuals seems, to me, both fundamentally wrong-headed and a reflection of the individualist ideology that prevents real, collective change from taking place.
posted by howfar at 3:29 AM on March 2, 2018 [18 favorites]
I'd suggest starting your reading in philosophy with some Marx, Althusser and Debord (or indeed Marcuse, as the article suggests); the idea that social change originates in the spontaneous self-transformation of individuals seems, to me, both fundamentally wrong-headed and a reflection of the individualist ideology that prevents real, collective change from taking place.
posted by howfar at 3:29 AM on March 2, 2018 [18 favorites]
read some Schopenhauer
posted by thelonius at 4:08 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by thelonius at 4:08 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
> About 50% of my time at my salaried job is essentially unsupervised idleness.
Isn't that nice for you.
posted by languagehat at 5:32 AM on March 2, 2018 [13 favorites]
Isn't that nice for you.
posted by languagehat at 5:32 AM on March 2, 2018 [13 favorites]
Thanks for the tips, howfar and thelonius. Allow me to reciprocate: The philosophy of Marx / by Harry Waton.
posted by No Robots at 5:33 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by No Robots at 5:33 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
Isn't that nice for you.
Indeed. I don't think I'm alone.
posted by No Robots at 5:34 AM on March 2, 2018
Indeed. I don't think I'm alone.
posted by No Robots at 5:34 AM on March 2, 2018
I'm sure you're not alone. I'm also sure your experience is far from normative, and you are speaking from a position of privilege. It's as if you were to say "Hey, I have a trust fund, I don't have to worry about such things."
posted by languagehat at 5:44 AM on March 2, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by languagehat at 5:44 AM on March 2, 2018 [7 favorites]
Proletarians have to learn to discipline themselves intellectually/spiritually. Once they do, emancipation will inevitably follow.
I honestly can't figure out if your comment is meant to be an ironic joke. The proletariat aren't the ones finding themselves with 40-hour workweeks consisting of 50% unsupervised time. The proletariat generally aren't salaried. The proletariat are stuck in Amazon-fulfillment-center-esque employment dystopias where their time is tracked and managed down to bathroom breaks, or stuck balancing multiple part-time gigs, none of which offer benefits; if they're not reading Marx it's not because they lack spiritual or intellectual discipline. Gains in 'productivity' have been made on workers' backs, not thanks to automation, and your experience is extremely atypical; your idea of 'theoretically sufficient' free time has zero bearing on most other people's lived realities.
posted by halation at 6:50 AM on March 2, 2018 [22 favorites]
I honestly can't figure out if your comment is meant to be an ironic joke. The proletariat aren't the ones finding themselves with 40-hour workweeks consisting of 50% unsupervised time. The proletariat generally aren't salaried. The proletariat are stuck in Amazon-fulfillment-center-esque employment dystopias where their time is tracked and managed down to bathroom breaks, or stuck balancing multiple part-time gigs, none of which offer benefits; if they're not reading Marx it's not because they lack spiritual or intellectual discipline. Gains in 'productivity' have been made on workers' backs, not thanks to automation, and your experience is extremely atypical; your idea of 'theoretically sufficient' free time has zero bearing on most other people's lived realities.
posted by halation at 6:50 AM on March 2, 2018 [22 favorites]
No Robots, complaining about how you have to find ways to fill the idle hours you’re paid for is not a position that is going to get you much sympathy, I’m afraid. I agree that others might also have salaried jobs in which they have the ability to decide how their time is spent, but that’s because (1) they’re quite fortunate and (2) their employer expects that they’ll be using that time in service to the employer’s aims. Playing video games—unless you’re a video-game designer—doesn’t quite count.
posted by TEA at 6:51 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by TEA at 6:51 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
Jesus, okay, just read some Marx. Over and out.
posted by No Robots at 6:51 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by No Robots at 6:51 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
Jesus, okay, just read some Marx. Over and out.
The fundamental premise of dialectical materialism is that it is only through transformation of the material conditions of society that change can be achieved at the social level. However, Marx acknowledged the role of ideology in maintaining the relations of power that maintain the economic status quo. Later Marxist theorists have extended and expanded the role of ideology in this line of thought, but the fundamental perspective that it is power structures which delineate the boundaries of the "intellectually/spiritually" persists.
And I read (and wrote about) quite a lot of Marx as a philosophy postgrad, although cheers for the tip.
posted by howfar at 7:04 AM on March 2, 2018 [8 favorites]
The fundamental premise of dialectical materialism is that it is only through transformation of the material conditions of society that change can be achieved at the social level. However, Marx acknowledged the role of ideology in maintaining the relations of power that maintain the economic status quo. Later Marxist theorists have extended and expanded the role of ideology in this line of thought, but the fundamental perspective that it is power structures which delineate the boundaries of the "intellectually/spiritually" persists.
And I read (and wrote about) quite a lot of Marx as a philosophy postgrad, although cheers for the tip.
posted by howfar at 7:04 AM on March 2, 2018 [8 favorites]
It took the author of this piece 20-something paragraphs to say that idleness is good, robots won't save us, and that "it remains a struggle to change the relations of production."
Robert Louis Stevenson was mostly on to that in 1877 with "An Apology For Idlers" and he didn't need to cram it full of appeals to the Frankfurt School and oxymorons like "totalitarian democracy."
I'm trying to eliminate the computer games in favour of reading philosophy.
One would think that "No Robots" would be averse to computer games from the start.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:05 AM on March 2, 2018
Robert Louis Stevenson was mostly on to that in 1877 with "An Apology For Idlers" and he didn't need to cram it full of appeals to the Frankfurt School and oxymorons like "totalitarian democracy."
I'm trying to eliminate the computer games in favour of reading philosophy.
One would think that "No Robots" would be averse to computer games from the start.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:05 AM on March 2, 2018
About 50% of my time at my salaried job is essentially unsupervised idleness
buddy, you're literally the textbook definition of the petite bourgeoisie. asking for the petite bourgeoisie to be more 'woke' is great but 1) you're not a proletariat and you don't know what it's like to be proletarian so kindly don't prescribe praxis to people you don't understand and 2) what you are prescribing is a pathway to inactive self-fulfillment, the same kind of 'opiate of the people' that believes itself to be part of some grand revolutionary struggle but is in actuality just the same ol' institutionalized self-helpy shit that keeps the foundations of inequity in place
I mean, just think about your idle labor: your actions benefit literally nobody but yourself and your own intellectual ego - that you find it difficult to strike a balance between absolute self-indulgence that is frowned upon by older generations (video games) and absolute self-indulgence that is acceptable to older generations (reading theory) is less a Marxist thing than it is you being enmeshed in and blind to the very culture and society that you think you have an objective handle on
you should read theory so that your organizing isn't shitty and unaccountable; you really shouldn't read theory for the purposes of getting on a high horse about how fuckin woke you are
posted by runt at 8:21 AM on March 2, 2018 [19 favorites]
buddy, you're literally the textbook definition of the petite bourgeoisie. asking for the petite bourgeoisie to be more 'woke' is great but 1) you're not a proletariat and you don't know what it's like to be proletarian so kindly don't prescribe praxis to people you don't understand and 2) what you are prescribing is a pathway to inactive self-fulfillment, the same kind of 'opiate of the people' that believes itself to be part of some grand revolutionary struggle but is in actuality just the same ol' institutionalized self-helpy shit that keeps the foundations of inequity in place
I mean, just think about your idle labor: your actions benefit literally nobody but yourself and your own intellectual ego - that you find it difficult to strike a balance between absolute self-indulgence that is frowned upon by older generations (video games) and absolute self-indulgence that is acceptable to older generations (reading theory) is less a Marxist thing than it is you being enmeshed in and blind to the very culture and society that you think you have an objective handle on
you should read theory so that your organizing isn't shitty and unaccountable; you really shouldn't read theory for the purposes of getting on a high horse about how fuckin woke you are
posted by runt at 8:21 AM on March 2, 2018 [19 favorites]
How is piling on No Robots helping move the ball forward?
just asking.
posted by cfraenkel at 10:05 AM on March 2, 2018 [4 favorites]
just asking.
posted by cfraenkel at 10:05 AM on March 2, 2018 [4 favorites]
How is piling on No Robots helping move the ball forward?
you're right, maybe if we hadn't responded to a terrible first comment we prolly would've had a worker's revolution by now
dang it
posted by runt at 10:11 AM on March 2, 2018 [8 favorites]
you're right, maybe if we hadn't responded to a terrible first comment we prolly would've had a worker's revolution by now
dang it
posted by runt at 10:11 AM on March 2, 2018 [8 favorites]
It took the author of this piece 20-something paragraphs to say that idleness is good, robots won't save us, and that "it remains a struggle to change the relations of production."
I had the same view, but I reread the article just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. The opening has some nice threads/thinkers I can follow up on (I'm not well-versed in Marx) but it kind of lost me, especially with this line:
the churn and burn of the daily grind encourages anemic escapism: the newest smartphone, the slimmest television, the shiniest car.
That got an eyeroll from me. It sounds too close to the "poor people buying iPhones" rhetoric, which then recast the article from "automation will not necessarily bring about fully automated gay space communism" to "the masses must enlighten themselves above their bread and circuses".
I'm a fan of lefty pep talks, but why did the author write these 20-something paragraphs, exactly?
posted by AlSweigart at 11:11 AM on March 2, 2018
I had the same view, but I reread the article just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. The opening has some nice threads/thinkers I can follow up on (I'm not well-versed in Marx) but it kind of lost me, especially with this line:
the churn and burn of the daily grind encourages anemic escapism: the newest smartphone, the slimmest television, the shiniest car.
That got an eyeroll from me. It sounds too close to the "poor people buying iPhones" rhetoric, which then recast the article from "automation will not necessarily bring about fully automated gay space communism" to "the masses must enlighten themselves above their bread and circuses".
I'm a fan of lefty pep talks, but why did the author write these 20-something paragraphs, exactly?
posted by AlSweigart at 11:11 AM on March 2, 2018
the textbook definition of the petite bourgeoisie.
I like to think of it as more of a Peterson guide.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:24 PM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
I like to think of it as more of a Peterson guide.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:24 PM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
the best place for spotting p. bougies these days are in local Indivisible Facebook groups
so many variations in individual habits! all the same coloring though lol
posted by runt at 12:28 PM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
so many variations in individual habits! all the same coloring though lol
posted by runt at 12:28 PM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
That got an eyeroll from me. It sounds too close to the "poor people buying iPhones" rhetoric
It's ironic too, because I'm pretty sure that the people most hurt by insane bosses who profess 'if there is time to lean there is time to clean' aren't the ones chasing the American dream. Then the debt part is moralistic nonsense about people who value money more than people ("The labor cycle requires all sorts of debt, and its fullness reveals something rotten.") --> Change that to look at those poors having to buy things with debt, instead of doing without! How embarassed will they be if they don't pay that back!
" come home to briefly rest by consuming pablum before getting up the next day to do it all over again."
Education, real estate purchases, and the arts (3 major sources of debt that people are chasing) are pablum? That's........good to know. We've got a friend in you.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:50 PM on March 2, 2018
It's ironic too, because I'm pretty sure that the people most hurt by insane bosses who profess 'if there is time to lean there is time to clean' aren't the ones chasing the American dream. Then the debt part is moralistic nonsense about people who value money more than people ("The labor cycle requires all sorts of debt, and its fullness reveals something rotten.") --> Change that to look at those poors having to buy things with debt, instead of doing without! How embarassed will they be if they don't pay that back!
" come home to briefly rest by consuming pablum before getting up the next day to do it all over again."
Education, real estate purchases, and the arts (3 major sources of debt that people are chasing) are pablum? That's........good to know. We've got a friend in you.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:50 PM on March 2, 2018
I'm a fan of lefty pep talks, but why did the author write these 20-something paragraphs, exactly?
Paid by the word?
posted by happyroach at 7:27 PM on March 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
Paid by the word?
posted by happyroach at 7:27 PM on March 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
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posted by No Robots at 6:57 PM on March 1, 2018 [5 favorites]