Corporate America has programmed people to HUSTLE! BE THE BEST! ACHIEVE! MAKE MORE MONEY!!! for so long that they now need to pay someone to come and teach us how to relax, enjoy the moment and be happy again.
The fallacy of infinite growth (money) is such a CF
Infinite growth is a strategy that works for a virus not humans
The real problem is that our concept of Infinite growth fails to describe the growth of use value. We only measure the growth of exchange value.
Strictly speaking, both are possible. But only one is good.
You could do the SMBC web comic joke about two computers that just trade bits of data as a form of economic activity and achieve growth capped only by the maximum processor speed of the transactions. Viola! Infinite growth! But its all exchange growth, no utility.
You could also describe the Cambrian Explosion as an “Infinite Growth” strategy. Rapid proliferation of species, new ecological niches that are filled by species specifically focused on occupying those niches, revolutionary new means of biologically observing and processing information, etc etc etc. Now we’ve got enormous utilitarian growth, but there’s no real exchange process (unless you consider organisms eating one another a market mechanic).
From a biological perspective, the real upper limit on growth is efficient use of solar energy to process planetary materials. And we’re still nowhere near that limit. Plants and planktons and insects and crustaceans have been lapping us on that front even into the modern industrial age.
Our model of economic growth just fixates on the exchange side so heavily that we end up with the Two-Computers-On-An-Island-Trading-Bits proxy for economic success. We’ve abandoned our conceptualization of utility growth in our quest to fully financialize. We don’t recognize volunteer labor as a form of economic growth. We don’t recognize procreation as a form of economic growth or mortality as a form of de-growth. We don’t recognize ecological destruction as a form of economic de-growth or extinction as a massive loss in economic value.
Until we adjust our measures, the infinite growth we’re aiming for is purely a growth in accounting statistics. We’re sacrificing real prosperity for a financial fairy tale.
If we got off this rock infinite growth wouldn’t be so bad. We’d have space to grow as a species. Until then infinite growth is more harmful than good.
But is space (and its resources) truly infinite?
According to our modern understanding of physics and and given an expanding universe…yes, the universe is truly infinite. There is a limit to how far we can see but not to how far the universe will expand.
CF?
I’m guessing CF stands for cluster fuck.
Carbon fiber
Cunt Fuck
Crowded Florist
Crammed Fart
Cool Flow
Colostomy FistCrusty finger
teach us how to relax, enjoy the moment and be happy again.
That’s not what they’re paying the motivational speaker to do. They’re paying them to make you more productive and trick you in to thinking they care about you so that you might stay loyal and work harder to make them money.
you are shocked to realise that an entity that exists purely to gain money is advocating make more money?
Not shocked at all. I just think it’s funny that they have to hire someone to cancel out the brainwashing they’ve done and teach us how to be happy again.
For me, it’s more that our species of primate’s general wellbeing and health was hijacked by a cancer-like abstract concept.
Motivational speakers are repulsive to me in the same way super-engineered food is
Except Matt Foley. He’s a truly inspirational man.
Agreed. Matt Foley saved my life. If not for him, I would have ended up living in a van down by the river.
Hell, I could go for that. Sitting on the tailgate, eating my can of pasta, watching the water flow by, no reports to finish, no quotas I need to meet.
you should try reading zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
I love it when the free market solves everything! Damand and supply rule!
I was an efficiency whore while working management at a big software company.
It sucked in some very specific ways. I didn’t even realize the impact until after I left that environment.
There were some good things from corporate America, too, but they didn’t bring real ultimate
powerhappiness.Practice patience. Drive slow. Why is it so hard?
Depressing and true.
I have been in the corporate desk jockey world for too long. So much of what people do every day in the white collar world is just performative bullshit. David Graeber wrote about it better than I can describe it.
Related: Connor O’Malley has a great (nsfw) stand up special on YouTube called “Stand Up Solutions” satirizing start-up VC hustle culture.
As a generally chill guy that doesn’t give a fuck about being a cog in the grind machine, I feel like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.
“You merely adopted the chill. I was born in it, molded by it!”
What exactly was topic of discussion? I mean how the speaker was able to motivate.
Was it just like usual " work hard " etc.?
No, it was how to relax and live in the moment and find joy.
I spent most of it typing out a tutorial for how to eat a taco without getting shit all over yourself. It’s in my comment history if you’re interested.
