They Don’t Want You
It’s not enough to merely be complicit in society; to keep your head down and … exist. Oh no, they want you to be keen about it. It’s a way, I’m convinced, to sort out the fakers from the true believers. You can’t take a job and simply turn up and do the required labour, now you must go “above and beyond” customer expectations, you must “show enthusiasm” and be “a team player.” Read any job advertisement for examples of this rhetoric.
And this applies to all aspects of life it seems. Not just confined to the workplace, this contemporary attitude of enthusiasm for more, for an unnatural keenness in all things spills over into the world of daily mundanity. The examples are too numerous to mention but I’m sure you get my drift. A better experience is the catch cry for all things - from appliances to holidays, from linen to lighting, there is a zealotry to life which, quite frankly, I find disturbing.
I suppose it is yet another side effect of the consumerist model; this constant competition for “value” or perceived benefit. No longer are we happy with good enough, everything must be better, faster, sexier, more efficient and yet less expensive. That last one being the kicker for it is an obvious contradiction. How do you get better for less? Well of course there is genuine innovation but breakthroughs in technology or manufacturing processes are rare and yet we are lead to believe we are riding the cusp of a wave of constant ever increasing efficiency. This simply cannot be. The truth behind this phenomenon is, of course, that it is bullshit.
There are innumerable ways one can flog the benefits and superiority of one’s product or service from outright lies (a common tactic) to appeals to its perceived social desirability (this product will make you cool). Why have a washing machine that simply beeps when done when you can have it play a completely uninspired 8bit melody?
Coming back to the beginning and I do suppose it’s something of a chicken and the egg conundrum, this hysterical desire of more for less has placed an unusual burden on us. It seems to me that even our leisure time has been co-opted into being something that requires a level of productivity, be it lively entertainment eg. watching sports or a movie - to low level education eg. watching a documentary. Does anyone simply sit and BE anymore? Does anyone ever get bored?
Zooming out still further, widening the frame, I see a general tendency towards lower tolerance, especially towards libertines like Dollyboy. He gets unfairly maligned. DB really just wants to be left alone so he can get on with his life, he enjoys his boredom. He doesn’t care much for the sportsyball or Marvel movies and prefers to cook and read. He is quiet, too quiet for a man and has no ambition beyond making things easy for himself and others.
However it seems as though this behaviour is intolerable. There is an implicit expectation that one must be stressed out all the time and busy - always busy, “Oh I am sooooo busy these days!” I’d like a dollar for every time someone has uttered those words. People who don’t complain are not only treated with suspicion they are actively excluded because they are not partaking in the collective suffering. They must be doing something wrong. Look at that guy sitting there with a hat on … just sitting, watching the world - what a freak!
I feel that we are seeing a narrowing of society, of what is deemed as being acceptable modes of behaviour or perhaps it has always been this way and we are simply seeing a shift in the view finder of tolerance? I am unsure for I have not lived long enough to be able to truly compare cross-generational attitudes. But I see, through the stories of the past, a different attitude. It seems that in times past there was at least a tacit acceptance of difference - “Oh that’s just Nutty Ned, he’s like that,” or some other such utterance. Once there was an acknowledgment of difference but there still remained acceptance because … well … they are people and people deserve to be treated with love and respect.
Tell me what you think?
In the meantime, please enjoy some of my music:
I applaud you and your sensitive observation of (programmed) patterned behaviour, and the reflexive unawareness of most to their own corralling towards such behaviour and 'self'-expression. Most are either devoid of, and so are insensitive to their lack of a genuinely individual mind, and as a consequence they want what everyone else wants, do what everyone else does, aspire to what society deems as aspirational, and even say what society wants them to say. Incapable of independent critical evaluation, they borrow the values held by the majority. Incapable also of formulating thoughts they rehash second, third, manifold-handed snippets that disseminate out from - who knows where, and who cares anyway? There was always but seems acutely more so now a keenness to be seen or heard to say formulaic things, such as "I'm passionate about ..." even about the most banal, and mind-numbing of subjects. "I'm so passionate about tax accounting!" Whenever anyone around me utters the words 'passion' or 'passionate,' I struggle choking back my reflexive retching response. Whatever happened to or what's wrong with enthusiasm? Why isn't admitting one's enthusiasm about something enough anymore? "I'm enthusiastic - actually, to the point of obsession - about enthusiasm. But I'm certainly not indifferent to, rather I have a strong aversion to 'passion'!"
"It’s not enough to merely be complicit in society; to keep your head down and … exist."
Another thing to notice is that one is not permitted to exist (in society) without being encumbered by a myriad of expenses, whether for weighty and onerous commitments, or for trivial and unavailing obligations and undertakings. The simple fact is that finance and the imposition of financial liabilities has been a (the?) most powerfully effective control weapon the oiler-financier bosses of the governments have wielded, probably since banks have existed. Cunningly, in kind as well as how widely arrayed ones expenses are has been engineered to be the metric for determining one's social status. Being a poor little aux but without any expenses affords me only the disdain of the world and my elimination from society. And I'm very, even zestfully grateful for that!
Thank you for sharing your observations and thoughts. I greatly value your writing because you write so well, but especially because you skilfully articulate inklings or inchoate thoughts I might have but am not able to work into coherence.
My grandmother used to say that the world would be a boring place if we were all the same. There was definitely more tolerance and a spirit of live and let live.
The difference that I can see is that people used to be more respectful of each other's right to live life on their own terms.
Now we have to fret about the consequences of everything we do & say on the collective. Workplaces are fraught with political correctness to the nth degree. Diversity is being measured in percentages of men, women and 'other genders' within a company. We are asked to lead woke initiatives that have nothing to do with our jobs and spend time on them that we don't get paid for.
It's time to get off the merry-go-round and smell the roses.