#capitalis

capitalism is a nightmare

businesses are really asking you

“Do you like your life y/n???”

“Do you wish to preserve your life y/n???”

THE CHILDRENS ARE LOOKING

Villa Crespo, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

I mean yeah. The title is pretty much what this word vomit is about. As an academic (former and future? I guess kinda presently?) in the corporate working world there are pieces of society that I have to deal with that I rarely had to in academia. Mainly anti-intellectualism. You’d be surprised at the amount of anti-intellectualism in higher ed and graduate programs for professional degrees. However I am constantly frustrated with dealing with it in my life.

By anti-intellectualism I mean more than the run of the mill people who hate to read or people who build their entire life off of blindly following an ideology. I also mean people who just aren’t curious. People who don’t want to understand the how or why, or simply don’t care about it.

Capitalism is built on blind acceptance and anti-intellectualism. It is purely based on utility and how useful you are to society. And academics aren’t “useful”.

I lament this, because my afternoon is just a perfect metaphor that caused me to write this. My master’s thesis work has been sitting in an old laundry basket in my room since I graduated. Beautiful shelves and photos and laser etched essays laced with memories of my grandfather. I just spent the past hour dismantling it because the wood and hardware have more value to me to be turned into a box to put my cats water fountain in so they stop tipping it over, than it did as a thesis project. The laundry basket I put all of it in has more value to me to keep as a second laundry basket for days with a lot of laundry than it did for safekeeping my work.

And damn. Doesn’t that just speak to how we value academics and learning in today’s capitalist society?

What’s your utility? Because being an academic is not useful.

★