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We collapse the self into a ledger of production, equating our utility (function) with identity. Yet, to “be” through work is a slow suicide of the spirit.
True sovereignty emerges only in play—the sacred, “useless” rebellion against the labor-impulse.
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The conundrum: we lose the self to the ‘slave impulse’ of labor as identity.
To reclaim the lost self we can follow the pragmatic path: one must first inhabit the machine we detest. We labor not for identity, but for the capital to eventually divorce it.
By selling out to get in, we specialize and go deeper to fund the ultimate exit—a tactical surrender of the present to buy back the right to be our “worthless” once again.
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While some stress stems from overcommitment and limited time, much arises from suspended decisions.
Lingering uncertainty—not merely circumstance—drains mental energy. The inability to prioritize concerns (or relinquish control over uncontrollable elements) leads to a piling of unresolved tasks, each demanding attention until anxiety swells.
Stoics advise understanding your agency (what you can control or change) to make better choices about what can reasonably be solved, then taking action, which relieves the stress of deliberation (procrastination) and turns it into a path to liberation.
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Elite institutions (think Ivy League schools) mint cultural gatekeepers whose status hinges not on wealth alone but on signaling “enlightened” beliefs.
These luxury beliefs—costless to elites, costly to others—reinforce class divides under moral pretense. The affluent promote ideals like family fluidity or police abolition, yet privately adhere to stability and security.
(Rob Henderson coined the term luxury beliefs: these are social elites who support hip values, such as socialism or polyamory, while profiteering from free market capitalism and maintaining stable, traditional families, raising kids in a gated suburb, and sending them to private schools. These are often people who say "I’m socially liberal and fiscally conservative," decrying privilege and yet carefully maintaining it, turning a blind eye to the social harm and fragmentation that results from these liberal, progressive beliefs.)
In crafting beliefs as symbols of distinction, elites maintain power while cloaking harm in virtue. The result is an aristocracy of thought: insulated, performative, and quietly punitive.
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The worst trouble -the most danger- comes from the unexpected: attack from the clear blue sky.
We can only defend against the future we can see; prediction allocates our resources.
This leaves us vulnerable to ambush from unforecast betrayal, against which only the paranoid can prepare. But even the paranoid must trade risk for the capacity to function.
A possible solution is to move faster than plotters, quicker than disaster can strike. Make of yourself the blade that cuts through expectation, become the chaos others must prepare against.
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What is it to go beyond, to be overoptimizing at 110% all the time?
To quote Radiohead, to be “better, fitter, more productive” is also to be more flawed and frantic, not necessarily “mo betta.”
The notion of perfection includes balance, yet our society worships excess until inevitable failure.
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Production has evolved from the heavy machinery of material transformation to the weightless algorithms of behavioral extraction.
Once, capital demanded we adapt to its clanking engines, processing earth into goods for a dream of material betterment—steel into cities, cotton into clothes. Now, industry giants wield algorithms, not hammers, mining human behavior to guide not what we make, but who we become.
Machinery built a world; algorithms manipulate it, turning us from producers of goods to products of data, shaped not for progress but for profit.
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Is expediency tied to efficiency? Is doing things quickly for convenience too often misapplied as doing things right optimally?
Expediency stems from a desire to simplify and act swiftly, cutting through complexity: a brutal chop of the Gordian Knot; there is no time for complexity here.
Efficiency, rooted in logic, emphasizes timeliness and streamlined action—an unassailable ideal of minimal wasted effort.
This clarity of efficiency seems truthful and singular, offering a direct, obvious path, which would be sinful to obfuscate with nuance. Yet, in prioritizing speed (a subset of efficiency), we distort the present moment into an inconvenience (along with every other potential expansive revelation.)
We expedient thing is to compromise the quality outcomes for hasty execution. By over-indexed speed, we destroy the ability to appreciate (to see the value of) quality, the “right” or “holistic” way to do something.
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Algorithms are lauded as new processes in capitalism’s arsenal. While traditional capitalism dealt in heavy metals such as gold, machines, production, and labor to move assets, the new model is a light extractive filter sitting atop a tangled web of connected network traffic, siphoning off the nectar.
While increasing efficiency and value creation, an algorithm sits atop an already exploitative digital economy (harvesting of personal data and clicks), much as traditional capital set atop early civilizations (militarized states protect merchants and allow factories and supply chains). This additional layering offers benefits yet increasingly attenuates production from the physical into the abstract and speculative.
Arguably, the reliance on coordinated, cooperative networks provides stability beyond material reality until chaos ensues, at which point the revenge of the real reduces artificial systemic complexity very rapidly: algorithms are not capital but pleasant parasites easily swatted.
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In youth, the vital energy of music, friends, and getting drunk/high can feel world-breaking.
As we age, an inversion from breaking to organizational mending occurs: we appreciate the mundanity of gardening, cleaning windows, sobriety, and silence. Obviously, our perspectives shift from railing against the quagmire of compromise to embittered grumbling about near-sighted hormonal youths. Giving in to either can be charming, but it is so cliche as to be boring.
Instead, is there a through-thread? Our larger perspectives shape our passions. Can we keep them alive and active, not drowning them in rage or exhaustion?
