Last Post/Reflection
17 years ago
Thursday, February 26, 2009
"Everything's amazing, nobody's happy."
Louis CK
"When I read things like 'The foundations of capitalism are shattering",' I'm like maybe we need that."
I just thought this was funny. And it makes a nice point about our inability to finally satisfy our needs with increasing division of labor. Durkheim may say this is great, this is how OS can be created, while Marx might point to how it just perpetuates the increase of DL and capitalist hunger, while Foucault might just sit back and watch what we decide.
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4 comments:
ha that was kinda funny. i agree, people totally take our living standard and modern comforts for granted. BUT, everything is relative. so while he's comparing people getting annoyed with their 3G cellphone with people having to use the rotary dial phone thingy...it's ironic because he's talking about how he used to get annoyed with those old-school phones...but at that time they weren't old school. and someone could point at him and say, "you're lucky you have a phone. in my day we had to send letters/telegrams/etc". and then someone could point at them and say...well in my day people didn't have electricity or gas heating or sewing machines, etc. so, i totally appreciate his point that times have changed. but dude, calm down. you're the same way buddy.
but yeah. we have so little perspective we don't even know it.
I certainly like the idea of appreciating what we have. Sometimes, life passes by so fast that we don't pause to ponder about all the wonderful things available in the world, no matter which century we're in.
Well, that's capitalism, right? We've figured out how to satisfy all basic needs (even if the distribution end of it sucks, and not everyone's needs are being met), and most extra-basic needs. But to keep the system going, it needs us to demand more. And clearly it's working!
I think it's easy to see how for Foucault, this is a power relation (I know, I know, everything is). Certainly, we've got survival covered, but we still look to all these places for more, anxious to shell out hard-earned cash (and indeed, the money we don't have, in the form of credit), which we procure through our submission to employment/employers. We agree to subjugation of power so that we may be further subjugated by still more power so that we may have "things" -- the amenities to which Louis CK refers.
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