Why they won't work anymore; The Horror of Living

I'm re-reading a bit of the Conspiracy Against the Human Race and thought how it applied to the current labor market here in the United States. In the Conspiracy humans are deceiving themselves into not accepting the terror of living because of their fear of death. 

It's quite similar to how poor people and low wage earners accept that corporations have neglected the low wage worker until Covid-19 came along. Suddenly, a number of jobs that were looked down on now seemed really important by the middle class. A lot of folks figured out they don't eat without a lot of low wage workers risking death for them. Even a few corporations (for a few weeks) noticed how important some of its lowest paid employees were. 

But that might be less important than the workers themselves gaining some knowledge and class consciousness. I think until the pandemic most people in low wage jobs didn't understand that they actually have great power in the economy. Without the hard work of farm workers, warehouse people, delivery drivers, grocers, and food establishments much of the work of the world stops. I think that lesson might have given some self esteem to workers who've always been demeaned historically. 

One section where the conspiracy got my attention is where Ligotti (the author) talks about the famous Russian writer Tolstoy. And if you know anything about Russians it's how unfunny and depressed they are. For instance when Vladimir Putin was asked about happiness, he replied "There's no happiness in life," "There's only a mirage on the horizon, so we'll cherish that."

But it's not just Putin. I was watching a YouTube video about life in Russia and the pretty Russian girl telling us about her apartment home and general life while she walked a crowded boulevard. She pointed out that in contrast to her time in the USA she noticed that Russians never smile at strangers because they think only stupid people smile. After all what's to be happy about? Russians are serious about things when it comes to life and death. 

Getting back toTolstoy there apparently there are 4 ways people deal with the ultimate question of human existence. It's the 4th way that seems most relevant to the labor situation:

"The fourth way out is that of weakness. It consists in seeing the truth of the situation and yet clinging to life, knowing in advance that nothing can come of it. People of this kind know that death is better than life, but not having the strength to act rationally—to end the deception quickly and kill themselves—they seem to wait for something. This is the escape of weakness, for if I know what is best and it is within my power, why not yield to what is best? … I found myself in that category."

I think we might all be in that category if it weren't for the fact that a lot of us are working so much that we don't take 5 minutes and think about our predicament as human beings. Not too mention that just about anyone who takes the time is mocked as a depressive kill joy because don't you just know that living in America is just super cool joy fun times. 

So, to continue our discussion of depressive philosophy Ligotti writes about the great philosopher of pessimism:

"In a section of The World as Will and Representation where Schopenhauer argues that only pain is real while pleasure is an illusion, the philosopher writes: “I cannot here withhold the statement that optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbor nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the most unspeakable sufferings of mankind."

I think a lot of workers were blind to the horror of what they go through. They assumed the horror is natural. That it's not being imposed upon them, but instead is a reflection of the natural order. That there is thoughtless talk of optimism in their heads, implanted by the capitalist system. 

Again another passage from Ligotti:

"Optimistically wicked or not, most people cannot afford to care, or to care too much, if they are living in the best or the worst of all possible worlds. They can only care about the one thing that, if one is to think of being alive as being all right, is worth caring about—feeling good, or as good as possible, whatever “feeling good” might mean to a certain individual at a certain time. "

"By the same token, should our mass mind ever become discontented with the restricted pleasures doled out by nature, as well as disgruntled over the lack of restrictions on pain, we would omit the mandates of survival from our lives out of a stratospherically acerbic indignation."

Obviously, Ligotti is speaking here in philosophic terms. I would extend his thinking to terms of this analogy. Today people are becoming disgruntled over the amount of pleasure that the corporations have doled out via wages. When the pain of working everyday was lifted from them indignation about their lives stepped in. "How did we live this way?" Many folks started asking. The veil has been lifted. The unskilled and low wage earners now know that their work is still important. The system won't survive without them. 

The proximate cause of our misery, the most direct line is our common enemy the ruling class of the 1 percent. And some recent disclosures from Amazon and other companies prove exactly what critics of capitalism have always said. Low wage jobs are made disposable, intentionally keep poor people on the edge. According to the NY Times:

“Even before the pandemic, previously unreported data shows, Amazon lost about 3 percent of its hourly associates each week, meaning the turnover among its work force was roughly 150 percent a year. That rate, almost double that of the retail and logistics industries, has made some executives worry about running out of workers across America.“

But it's even more than that. 

I didn't like the idea of being a conspiratorial thinker. But when some of the bad guys are saying the quiet part outloud it's hard to ignore.

According to a lengthy expose by the New York Times, Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon believes people are naturally lazy. He uses monitoring devices that allow Amazon to track employees every movement. They track how long you go to the bathroom. Amazon doesn't believe in offering raises after 3 years of work because they think complacent workers mean a slow ride to mediocrity. These are the enemies my friends.