The Psychopathology of Work

[LiberalUprising]

Every hour, moreover, countless billions are spent on propaganda, advertising and other mystifications to sustain the delusion that the crisis-strewn society we live in today is the best and only one possible.

Depersonalization and alienation from our deepest desires is implanted during childhood via school, church, movies, and TV, and soon reaches the point where an individual's desire is not only a net of contradictions, but also a commodity like all the others. "True life" always seems to be just a bit beyond what a weekly paycheck and credit card can afford, and is thus indefinitely postponed. And each postponement contributes to the reproduction of a social system that practically everyone who is not a multimillionaire or a masochist has come to loathe.

That is the problem facing us all: How to break the pattern of work—of week-to-week slavery, that habit of habits, that addiction of addictions; how to detach ourselves from the grip of Self-Defeating Illusions For Sale, Inc., a.k.a, the corporate consumer State. Especially ingrained is that pattern of working for someone else: making someone else's "goods", producing the wealth that someone else enjoys, thinking someone else's thoughts (sometimes actually believing them one's own), and even dreaming someone else's dreams—in short, living someone else's life, for one's own life, and one's own dream of life, have long since been lost in the shuffle.

The systematic suppression of a person's real desires—and that is largely what work consists of—is exacerbated by capitalism's incessant manipulation of artificial desires, "as advertised." This gives daily life the character of mass neurosis, with increasingly frequent psychotic episodes. To relieve the all-embracing boredom of daily life, society offers an endless array of distractions and stupefactions, most of them "available at a store near you". The trouble is, these distractions and stupefactions, legal or illegal, soon become part of the boredom, for they satisfy no authentic desire.

Children too learn to work, or at least how to suffer boredom. From the earliest age they are taught to obey orders. School and church teach them the necessity of going to and staying at a particular place for a prolonged period, even when they would rather be anywhere else. All the classic parental admonitions—"Sit still!", "Do what I tell you!", "Don't talk back!", "Stop behaving like a bunch of wild Indians!"—are part of the education of the well-behaved, uncomplaining wage-slave...

http://deoxy.org/psychowork.htm

[Pharaoh]

1. yes, very well said!

I'll have to check out that site.................

[patrice]

2. Definitely true.

Teaching high school for 10 years made this clear to me.

At the risk of being mistaken for a Jonestown-type crazy, I think it is time for those who can and will work for fundamental change to come together and form their own cooperative grassroots' economic communities.

[Pharaoh]

3. grassroots coop's

we are talking about them around here, at least the few of us awake, I think you are right, we will have to get back to basics,eat what grows around here and help on another out.

[undergroundpanther]

4. It's torture

For me at least I can't work. I sit at home the neighborhood is vacant.Everyone's at work. It's so lonely.It's like a ghost town.
The day may look beautiful, but to go walking in a silent neighborhood
feels even more alienating than sitting in the house.
When I speak to people one of the first questions asked is WHAT do you DO?

What do I tell them?

Independently wealthy? (lie)
Career mental patient(truth)
Oh I'm an artist(who sells no art)

When you don't work you are seen as a lessor person, like you are lazy or unwilling to contribute to "society".It's fused that way in so many people's minds.

In truth I am not lazy and unwilling to do my part.When someone asks my help one human being to another human being, I'll bust my hump to help them because..I care..


When I was active in the psych rights movement I did the news letters , I facilitated support groups, I was on a consumer rights board, I did murals, educational seminars on being transgender and mentally ill to"professionals"..I went on trips all over the place even to Colorado for a huge national conference.. I did advocacy for people struggling against bigotry and sadistic staff when they were gay and in a psych rehab run by bigots or just ignorant of gay issues people. I did stigma training.I did all sorts of stuff. It was interesting observing the clash between the grassroots structure and how the state did stuff.The more authority based structures in certain organizations actually feared us and tried to bad mouth us. The NAMI a few years back were not fond of consumer run orgs. But now that the link between NAMI and Big Pharmacy is crystal clear they have been trying to co-opt the consumer movement.Luring with money and grants.Trying to splinter it..

Why did I give it my all without money involved ? Because it wasn't a job, it was a meaning to my life. Yes it changed things,it meant something precious to help and be helped in a grass roots organization,like no job ever can do for me.There was no money in it for me to make me dependant upon a paycheck so it didn't feel like a whip was cracking overhead and I never felt threatened.My limits and quirks were respected..I could show up in the office in my panther tail nobody saw me as some lessor loon,they saw me as just panther one of the members helping out.And it was for me at least a place to be as I am,and use my skills and talents in a MEANINGFUL way not as a tool to be used and forced to conform as others say I have to be to fit in with their rules dictated from above like in a job..

It was a way I could help people like me and be helped myself too. There was no shame in saying I can't do that Or I have done enough because there was no internecine competition. .H&E and On Our Own were like havens to me. I hope one day to get out of this alienating town and go back to the city, they call me and tell me I am so missed and my heart breaks.That was one place on earth where I felt like I belonged there, and knew I was wanted to be part of life there..not to support someones profits,at my expense.. but I was wanted because of who I was and for what I could give and I was a participant from the bottom to the top,because there was no top or bottom. The consumer rights or gs that I worked with were run with the idea all of us are unique and EQUAL and worthy of help and helping....in the unique ways only the individual could do.Everyone who did not harm the community or try to dominate it belonged there.

This movement was a total inverse to how our culture is run in it's tyrannical over specialized pyramidal social and corporate dependency/exploitation structure that crushes the soul.

[patrice]

5. At least you haven't forgotten what it means to be happy, even if it was

elsewhere, elsewhen.

Many don't even have that.

[undergroundpanther]

6. I know.

And it makes my heart ache to contemplate it. I am often really suicidal and for me those groups were a breath of peace.I miss them.