So I decided to watch Yang's recent podcast about boys and men and how they struggle to find a place in the modern world. This isn't the first time Yang has discussed the subject. And in SOME ways I'm a fan of Yang's approach to the problem, but in other ways it falls flat and I obviously have some differences in opinion here, as someone who has lived it and whose life has taken the kind of turn Yang describes of a lot of men dropping out of the work force and the like.
Before I get started, I want to discuss what Yang does right on this subject. First of all, it's rare for the left to even touch this topic. yang said a lot of other people in the democratic party refused to discuss this for fear of the political fallout of doing so. And Yang himself has actually gotten crap from the SJW left for doing it. The fact is, the left has a "white male" problem as they only like to talk about the problems of the so called "underprivileged" and this is intentionally exclusionary of those who fit more privileged demographics. And I think it's stupid to not do so. I mean, as a white male who deals with the kinds of problems Yang talks about, i can;t tell you how alienating the democrats brand of identity politics is. It's like they're trying to drive people like me to the right.
But, let's also discuss the right. Any time the right does discuss the topic it turns into a toxic clusterfudge in itself. A lot of white and male identity politics has a similar kind of toxicity with it as the identity politics of the left, if not WORSE, because many people do end up developing attitudes that are quite frankly racist, sexist, and toxic. I tend to despise MRA movements for this reason. Too many incels and mgtows and red pillers who seem to want to return to traditionalism and sexist attitudes common on the right. Also look at idiots like Josh Hawley who want to ban porn and the like. For all the talk these right wing populists get for tapping into the male demographic, they never do so properly and end up being quite toxic. Even left wing movements with this focus typically devolve into a clusterfudge. One I know of known as "left wing male advocates" tend to just be the same MRA nonsense with a slightly more left wing focus. And others end up getting "cucked" so to speak as they just end up being an extension of feminism's sphere and their ideology. Yang does end up at least properly diagnosing the problems. The economy isn't working for these people, people are dropping out, and this is bad because it denies them financial independence and access to many positive benefits in society. All true sentiments.
But, and this is where I start to differ from Yang...while I definitely see UBI as part of the solution, I don't necessarily want to be integrated into the system the way that Yang seems to want men. While there are issues with men not being in the work force, it's an issue of anomie. A mismatch between society's expectations and the reality. Most people who acknowledge this problem just want to fix the system by making the reality more in line with the idealized expectations. Ie, they want everyone to have a job, they believe jobs are inherently good, and provide people purpose and meaning to their lives, and I just....don't believe this. Keep in mind the title of this blog. out of plato's cave. All of this crap is...literally...plato's cave. Being stuck in this false reality society tries to impose on you. While I definitely feel the problems with anomie....I've kind of come out on the other side of the plato's cave debate. I am...as the title would insist, OUT OF IT. I'm not in the cave. I've seen the light from above. I've seen how reality really is. And now trying to make me go back into the cave is like trying to force me to live a lie. I don't see any purpose or satisfaction coming from getting a job. As Yang once admitted in his war on normal people, a lot of jobs are just not rewarding to the people who have dropped out.
Like...yang seems to think that the solution is to reintegrate people into the system, get them jobs, and allow them to live according to the traditional idea of purpose in society. But I'm going to be honest, can you not understand how to someone like me who has grappled with these issues and came out on the other side, that this is unrewarding? Not only that, but it seems cruel. Like sisyphus being forced to push the boulder for all eternity. I too am a bit of an absurdist. I guess in that book camus thought that accepting one's fate can make sisyphus happy, but MAN, I can't just stop thinking about how im wasting my life pushing some BS boulder up a hill that doesn't need to be pushed, and how I'd rather be doing something else with my life, you know? I just think that it's a waste of time.
Honestly, UBI is the solution here. We need to give everyone the means to live without being coerced to take on jobs and submit to someone else's authoritarian idea of what our lives should be. We need the freedom to say no. Again, for me, it isn't jobs that give people dignity, it's having the financial situation to be able to live as you want, no matter what that is. if that's working a job, well, someone needs to do it until we can automate that stuff away. If it's another purpose, that's cool. If it's nothing, well, that's fine too. The point is, I want people to decide what they want to do, not being gaslit into accepting jobs under this antiquated and messed up idea that jobs are good for us and provide us purpose, as if we'd all be up to no good if we weren't given something to do ("idle hands do the devil's work").
And you know what? I wish that more people would exit the cave too. I know it's scary at first. The light hurts, and existential crises aren't necessarily fun. They can be quite mentally damaging in the short term and even long term if having one leads to a state of anomie like happens with me (except I want the standard to meet where I am, not the other way around). But...if more people awakened, then more people would be able to see the nonsense that is our current way of living, and maybe we'd be more inclined to change it rather than assuming it's inevitable and gaslighting people into accepting it.
I think that at some point all young adults tend to go through this process of realizing that this is the rest of their lives. Working 40 hours a week (or more) for the next 40 years and then retiring just in time for all of your health problems to catch up with you where your health steadily declines and then we die. It almost feels unfair. We give them our best years, and then we're thrown away when we're too old to do it any more. Almost like we're slaves. Disposable tools that are thrown away when old and worn out.
Well, guess what, maybe we are? And maybe rather than coping with this by insisting this suffering is necessary and forcing everyone to waste their lives too, we should finally get out of this bucket of crabs by not dragging everyone back into it.
Really, it baffles me the extent to which people just accept this. I even had someone ask on reddit today why people wouldn't want to work? It's like...what is good or attractive about working? It's a master slave relationship by another name, our economy is more productive than it's ever been, but this never leads to us working less, and we need to free people from labor. Duh. To me the answer is obvious. We need to work less as society. We need to free people from coercion to participate in the first place if that's feasible.
That said, Yang, I love you sometimes, but sometimes, you're just wrong. And while I can agree with Yang on issues like UBI, I honestly do have to admit Yang seems to still have a lot of old programming in his views. Like, oh, we need to reintegrate these people into society on our terms. Uh, nah. We need to liberate people. I see joblessness as a good thing. It's a sign that our society is so rich we don't actually need everyone working. We should celebrate when we automate jobs, and give people money as a shareholder in this economy of ours. Instead we act like it's the worst thing in the world, and we need to make more jobs because our whole social compact is based on the idea of working. Again, rather than changing the social compact to make it meet the people where they are, they want to keep trying to make this old arrangement work, even though nothing about it is great and it kind of sucks. Perhaps it was necessary at one point in society, but I don't think it is any more, and I think most economic dysfunction is related to this system of ours. We need to change the system to meet peoples' needs better. And for me, that's what human centered capitalism is really about. Yang is for it, he admits that we need a system where people matter more than money, but if you really think through what it means to have a system be human centered, it means the system needs to meet human needs, rather than forcing people to participate in the system as wage slaves for an infinite growth engine that never really appeals to them.
That's how I see it at least.
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