Monthly Archives: July 2013
Reflections on EXT/INT-version
Artistic Ramblings
Non Profits are Not the Solution
There is something deeply problematic about the nonprofit, as it parades as a beneficent, moral institution that fulfills and satisfies some mission but does so at the cost of its workers. I say this without the proper literary substantiation, a project that may come from this. But speaking from personal experience, administrators and managers use the mission statement as an excuse or perhaps as a tool to under-compensate employees. Exploiting a downturned market and reduced prospects for continuing or graduating students, the program systematically undervalues them by undercompensating.
Undervaluing is itself a phenomenon worth examining, as it has myriad psychological and physical effects, all of which are infinitely prominent in our own society. In undercompensating individuals, a company shows their lack of appreciation for their services, based on some kind of market calculation of what is in demand and what is available.
This is where the Market serves little purpose but to justify the efficiency-seeking denigration of workers. Similarly, a hierarchical command structure, expressed in management decision-making and supervisorial relationships, basically justifies autocratic attitudes and the predispositions of individuals to control others. In my own experience, this translates into passive-aggressive behavior where outright conflict is thought to lay in wait or has already occurred.
We need a whole new way of organizing that is liberated from the constraints of efficiency and from the chronic and seriously devastating undercompensation of workers. A part of this fight will be subverting the very theories that underpin such management practices. Another will be a radical reorganization of earning flows.
It is surprising, for all of the harmful effects crushing debt and recurrent bullying have had on the financial woes of citizens around the globe and our nations high school students, that private industry remains so uncompromisingly tied to a structure that is so psychologically damaging and spiritually effacing, too.
These are no empty claims either. Self-actualization, a Rogerian concept, is virtually impossible in said management structure, the likes of which predominates in the United States. How may we be able to find ourselves if we are constantly being ordered and directed to do this and that project? How can we really separate work and post-work? This aspect of the work world seems so essential to it as to make it possibly definitive of it.
As I write this, I’m reminded of a story a starbuck’s employee friend told me. A dissatisfied customer, after having left the store and nearly consumed their drink, decided it appropriate to call starbucks and complain their inability to reach, with a straw, the last few drops of coffee remaining. they proceeded to castigate whomever they reached, using the opportunity likely to vent frustrations accrued from so many other places, aggression that is understandable and rational but misplaced. It likely even derived from problematic work relationships, as I see it.
I’m sure there are myriad and easily explicable examples to be found everywhere, and yet it continues and often with the rationalization that it was only single individuals, populating managerial spots and inhabit the system itself that deformed and misapplied its mandate, but I argue a different position. The very notion of hierarchy and reduction of the power of decision-making is itself problematic. In the work place, for human beings to be treated as human beings, we must struggle to proliferate these spaces, creating new hopes for direction organizations in different directions and even for a self-setting of the environmental conditions.
And yet, we are forced to maintain our participation here, as we must work to survive, to achieve subsistence and some modicum of autonomy over ourselves and our progress. Here is the binding constraint that prevents all movement.
Baggaging Family?
I don’t want to return home this weekend, like before. I feel that I’ve reached a point in my creative commitments that I want/need the alone time and would like the opportunity to remain in Berkeley to develop them further, to read and write and to enjoy the potential spontaneity present here.
At home, too, I feel so pressed to commit to many activities that I only partially enjoy but that my family always desires to include me in, so I know that my creative life will need to take a backseat. I still want to preserve a sense of community with them, and they are very important to me.
And I miss my brother even. But we inhabit different worlds. I read, write, draw, play guitar, garden, cook and etc. And they don’t do much of this at all, absent one or two of them. They watch excessive amounts of tv, and I desire only some part of it, if at all. oh well.
But, as with many times before, I’ll most likely reluctantly go, in spite of what remains here and for me to enjoy, to learn from, to take pleasure in. There is so much already.
Prudish Prudence
Talk about reproducing sex-unfriendly social habits and assuming that human beings just can’t stand publicly admitting they have any part in reproductive or procreative habits. This Prudence lady gives weird advice, again and again.
Onwards!
Unfortunately, as of yet, I don’t inhabit a world where I can read and write all day, but instead, I have to commit myself to jobs and other occupations that are not necessarily in line with interests but provide me a level of subsistence. Oh the future I look forward to…
Personal Time
Perfunctory or brief posts may as much be evidence of time alloted as of focus or interest. One can only do with the time that one has.
Infatuation and Compromise
I see people engage in relationships around me all the time, but I have a deep sense that I’m incapable of them, and I say this not to incite or compel sympathy but to admit to myself and my viewing public, whoever that may be, that being uncompromising might mean being lonely.
I empathize profoundly with Benjamin here, who, time after time, found human and economic relationships troubling and hampering of his own work, compelled on, again and again to produce and to hold responsible the exploitative system of relations characteristic of capitalism.
Again, a post that is far too personal for any to view…
Capitalism and Human Bonds
This morning, as I was re-listening to a song I excitedly shared with a friend to solicit their thoughts, I realized that I was listening to work of art that reflected the prevailing conditions of production as much as any economic textbook might attempt to do. The song lamentedly recalls the challenge of creating new social bonds, of accepting the dissolution or disrepair of old ones and even prescribes and active and distracted form of coping with such changing social relationships. The melody is light-hearted but taut and energetically, unrelentingly and resolutely but hopefully defiant. The audience to which the musicians play is of a distraught generation, appraised of the challenges of creating long term bonds amidst the constant pushing and pulling of capitalist productive means and their constant tendency for establishing the constraints and limits and conditions of social connections. This is the logic of the market. As competition inevitably requires changing flows, humans implicated in the system (symbolized as figures and variables themselves) are subject to its logic as much as any capital. They are forced to adapt to a world in which lasting human relationships are not the norm and perhaps not even what is celebrated as the highest form. Even a quick look at divorce statistics may substantiate this point.
Whether this is negative is another question, entirely, however, and one that I’m not necessarily or mainly concerned with. Many positive relationships exist and come from this particular social formation. Even new or recapitulated forms like polyamory are worth discussion here, as they attempt to find a kind of medium by establishing lasting connections with some but leaving open the possibility of including others in one’s life. This system is not perfect either but is perhaps a stopgap measure, but it all falls apart if the communication component is seen lacking, as trust itself is called into question. What concerns me is that Capitalism as an economic system does carry with it particular kinds of social formations, and as I’m always looking for ways in which to disclose the reality, existence and peculiarity of of capitalism (much like Brecht or in his emulation), its particular nature and how it affects our lives uniquely, relationships became a natural part of this attempt. Our very human bonds are immersed in and conditioned by productive relations, as much as we attempt to extricate or hide ourselves. They are determined by our working lives, our need for food and sociality, our adherence and conformity to the working day and engagement in forms of investment, communication and entertainment. It is impossible to depart from being Capitalistic within Capitalism, but one certainly can be critical. And, as the only potential avenue for creating a new world, critique may be the only viable tool we have for staying ourselves against the depredations of the system and the multiplicity of effects it has, that we are a part of, that seem disconnected, fragmentary and contradictory. But, if you look closer, if you think about songs like this and related works of art as forged within this milleu, then you begin to see the parallel logics, you see how much sense it all makes.
Do not resist these analyses. See their validity and accept them and live with them. Living genuinely and sincerely and self-honestly is the only way in which one can be faithful to others and to a higher project of alleviating inequality and domination.