Careers, Jobs and stuff
- Thread starter you
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baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Exactly my experience. I think it's the denial of the existence of a blatant power differential between employer and applicant that irks me most, and the continued insistence that it is purely a process of merit/ability to do the job. They can be as useless as they like, and as an applicant you have little means of redress.
Plus there is the pathology of organisations to consider.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Could not agree more. My guitar and piano playing have benefited hugely from the extra time I have free, and to experience (rather than simply know intellectually) the process by which things acquire more meaning when everything stops being about consumption, is a wonderful thing. Not to romanticise actual poverty of course, far from it, but rather to say that the state where you have enough to get by but are forced by necessity to remove yourself from the endless consumption cycle (which of course can be done by choice, but is, if I'm honest, hard to effect) and use the extra time you have free in more creative ways, can be freeing.
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baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Also, the simultaneous evil and humanity-hating idiocy of capitalism (especially of course late capitalism without any safety nets) becomes even clearer when you step outside of the 9-5 for even a short time, which obv is no news to any people who have already opted out of that system. I hope to god housing becomes the main issue at the next UK election - the current emphasis on ensuring constant precarity for millions of people in the basic matter of having a home, so they become ever more servile, is just pure evil.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
you
Well-known member
Yeah... I mean, work is only important in as much as you need it. I guess I always try to keep that in sight. I presume you, like me, are looking for some work for cash but not some life defining career. I feel this is the right way to approach work.
The idea of work as life is a fucking neurosis. The twitching repetition of trauma of driving down the same streets, in the same incremental variants of german cars, to do the same tasks (that could be automatised - this goes for the managers too, and accountants, and services industries)... it's just a repetition compulsion, but the trick to to know what to do with yourself if you are not able to follow the compulsion to repeat. You can do something other than endlessly throw that ruddy ball Ernst!!!
The idea of work as life is a fucking neurosis. The twitching repetition of trauma of driving down the same streets, in the same incremental variants of german cars, to do the same tasks (that could be automatised - this goes for the managers too, and accountants, and services industries)... it's just a repetition compulsion, but the trick to to know what to do with yourself if you are not able to follow the compulsion to repeat. You can do something other than endlessly throw that ruddy ball Ernst!!!
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you
Well-known member
Death-gages and property are obviously a massive factor alongside the private landlords who crush and house their serfs - true. But I see so many unhappy people who endlessly enter into the soft middle of control (it helps that I live in Reading, home to the big 3 accounting forms and many IT companies - none of which actually require warm bodies...) .. People like buying shit and checking emails in bed, people like struggling through a large company engaging in some absurd performance of engagement and investment - not because it's rewarding but because it's the easiest thing to do.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
i want to agree but what happens when you can't physically work anymore (depends on the kind of work of course). i dont know if i want to just be working until i drop.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
The idea of 'career' fills me with loathing, but I guess I'm keen to do something that strikes me as as meaningful as possible within the boundaries imposed by the need to get cash, without getting too hung up on that.
Yeah, it's impossible to think past the predictions of - was it Keynes? - that mechanisation would lead to decreased working hours. Unfortunately he radically underestimated the self-hating sickness of humans. And the idea that people should only specialise (jobs-wise) in one thing has never really gone away, despite what we are told about 'transferable skills' etc. It's so anti-life.
Yeah, it's impossible to think past the predictions of - was it Keynes? - that mechanisation would lead to decreased working hours. Unfortunately he radically underestimated the self-hating sickness of humans. And the idea that people should only specialise (jobs-wise) in one thing has never really gone away, despite what we are told about 'transferable skills' etc. It's so anti-life.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Agree, but sadly the death drive (misusing the term maybe, but it seems to fit) and sheer lack of imagination of these people means that all the rest of us have to suffer too.
As Winnicott brilliantly said in relation to the clients he took in psychoanalysis, the clearest sign of their being in tremendous emotional distress was that when they spoke they bored the shit out of him (paraphrase). This applies to these people.
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you
Well-known member
Well this is the chasm of hell created between a gov that wants everyone to work and a country that cannot provide work that everyone can do. Obviously, not all can work, but even the willing can not find work in the areas provided.
you
Well-known member
It's a common concept that people have 3 major careers. Even the inner party know that. The concept of career is long lasting in the face of capitalism moving too quick for any semblance of career to be maintained because C required a massive blurring of private and public. There are no shifts any more. You reply to your line manager whilst conducting foreplay to manage your career relationship...
So there is this awful paradox of being told you life is your work, take it home, lets have a drink, and at the same time your work cannot become your life because you will have 3 careers! This is reflected best in the void between property financing (death-gages based on a 40 year single career progression) and working reality: multiple careers, precarity etc etc...
you
Well-known member
The problem of sheer lack of imagination points us right back to a bunch of guys who know whatsup. "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." We see this played out in the compulsive buying of shite coffee, the success of fast fashion, the hype interest in album releases: more of the same is the antidote for no imagination or hope. Ernst, quit throwing that bloody ball!
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baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
you
Well-known member
you
Well-known member
not utter meaninglessness. because work is still required for life and demands to be life - but contemporary work possibilities are completely incompatible with life as ordered broadly but still want to be life... it's a paradox.
you
Well-known member
Ernst, maybe not a ball, but whatevs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Pleasure_Principle#Exceptions_to_the_pleasure_principle
There is never anything new. Just opportunity for repetition. Degrees of simulacra.