|
|
Post by Infinite Ego on Aug 1, 2012 9:32:52 GMT -5
"With regard to music and why we do it... I think of it as mental therapy. I am 100% convinced that the current system of work (and maybe it has always been this way) will make you fucking crazy. I have a "good" job (good pay, a fair amount of autonomy, fairly sane boss) and I still would rather not be here. If I learned anything in 8 months of unemployment it is that work sucks... It is like at ATM - just here for the money."
I can definitely relate to that. Americans are so "Job" and "work" oriented that they miss the simple fact that having a job is being a slave. That's not an exaggeration and why Marx referred to wage labor as wage slavery. We perform unpaid labor....that is where profits come from for the most part.
Music/guitar becomes a way for a person to retreat and find self-expression. And I'm all for that. But it does not in any way help us get to the root problem that we all live in a forced-labor camp. It would be far better to get to the root of the problem and liberate ourselves from this situation so that we do not reduce our free personal time to the point of infantile narcissistic behavior or reality avoidance (fetishistic disavowal).
Why should music be an 'escape' and not an active force in liberation? Why should music be nothing more than a soundtrack to the advent of the greatest totalitarian system the world has ever known.
Fuck, I wish I had some of the anxiety-free infantile narcissistic play time some people have.
My professional time is spent around teens and people in their early 20s who are marching off into the joys of unemployment, part-time underemployment, or, worse yet, full-time bullshit jobs that will suck the life out of them and then flush them out when they're no longer an expendable utility. More of them are going to grad schools and saddling themselves with debt. I see a rise in self-mutiliatons, self-destructive substance abuse, and suicides.
Just got an email a couple of days ago that one of our former students killed herself at age 23. She couldn't even get a job babysitting after leaving college. She became a raging alcoholic (something that started her Jr. year) and finally just checked out.
Increasingly, I find myself serving as the last guy they see before heading off into the gas chamber of pointless existence. On top of that I have my own kids heading off into this abyss.
It seems to me that contrasting NY and G3 that the former had it right all along and that G3's appropriation of NY's "Rockin' in the Free World" is pretty nauseating when you see all that ego inflation slathered on top of an altruistic song. It's just negating the negative leaving behind the residue of the ego.
I'm to the point where I no longer have patience for this infantile bullshit abstracted from collective existence. The cult of the me (or the me + the me's stupid guitar or the me's other stupid entertainment) is not simply a symptom of this whole setup but the proper condition for the intensification and preservation of the status quo.
And if anybody believes they are not on shaky ground and frighteningly exposed to the contingency of corporate totalitarian terror, well, I have bad news for you. Everybody here is on the thin edge.
|
|
|
|
Post by aliensporebomb on Aug 1, 2012 13:51:24 GMT -5
I have to admit that their cover of a King Crimson song with Robert Fripp sitting in was pretty thrilling but mixing "Red" and "The Court" in the same song was kind of missing the point.
Oh yeah, music - big escape. No doubt. For a lot of people.
|
|
mirth
New Member
Posts: 931
|
Post by mirth on Aug 1, 2012 14:42:32 GMT -5
Great discussion....I didn't think a Yngwie video was a capable of starting an interesting thread, haha.
IE, I can imagine your job has allowed you to see things most of us never get a chance to, especially when watching motivated, curious young adults turn into begging pleading products of the system, only bowing to the money gods in the end.
|
|
|
|
Post by Infinite Ego on Aug 1, 2012 15:35:47 GMT -5
Great discussion....I didn't think a Yngwie video was a capable of starting an interesting thread, haha. IE, I can imagine your job has allowed you to see things most of us never get a chance to, especially when watching motivated, curious young adults turn into begging pleading products of the system, only bowing to the money gods in the end. Twenty years ago they were chomping at the bit, couldn't wait to hit the world. Some even dropped out early to take advantage of opportunities too good to pass up. Now they're so depressed they drink like mad and go to grad school to avoid the inevitable move back to the parents basement. I have kids with 4.0 GPAs shoveling fries at McDonalds and feeling lucky. They smoke mass quantities of grass to ease the pain. The atmosphere of anger and rage is palpable and growing. |
|
mirth
New Member
Posts: 931
|
Post by mirth on Aug 1, 2012 16:31:03 GMT -5
College degrees have definitely become a dime a dozen.
|
|
|
|
Post by brucestevens on Aug 1, 2012 18:09:55 GMT -5
College degrees have definitely become a dime a dozen. I also see some unrealistic expectations. I know I am spoiled - my degree is in engineering, which means I am well (probably over) paid. That being said, I think kids need to be honest. There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting a degree in anything - communications, fine arts, biology, whatever. However, don't be surprised with your options on the other side. I should come as no surprise to someone that if they get loans to go to Harvard for a BS in English they will never pay off their debt. The market pays what it pays, and while it has gone down for almost all of us in the past few years, liberal arts degrees have never been valued highly in the workplace. Again, do what you want, but understand the consequences of that decision. I know someone that went back to school to be a teacher on loans. Fine, a noble job, but don't be surprised by the money. Long term he might have been better off financially as a barista w/o loans. One of the best things my parents ever did is refuse to co-sign a student loan. They paid, but only in-state for a state school. Graduating with no debt was (and still is these many years later) huge. Bruce |
|
mirth
New Member
Posts: 931
|
Post by mirth on Aug 1, 2012 18:55:02 GMT -5
I am fortunate to be an engineer too, that lead to many very good offers, however that's not the norm. My parents didn't pay a cent of my college...and I have a ton of loans. My wife is in the same boat, as our student loans far exceed our mortgage. We even went state schools, but we were stupid kids, making stupid decisions, with parents that didn't know what to do, and didn't have the money. Still, much happier than when I worked in music stores.
Luckily my wife is a nurse too, so we'll be able to pay off our 1500 dollars a month student loan debt one day. I can't imagine the English majors and arts majors on the same position. They'd definitely be suicidal I think, especially if they were straight A students.
|
|
|
|
Post by Infinite Ego on Aug 1, 2012 19:15:15 GMT -5
Thankfully, both my kids are the STEM types.
|
|
|
|
Post by brucestevens on Aug 1, 2012 19:36:16 GMT -5
Thankfully, both my kids are the STEM types. STEM? |
|
|
|
Post by chrissh on Aug 1, 2012 19:45:53 GMT -5
Thankfully, both my kids are the STEM types. STEM? You're STEM, Bruce. Science Tech Engineering Math. |
|
|
|
Post by chrissh on Aug 1, 2012 20:25:18 GMT -5
And yes, consider yourself very fortunate if your personal circumstances guided you to become fairly rewarded for your aptitudes and choices, with minimal burden.
And if you ever want a righteous conventional platform to help transform this socio-economic fiasco, advocate for a true living wage (which is 2-3 times minimum wage).
|
|
bear
New Member
Posts: 74
|
Post by bear on Aug 1, 2012 20:27:21 GMT -5
The data is that unemployment cares not for what your major is. A college degree is better than not, but the data probably doesn't track college grads that well -- official unemployment numbers don't track new attempted entrants into the job market. The legal market for fresh attorneys is a microcosm of how wrong things are. Pre-bust there was a distribution of first year salaries with a big wide bump around $45-50k and a narrow sharp spike around $125k, with the median salary about $60k. Post-bust that median went to $85k, but only because the basement level jobs ceased to be in large numbers. Yep, your barista may have been an editor on the law review.
Sad thing if you read Krugman or an Econ 101 textbook is that this is human suffering that we are enduring mostly by choice.
Back to music, I like IE's take on Coltrane vs. shredder. I get that. It's in sync with how music works for me.
|
|
|
|
Post by dasein on Aug 1, 2012 21:37:03 GMT -5
All these twenty-year olds are my friends and former classmates, and I can confirm that the frustration and anger are very real.
I was talking to a friend recently. This guy has done everything right: got good grades in high school, went to a good university, studied hard and avoided partying, got an internship before graduating. Now he's working at a coffee shop, barely making ends meet, sending in resumes and getting in no response. His mounting desperation and frustration were evident... he essentially asked over and over, "What am I doing wrong? What can I possibly do more?"
I fully expect Obama to win in November, and I fully expect young voters to go for him in droves, but it's clear that he's not going to do anything substantial to alleviate this. And it'll be interesting to see the reaction when that happens... there really is no alternative.
Reading Andrew Kliman's new book really hit home just how fucked we are... there's no going back to the New Deal or the 50's, and the only way for the capitalism to keep its necessary, relentless expansion going is to resort to increasingly risky and desperate financialization efforts, which will only lead to more and more crises, with ever increasing intensity and frequency.
My job brings me face to face with the fantasy-escapist contingency of music. Most of our clientele are Wall St. and other business-types and their children.... super-affluent types who get to play rockstar for a couple hours. It's a bit nauseating, but on the other hand, I have a job that pays the bills, which is something a lot of people my age can't say.
Better stop now before I get really depressed. ;D
|
|
|
|
Post by Infinite Ego on Aug 1, 2012 22:13:32 GMT -5
"What am I doing wrong? What can I possibly do more?"
That's the American way right there: we convert a systemic problem into one of personal failings.
It's the system, folks. This is called 'heteronomy' and we have to comprehend the impersonal quality of the forces that push us around. The idea of 'false consciousness' applies well here. Like the people in any totalitarian system they think they are alone in their feelings, that there is something wrong with them personally and that others do not think and feel the same way. Little do they know that the people living in the apt. next door are having the same conversations. When they meet in the hall they just stick to ritual pleasantries, not knowing that the other is just like them.
Though, I think we are seeing, clearly, the thawing of this phase of false consciousness and we're moving on to the phase of total collective confusion.
The really dismal thought right now is that there is nothing yet in the way of an alternative to Republicans, Democrats, Tea Party kooks, etc. Occupy still has not gotten it together and maybe cannot. I don't know.
Capital and its state have an amazing structural problem to contend with: a growing mass of tens of millions demobilized from employment, liquidation of unions, austerity, dead end wars, financial gambling, etc..... Normally, mass war would be used to expunge hundreds of thousands of surplus young men from the system but wars don't accomplish this any more (that's why they keep sending them back, time and again, from one war zone to another; it's 'virtual' death....keeping them cooled out 'over there' instead of clogging up more of the system 'over here.' Hence, also the reason the prison population is exploding along with a tidal wave of pharmaceuticals used to keep the survivors of wars sedated and disengaged.
So the military is not functioning quite as it used to. Colleges are not functioning as they used to. Jobs are scarce, shitty, and pay little. This leaves dependency on parents, prison, scavenging, suicide, murder, or murder-suicide.
Oh, and rallying behind a fascist dictator.
They'll get behind all that before it would ever occur to them that the political-economic system deserves to die or that "getting a job" is not the alpha and omega of life.
|
|
|
|
Post by chromedinette on Aug 2, 2012 5:36:15 GMT -5
A lot of people don't know what to do with themselves when they are not at work.
I work with a guy who has managed to accumulate the maximum number of vacation days possible. He has to use them at this point or he loses them(by not accumulating more), He basically has nothing he wants to do. He has no interest in travel and I guess he just hangs out around the house when he is off.
He is not the only person I have met like this.
It also blows my mind how many people I work with have no problem with overtime. We occasionally have to work the odd weekend day or at night. Personally, I make sure I take the time off during normal hours,but most guys don't. I think a lot of it comes down to people having nothing they feel strongly to do in their personal lives, so they feel they may as well be at work.
|
|
