Mairead
01-29-2007, 02:48 PM
Capitalism is a viciously competitive system (I hope that's not a newsflash to anyone).
We--we here--were all raised to fit into that system. I.e., we were all raised to be competitive with our peers as the baseline expectation. We're allowed to cooperate Only When Authorised By Duly Constituted Authority. We are expected to feel elated when we win these artificial competitions and worthless when we don't. And we were also raised--schizophrenogenically--to deny our feelings in public, whether the elation or the despair. We were especially taught to be "good losers".
There's only one way we can really feel okay when we win and other people lose, and that's by dehumanising them in our minds. At least a little bit. We have to tell ourselves that if they were really as good as us, they wouldn't have made the mistake(s) they did. But they did make it/them, so they're not, q.e.d.
The act of making a mistake becomes an implicit, system-level 'admission' of being lesser, being defective on some level. So mistakes become more than just expressions of quantum uncertainty (which is what they are, at bottom---it is not possible for us ever to have complete information, and therefore it is not possible to never make a mistake) (and no this is not a spillover from that other thread--I'd have said this anyway :twisted:). They are transformed by Capitalism into signifiers of essential, almost genetic defect. Make enough mistakes, or even one if it's the wrong kind, and we get flushed away, as in that scene in The Matrix. We're no longer suitable to power Capitalism, so out we go to live or die on the fringes as best we can.
If we, here, have no respect for Capitalism and its viciousness (and Goddess knows I can't imagine why any non-psychotic people would!), why are we buying into its disgusting ethos? Why can't we let each other make mistakes? Why do we need the mistake-maker to abase hemself? Are we personally getting anything worthwhile out of that, or are we simply being reflexively obedient?
We--we here--were all raised to fit into that system. I.e., we were all raised to be competitive with our peers as the baseline expectation. We're allowed to cooperate Only When Authorised By Duly Constituted Authority. We are expected to feel elated when we win these artificial competitions and worthless when we don't. And we were also raised--schizophrenogenically--to deny our feelings in public, whether the elation or the despair. We were especially taught to be "good losers".
There's only one way we can really feel okay when we win and other people lose, and that's by dehumanising them in our minds. At least a little bit. We have to tell ourselves that if they were really as good as us, they wouldn't have made the mistake(s) they did. But they did make it/them, so they're not, q.e.d.
The act of making a mistake becomes an implicit, system-level 'admission' of being lesser, being defective on some level. So mistakes become more than just expressions of quantum uncertainty (which is what they are, at bottom---it is not possible for us ever to have complete information, and therefore it is not possible to never make a mistake) (and no this is not a spillover from that other thread--I'd have said this anyway :twisted:). They are transformed by Capitalism into signifiers of essential, almost genetic defect. Make enough mistakes, or even one if it's the wrong kind, and we get flushed away, as in that scene in The Matrix. We're no longer suitable to power Capitalism, so out we go to live or die on the fringes as best we can.
If we, here, have no respect for Capitalism and its viciousness (and Goddess knows I can't imagine why any non-psychotic people would!), why are we buying into its disgusting ethos? Why can't we let each other make mistakes? Why do we need the mistake-maker to abase hemself? Are we personally getting anything worthwhile out of that, or are we simply being reflexively obedient?