Learning implies change. To live implies change. Change is the only constant. Therefore, instead of fighting it, we should embrace it.
What experiences have you had with change?
I’ll start:
As I’ve become more politically aware, I’ve become less and less willing to do hard work. I now do only what is asked of me, and no more. It started as a response to the inherent exploitation we are forced to participate, but it creeped into my own personal life. I have become “lazy”, as I’ve become less and less engaged in my own personal projects. And while I tend to antagonize this part of myself, I’ve recently learned to be compassionate. I’m now slowly realizing how much I overworked myself, and how toxic my relationship to work was. I’m slowly enjoying life a bit more every day, and even though I feel like I’m going “slower”, I no longer think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s ok to smell the roses sometimes.
There is still a sour feeling in me of how much more I would be willing to do if the result of such work benefited society directly. But I can’t just will a different economic system into existence, so I need to learn to let go. We need to pick and choose our battles.
Speaking as Aristocratic Labor in the imperial core, I struggle with relationships. It’s difficult to have conversations with others about healthcare, climate or inflation without injecting capitalism and materialism into the conversation. They want to complain, not solve or discover the root problems. I try to stay humble and find entertainment in the absurdity of the situation we’re in, but it is exhausting.
Most aren’t educated to understand how pernicious markets are to social policies. Also, historical labor struggles are scrubbed or minimized, at least here in the USA. Don’t be too hard on them though if they are at least trying to learn. We need all the help we can get.
My ex would always make all kinds of offhanded remarks about capitalists being evil, almost as a joke. Like a “CEO gonna CEO” kinda thing. But the mere second I gained class consciousness and started considering what could be done about it instead of complaining about it, all of a sudden I was some crazy radical.
I became a lot more introspective after I joined and eventually left the military. I guess it was born out of a desire to not end up a complete asshole like some people I know.
I’ve had to move several times in the past few years due to unstable living arrangements. I’m now in a new state, where I had to move abruptly in order to avoid homelessness, and now I’m moving again because our worthless parasite of a landlord rented out a condemned building.
I’d love to be more involved in fighting capitalism but my own situation has continuously been fucked by shitty ass people.
I don’t beat myself up (sometimes literally) like I used to. The part of me that wants to destroy me has moved on to more subtle and cunning means of self sabotage.
Biggest for me is my inability to be a passive consumer. Watching a movie, a video etc is essentially impossible for me now and it was all I did as a teenager. Now I have to be actively doing something. I used to watch a lot of let’s plays in the past and seldom ever game. Now it’s the opposite and I mostly open stuff to have in the background while I eat but that’s that. The only way I can watch a movie now is if I watch it with someone and we laugh at it throughout.
