Reflections on EXT/INT-version

I think we've essentialized the categories of 'introvert' and 'extrovert' to the point of absurdity. It's not as if we received an INT v. an EXT stamp at birth. We live in circumstances and and are formed by the pressures of a real, living, and dynamic social situation and our basic coping mechanisms on a daily basis reflect these, as we must fit ourselves to its pressures. Seeing our own basic relating tendencies as intrinsic is kind of a problematic way of looking at human behavior then. http://betweenletters.quora.com/How-to-Live-With-Introverts?ref=fb

Artistic Ramblings

I find artist descriptions to be interesting. Often they are attempts to rationalize and ascribe logic to the lives of individuals who go on to produce things, reading into those artistic objects their aspirations, experiences, tendencies, hopes, thoughts and ideas. But is art so simple, as with political protest, or really, any kind of human action and endeavor? There is no formula like artwork=experiences+thoughts*materialresourcesforexpression. This is a delusional byproduct of certain modes of inquiry that seek to homogenize and explain to the point of absurdity. There is an enormous amount of creative agency, of decision and deliberation, consideration and determination that will forever be beyond or outside of what we can render intelligible and reproducible. Art does not fatalistically follow from events but is one of the most real and profound examples of human agency and capacity to produce something from nothing, to take what is and to transform it into something completely new and novel, fashioning objects that subsequently inhabit the world and inform how we think and live and be. This is why we must protect the space and stature of the artist, whatever project they they actually engage in; their work is key to the stability of our world and our own ability to continue residing - and doing so happily and contentedly - within it.

Non Profits are Not the Solution

There is something deeply problematic about the nonprofit, as it parades as a beneficent, moral institution that fulfills and satisfies some mission but does so at the cost of its workers. I say this without the proper literary substantiation, a project that may come from this. But speaking from personal experience, administrators and managers use the mission statement as an excuse or perhaps as a tool to under-compensate employees. Exploiting a downturned market and reduced prospects for continuing or graduating students, the program systematically undervalues them by undercompensating.

Undervaluing is itself a phenomenon worth examining, as it has myriad psychological and physical effects, all of which are infinitely prominent in our own society. In undercompensating individuals, a company shows their lack of appreciation for their services, based on some kind of market calculation of what is in demand and what is available.

This is where the Market serves little purpose but to justify the efficiency-seeking denigration of workers. Similarly, a hierarchical command structure, expressed in management decision-making and supervisorial relationships, basically justifies autocratic attitudes and the predispositions of individuals to control others. In my own experience, this translates into passive-aggressive behavior where outright conflict is thought to lay in wait or has already occurred.

We need a whole new way of organizing that is liberated from the constraints of efficiency and from the chronic and seriously devastating undercompensation of workers. A part of this fight will be subverting the very theories that underpin such management practices. Another will be a radical reorganization of earning flows.

It is surprising, for all of the harmful effects crushing debt and recurrent bullying have had on the financial woes of citizens around the globe and our nations high school students, that private industry remains so uncompromisingly tied to a structure that is so psychologically damaging and spiritually effacing, too.

These are no empty claims either. Self-actualization, a Rogerian concept, is virtually impossible in said management structure, the likes of which predominates in the United States. How may we be able to find ourselves if we are constantly being ordered and directed to do this and that project? How can we really separate work and post-work? This aspect of the work world seems so essential to it as to make it possibly definitive of it.

As I write this, I'm reminded of a story a starbuck's employee friend told me. A dissatisfied customer, after having left the store and nearly consumed their drink, decided it appropriate to call starbucks and complain their inability to reach, with a straw, the last few drops of coffee remaining. they proceeded to castigate whomever they reached, using the opportunity likely to vent frustrations accrued from so many other places, aggression that is understandable and rational but misplaced. It likely even derived from problematic work relationships, as I see it.

 I'm sure there are myriad and easily explicable examples to be found everywhere, and yet it continues and often with the rationalization that it was only single individuals, populating managerial spots and inhabit the system itself that deformed and misapplied its mandate, but I argue a different position. The very notion of hierarchy and reduction of the power of decision-making is itself problematic. In the work place, for human beings to be treated as human beings, we must struggle to proliferate these spaces, creating new hopes for direction organizations in different directions and even for a self-setting of the environmental conditions.

And yet, we are forced to maintain our participation here, as we must work to survive, to achieve subsistence and some modicum of autonomy over ourselves and our progress. Here is the binding constraint that prevents all movement.

Capitalism and Human Bonds

This morning, as I was re-listening to a song I excitedly shared with a friend to solicit their thoughts, I realized that I was listening to work of art that reflected the prevailing conditions of production as much as any economic textbook might attempt to do.  The song lamentedly recalls the challenge of creating new social bonds, of accepting the dissolution or disrepair of old ones and even prescribes and active and distracted form of coping with such changing social relationships. The melody is light-hearted but taut and energetically, unrelentingly and resolutely but hopefully defiant. The audience to which the musicians play is of a distraught generation, appraised of the challenges of creating long term bonds amidst the constant pushing and pulling of capitalist productive means and their constant tendency for establishing the constraints and limits and conditions of social connections. This is the logic of the market. As competition inevitably requires changing flows, humans implicated in the system (symbolized as figures and variables themselves) are subject to its logic as much as any capital. They are forced to adapt to a world in which lasting human relationships are not the norm and perhaps not even what is celebrated as the highest form. Even a quick look at divorce statistics may substantiate this point.

Whether this is negative is another question, entirely, however, and one that I'm not necessarily or mainly concerned with. Many positive relationships exist and come from this particular social formation. Even new or recapitulated forms like polyamory are worth discussion here, as they attempt to find a kind of medium by establishing lasting connections with some but leaving open the possibility of including others in one's life. This system is not perfect either but is perhaps a stopgap measure, but it all falls apart if the communication component is seen lacking, as trust itself is called into question. What concerns me is that Capitalism as an economic system does carry with it particular kinds of social formations, and as I'm always looking for ways in which to disclose the reality, existence and peculiarity of of capitalism (much like Brecht or in his emulation), its particular nature and how it affects our lives uniquely, relationships became a natural part of this attempt. Our very human bonds are immersed in and conditioned by productive relations, as much as we attempt to extricate or hide ourselves. They are determined by our working lives, our need for food and sociality, our adherence and conformity to the working day and engagement in forms of investment, communication and entertainment. It is impossible to depart from being Capitalistic within Capitalism, but one certainly can be critical. And, as the only potential avenue for creating a new world, critique may be the only viable tool we have for staying ourselves against the depredations of the system and the multiplicity of effects it has, that we are a part of, that seem disconnected, fragmentary and contradictory. But, if you look closer, if you think about songs like this and related works of art as forged within this milleu, then you begin to see the parallel logics, you see how much sense it all makes.

Do not resist these analyses. See their validity and accept them and live with them. Living genuinely and sincerely and self-honestly is the only way in which one can be faithful to others and to a higher project of alleviating inequality and domination.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIA5e4esp1g