The attention economy has taken over our lives completely. Unless one is enrolled in university or finds exceptional focus it is hard to get out of the content consumtpion loop and shift to the content creation side. After a day's work, doing the chores of adulthood and sleep there's little time to be spent learning new skills and finding the interest to develop them, while doom-scrolling bypasses this lack

The ubiquity of the attention economy makes sure that there's no premium on encouraging people to learn and the onus is put on the individuals to fight their battles with digital addiction as the corporations behind them make bank. Where does one even begin in a sea of distractions where having no phone or internet is equivalent to losing half of one's soul? Modern workplaces, relationships and bureacracy require one to be perpetually online to be on top of things, so being a Luddite and disconnecting from the world is not the solution, nor is the self-discipline, which is the equivalent of telling a coke addict to detox through song and prayer.

Unfortunately, this prevailing trend could have detrimental consequences for humanity in the long run. As more people are encouraged to consume content rather than contribute to it, and to adopt prevailing opinions rather than nurturing independent thought, society risks becoming insulated in a cocoon of global perspectives devoid of critical filtration. A populace accustomed to passive consumption might struggle to confront the unfiltered challenges of reality, impeding the cultivation of proactive and creative thinking.

How does one learn in such an environment? And to what purpose does this learning serve? One of the ways that seem promising is to use the internet as a tool to teach others, shares one's experiences and serve as a notebook of progress, refining one's own learning process while also inspiring others. Another would be to do a hard social media reset and a blanket wipe of distracting apps from every computing device and set-up a daily routine of distraction-free learning, though this method requires immense willpower and one also needs to find a greater purpose towards the goal they're learning for. Either way, the battle to regain our attention from digital corporations to individual selves requires an almost spiritual levels of patience and understanding of our thought processes, environments and the human weakness to procrastinate.

#work #internet #consumerism

Freedom, the fresh air of hope that helps us go through life chained. We vote for freedom and desire for it, our yearning for money is in fact our yearning for freedom, where blue skies and endless beaches help us live life without constraint or worry. Freedom is no person or system dictating to us what we have to do, it is the ultimate human salvation to attain.

It is what we want for us and the people around us, the premise of politics is to ensure freedom for one and for all. Though in practice our experience of freedom (and the closest form of political organization associated – democracy) is enclosed in the system of organization of firms and corporations, where the dominant system is not democratic but quite the opposite: Autocratic. At work places, the system of rules are defined by a singular person (The Boss) or a group of people (The Board), who set aside for themselves the greatest part of the profit pie while treating everyone else as expendable. There is the promise of free speech and “innovation” but everyone knows that there's an invisible line that shouldn't be breached, that freedom of speech comes with its own caveats.

In such a system, how do individuals who rely on jobs, dedicating a significant portion of their waking lives to serving businesses, corporations, or institutions, foster democratic ideals? There seems to be a misguided notion that, since we live in a democracy, all our actions should be democratic. Yet, a considerable portion of our lives is spent confined to cubicles, following the directives of bosses and the whims of market forces. This is where the entire political theater of democracy unravels: our political systems enable the capitalist structure of regulated dictatorships, all the while attempting to whitewash us with the illusion of free choice.

The lines between formal and informal politics are often unrecognizable. If all acts are political (even the altruistic and mindless ones), then there is no barrier between what is expressed as formal and informal politics. Thus, what we see being represented is merely a sliver of the underbelly that props it up. While we celebrate democratic ideals and brainwash ourselves into believing that they are the end goal of political organization, the subliminal cues always point to something more sinister. Our brains, wired with a preference for super-tribalism, tend to seek a charismatic leader who will fulfill our political hopes. This trend is being revived from the US to India. Although freedoms exist on paper and on the ground, when questioned, we realize that they often come at the cost of ignorance. We are discouraged from asking too many questions both at our workplaces and our societies, and this dichotomy plays on the worldwide scale in the shape of fractious politics.

#politics #work #democracy #philosophy

Canned tomatoes, packaged fish, a bag of chips, a bag of screws, a box of nails. Sitting in a bus, a train, an office space – we the people are the industrial cousins we created. Closer and closer to efficiency: produced, packaged and transported each day to convert invisible parts of ones self into “work” which in turn translates itself into money which we can use to buy things to produce, package and transport ourselves back into its strange, lifeless self for another day and then another.

Why do we work? What meaning does the work we do really have? I think of all the lofty work I could be doing right now but in the longer time frame, would it even matter? Going to work feels like playing a video game, sometimes it also feels like a way paying debt to faceless gods. This has to be the Sisyphusean punishment Camus talks about, endless interaction with shapes, patterns, numbers and egos. Is it for the money? Not everyone can have money can they? Otherwise money loses its value. This scarcity we created out of the nothingness all other species wander about – a scarcity made more profound by the immense self importance we draft in every Constitution.

Work is about working through a network of people – the same network that becomes a society, a people, countries and organizations. Work is rarely a solitary thing, we are rarely (if) ever solitary. When we don't meet then the result is usually hidden labour that toils for us, modern slaves with a uniform and no identity. This is a digression – as work involves levels, a kind of caste system that everyone confirms to. Money means a level-up: the harder you mine, the higher you go. The paths between people, the stories we tell ourselves.

I wanted to say that work is a cynical aspect of life – that the life behind the person who works has no inherent value. It is a derived value, the net value of a person's life. I have a certain point to which I am sold. A homeless man has one and the President/Chancellor has another. I have one and there's a million other onion layers. But life means nothing here too. The best example to this anomaly is the homeless guy, drunk on the church stairwell. There cannot be a more iconic imagery, where even our Gods do not care about our suffering.

I find work as being an essential antidote against pessimism at the heart of our lives: which is to live alone on this strange planet. We have to embed ourselves into ignorance and drama for which we have to build walls to sleep inside. What happens in our mental lives is almost irrelevant. We are not the masters of this planet, that is a very egoistical expectation. And we are collectively carrying the burden of that egoism. This is also at the heart of modern capitalism, while on one end everything is individualized the operations side of it sees people in faceless packs, stripping them of the very individual self that makes them consume in the first place.

#work #capitalism