Fuck Capitalism, Do Art | Ep 249

/
 
a banksy image of a man with a whip driving workers like a slave

Buy more. Do more. Be more. Consume more. Watch more… This seems to be the mantra of modern society and it is kill us.

We are losing our communities, forgetting our art, and wasting our lives, all in pursuit of an ever diminishing in value dollar and ever rising expectations to keep up with the proverbial Joneses.

In this episode I read the poem ‘capitalistic desire’ from my book Wage Slave: The Unpaid Overtime Edition, and discuss the hypocrisy I feel as an artist living within a capitalistic society.

Click play below to listen or scroll down to read the transcript:

capitalistic desire

here’s to the capitalistic desire
to sacrifice our lives
in order to have the
most fancy coffin
just to flex on
our friends
that we didn’t have time for
and to afford a headstone
chiselled with a quote
espousing the value
of hard work
and dedication
to something beyond ourselves
that no one will read

That poem is from the book Wage Slave: The Unpaid Overtime Edition, which was written as a way for me to say goodbye to the norm, to the the traditional ‘regular’ work life, a way to say fuck capitalism.

I tried my best to do full-time work, the normal ‘nine to five’ but I found that the process was quite literally killing me. I had to take all of my sick days and much, much more, all for my mental health.

Escape The Rat Race

I couldn't stand the grind. I couldn't stand the politics. I couldn't stand the aimless, pointless monotony of it all. The work I was doing, some people would say, was valuable, was contributing to society, was somehow inherently rewarding. But unfortunately I didn't feel that way. I just wanted to escape the rat race.

I didn't have those same values. Or rather, I was so stressed and overwhelmed by it all that those values couldn’t compete with the impending breakdown.

Some people might have seen value in my job and felt those rewards, but I was just run down by it.

I saw my co-workers with the latest gadgets and the latest cars and the latest clothes and all of these things and I felt this need, this desire, this push to keep up with them. Constant advertisements streaming on my phone added to the noise: buy more, do more, be more. Consume.

Eventually I just checked out and quit. That decision was the stimulus to write wage slave - I wanted to express my displeasure with my job, with my life, and with the cause of it all: capitalism.

To be clear, I am not ‘anti-capitalism’, because any quick review of history will show you that it's the best system that we have come up with. Everything else produces far, far worst outcomes for most people. If you look at the stats, the numbers speak for themselves.

Regardless, every system in which tens of thousands, to hundreds of millions, to billions of people all come together collectively, seems to be an aberration on evolution. We did not evolve to live in such societies, mega societies, where people can hoard wealth to such an extent that would make the dragons of Tolkien seem poor, right?

We live in a society in which people are free to create businesses and products and art that will ultimately benefit the world and get rewarded for doing it. That's great. If you reward people for innovations, then they produce things that, well, innovate.

But it can also cause our true needs to be put aside or manipulated for the sake of the dollar, for the sake of a sale. If you invent a product and you want it to be successful, you now need to manipulate people, aka market to them, to get them to buy, to keep you in business, or else you lose business.

On a fundamental level this is just the drive to survive, right? If you get something and I don't, if you get the sale and I don't, you win and I don't.

But what does winning mean? Winning means that you eat and I don't.

There's a lot going on here and a lot that I would like to say about this topic, but ultimately, there is this inner sort of displeasure that I feel, and I think a lot of us feel, about the capitalistic nature of our society, this hustle culture, this desire to just do more, be more, buy more, more, more, more, all the time.

You go everywhere, you see advertisements, you turn on any sort of social media or podcast or video or music or anything, and there's just ads and product placement and it feels like all of life is just a sell.

tyler durden fight club by chuck phillanak quote, we work jobs we hate, to buy things we don't need, to impress people we don't like.

The Hypocrisy Of Creating Art In A Capitalistic Society

The hypocrisy of this, the irony of this, the part of me that I dislike about all of this, is that I am a part of this system and I cannot fight it. I'm sharing my book with you and this content with you, telling you it is from the book, Wage Slave, The Unpaid Overtime Edition, because I want you to buy it.

Because I need to eat, because I want to be successful, because I have things that will enable my world to function.

I'm not a revolutionary. I'm not asking for the downfall of capitalism. I'm not asking for the workers to unite and reclaim the means of production, because I'm a student of history and I see where that path leads.

But I'm also a student of history and I'm seeing where this path leads. And I'm not offering a solution, I'm just seeing the problem. And I'm sharing my discontent about that problem. I would like to inspire you enough to buy the book, but not inspire you enough to riot and tear down the system.

I don't know what the solution is, but I can only guess and point at a potential way.

I think if people individually check out, if we individually check out and start buying only what we actually needed, practicing mindfulness meditation and really just eliminating all of that unwanted bullshit from our lives, we would be able to step back and see that we don't need the latest stuff, the latest fashion, and get out of this single-use plastic culture in which we just buy something and we don't like it, we chuck it out.

Perhaps we can actually think of the future for once. Fuck capitalism and do things for the greater good.

The Tragedy of the Commons

Move against or away from the tragedy of the commons and into a collection in which we work together. Yes, people need to be able to make money and be encouraged to invent and all of those things that have caused a lot of the prosperity of the 21st century. But perhaps we could do it in a way that is more in line with our overall goals as a species, our overall needs as a species, right?

The tragedy of the commons suggests that, for example there are four farmers with access to a field and that field can hold 12 cows before it becomes sort of overused and not usable anymore. Each farmer should, in fairness, put three cows there.

But the tragedy of the commons suggests that that it's in each farmer's individual best interest to have as many cows as possible. Thus, each farmer gets four and five, and suddenly that field that only could hold 12 cows now has 20, and it breaks down and dies off.

The tragedy of the commons warns that is happening with the world at large, with all the collective resources we have: air, forests, oceans etc. The tragedy is that each individual nation, each individual person, each individual country, company, whatever, all wants to have as many cows as possible because it's in their individual best interests… aka fuck capitalism.

But if we step back and start seeing the truth, if we could all just get a little bit of mindfulness in our lives and start stepping back, stopping, and saying, ‘hang on a second, I don't need this thing, I don't need to be in this rat race as much’, perhaps then we won't suffer the fate of the tragedy of the commons.

capitalistic desire

here’s to the capitalistic desire
to sacrifice our lives
in order to have the
most fancy coffin
just to flex on
our friends
that we didn’t have time for
and to afford a headstone
chiselled with a quote
espousing the value
of hard work
and dedication
to something beyond ourselves
that no one will read

If you like the sound of that poem, if you like the idea of the book, grab a copy of Wage Slave, The Unpaid Overtime Edition.

It's a collection of fiction and poetry that will make you think, but hopefully not act. Grab it and buy me dinner tonight.

Catch ya.