pinkfloydpsw's Blog

Our Mr Dracula describes the now to an ordinary citizen that he has invaded the house of. She thinks her home is a dump, he considers it a palace compared to the things he has seen in the past.

“I knew the future would bring wonders, I did not know it would make them ordinary” – Count Dracula (Character), Dracula, Netflix series.

What we learn from this is perspective is that we have it good, I have recently fitted a dishwasher in my house and it is a time of great excitement for both of us. We didn’t have a dishwasher, and now we do, meaning we will not manually wash dishes any more, and that’s great, better than before. This simple appliance gives us time back, and what could be more important than our time? Every article of white goods we own is a labour saving device, from the gas hob and electric oven, to the washing machine, each one frees a portion of time from the day where we can do something else with that time, and even if we do absolutely nothing useful with it, we still have it. Marvellous.

It’s easy to forget that we have it so good, even us ordinary people that work and earn. I have, in a previous post, discussed the problem of comparisons, where our perspective is built in a comparison between what we have and what everyone else does. We imagine ourselves poor only because others have more, but in truth we are only “poorer”. And I have discussed how that comparison makes us miserable as we realise that we are ever chasing something else. The great quote from Lacan is “desire is always for the other”. But, what if we compared ourselves to the past instead?

I think, I do not know for sure, that my grandfather, as a young man, hunted rabbits so the family had something to eat, that his older brothers took jobs in manual labour and learned trades, as he then too did later on, and while they learned they barely earned. They might even have paid to learn, I think that was a thing? My grandmother was in service, quite unhappily I am told, sort of like Downton Abbey in the kitchens preparing for the rich people. These folks lived a life that contained struggles that I have never experienced, yet I still complain far too often about my lot in life. I think that’s normal, we all do his, but maybe I do it a bot more than most. I put it down to me being so idealistic, and maybe a little naive at times.

I see possibilities unrealised and it frustrates me, I see people working too hard and being stressed so they can be happy with the things they accumulate and the experiences they desire. This is the horrible part of modern life, that we all want too much. “We work jobs we hate, to buy shit we do not need, to impress people we do not like” – Tyler Durden, Fight Club. It’s not that simple though, I think Capitalism has something built into it whereby people must be miserable and stressed to be functional. We simply must have the motivation to want to consume things so that it all functions as it needs to. We must also be specifically persuaded to desire that which is ephemeral, not that which is lifelong, so that desire may only be fulfilled temporarily and the same desires will return over and over like hunger.

So how can a person have, so much more than their ancestors, and so much more than they had themselves at a previous time (i.e. you exchange labour for money and then buy things that save you time), yet still become unhappy even if they recognise all of the above?

If I could accumulate all the things I need then would I go to work so that someone else can get rich? Marx thought that working for somebody else had less value that making everything your life needed yourself, C.H Douglas thought that capitalism couldn’t work to satisfy the worker because the exchange could never be fair. These theorists, and many more, highlight an unhappiness in society that is born of the ideology that structures it. Capitalism, as a structure, may be making us unhappy, it may be taking away our ability to survive in any other fashion than the medium of exchange that is money. Capitalism may make us next to useless, able to make things as part of a process that uses a machine, but most of us unable to make anything individually.

When I think about these things I agree strongly, but I’m not unhappy, I’m stressed to the fudging max, I could do a lot more useful things with my time than go to work so that the people who own me can have more than many lifetimes could use….. I’m dissatisfied, and that’s different.

Paul S Wilson