Nice post, and I think it’s something a lot of us are struggling with. Add to that the cost of living, the necessity of work (and all the values it glorifies), the fact that we’ve all collectively helped facilitate and entrench this weird system that commodifies everything…
I’ve not read much Adorno, maybe brushed against his Late Style stuff. Should check out that Culture one.
This morning I was thinking about all the things that are compatible/good for capitalism: cheap/exploitable resources, cheap/exploitable workers, exploitable/lax waste management laws etc. And then I realised: crappy/incompetent managers & bosses are also very compatible with capitalism. You can’t think of one quite without the other.
Yes, I haven’t fully recovered from reading Graeber haha.
rino
Well, I haven’t read Graeber, but I did join an Occupy protest back in the day.
Resisting capitalist conditioning becomes so difficult, particularly when free time (real free time) is so elusive. Reading, thinking, and writing require some effort. Plugging into consumerism is easy–a brief jolt of pleasure after buying something, something that has to be paid off. Around we go.
I usually turn to Walter Benjamin, rather than Adorno, when wresting with these issues. “Free Time” was a very quick read though. I like Louis Althusser, too, but he reminds me that the education system is another cog in the machine. I try to teach my students skills so that they can pursue careers–feeding the labor machine. Not that there’s much choice in the matter.
But, back to the Occupy Movement: imagine a world with fair distribution, or four-day weeks, or flexible hours, or longer vacations. I suspect that a lot of us would continue with our bad habits, but some might learn to live differently.
The Untimely Typewriter:Daily Writings Against the Tides of Distraction 
Nice post, and I think it’s something a lot of us are struggling with. Add to that the cost of living, the necessity of work (and all the values it glorifies), the fact that we’ve all collectively helped facilitate and entrench this weird system that commodifies everything…
I’ve not read much Adorno, maybe brushed against his Late Style stuff. Should check out that Culture one.
This morning I was thinking about all the things that are compatible/good for capitalism: cheap/exploitable resources, cheap/exploitable workers, exploitable/lax waste management laws etc. And then I realised: crappy/incompetent managers & bosses are also very compatible with capitalism. You can’t think of one quite without the other.
Yes, I haven’t fully recovered from reading Graeber haha.
rino
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Well, I haven’t read Graeber, but I did join an Occupy protest back in the day.
Resisting capitalist conditioning becomes so difficult, particularly when free time (real free time) is so elusive. Reading, thinking, and writing require some effort. Plugging into consumerism is easy–a brief jolt of pleasure after buying something, something that has to be paid off. Around we go.
I usually turn to Walter Benjamin, rather than Adorno, when wresting with these issues. “Free Time” was a very quick read though. I like Louis Althusser, too, but he reminds me that the education system is another cog in the machine. I try to teach my students skills so that they can pursue careers–feeding the labor machine. Not that there’s much choice in the matter.
But, back to the Occupy Movement: imagine a world with fair distribution, or four-day weeks, or flexible hours, or longer vacations. I suspect that a lot of us would continue with our bad habits, but some might learn to live differently.
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