Up in my feels this weekend...

Feeling the friction between what's good for me as a worker and what I want as an animal. I'm not really sure how to articulate this lol, sorry if it's overly heavy.

There was a short piece in Capitalist Realism about mental health essentially boiling down to a person's ability to function in a given society. Anxiety, depression, ADHD are incredibly pervasive now and you could see that as an expression of our society being unsuitable for human animals to thrive in. Yet instead people who admit difficulty are considered "ill" and medicated until they can perform 40+ hours of work per week, 1+ hour commute, under constant threat of poverty with no issue. The "health" is just whether you can do that or not.

Obviously you've heard this argument a thousand times and the bottom line is always "it's society that's actually ill, yada yada". What's sad is we all already agree on that, but there's such inertia around doing anything to alleviate it. We know about better city planning, our increasing alienation and the importance of community and everything else. Now what?

Your doctor wants you to be happy but she can't lift you out of poverty or give you a supportive community, so she prescribes you SSRIs or stimulants so you hopefully don't lose your job, because that's all she can really do for you. And your employer wants a 4-day workweek as much as you do (because he also has hobbies...), but he doesn't have the authority to make it happen, and neither does his boss and her boss and so on. But they can create a mandatory mental wellness/self-care webinar, so that's what they do. If you think about that "Capital is a lifeform in itself" idea (I think it's Nick Land?), it really feels like we're just the lesser animal that thing eats.

What has made me sad this weekend was a discussion I had about having a family. I had to confront the drawbacks both of having children and being childless. For me, I get joy out of doing art and travelling, but also the close connections with my friends and family. I was ambitious in university, got a degree, then a masters, good internships, studying abroad in a fancy grande école and everything, but about a year into my career I stopped caring about prestige entirely. I do feel good about the work our department does (I don't work for like, a plastics company or anything like that), but I really just want to do a good job and go home. I don't think I'd be happier or more fulfilled if I became a department director or anything. I'd probably be annoyed having to work such long hours and always be on call.

So, when having this discussion about terminating a potential family—this is just hypothetical, there's no actual baby lol—my sentimental side got hurt. The (emotionally-driven) thought in my mind all weekend, was some realization that most human relationships are exploitative. Someone trying to get money from you either as a labourer or consumer, people trying to fuck you, to use you in one way or another. And while not all parent-child relationships are healthy (sadly), it is potentially one of the deepest connections in which you can genuinely love and be loved. So I wondered about the thought of forgoing the latter in order to make myself more available to the former. I would only want to bring a baby into a stable and sound home, but for more and more people, that environment will never materialize. What would make me happy, when I'm 50? I've had my answer for many years—you can be happy in many different situations, you don't need to insist on one. Whatever your life ends up being, try to find happiness there. But I know also, it's sort of a non-answer, isn't it?

I think women know a friction that's particular to them. Of course men have their own struggles with modern life and some are distinct to them and others are shared. Men and women are supposed to be interchangable as economic units now; but this economic being is modelled after the traditional male role, it's not really a blend of both as it perhaps should be. We try to smooth over any friction caused by biology, and it can really sting when we're not able to do it. It's really jarring because it doesn't fit with our mentality of how things should be now. For example, regarding sexual and romantic relationships things should be egalitarian now. There should be no male or female specific roles regarding flirting, making the first move, behaviour while drunk, communication, etc. Same rules for everyone. Until something happens, then retroactively he or she should have considered this or that...

Regarding my problem, women are supposed to be liberated now because they can choose between focusing on career or family. But that doesn't actually put them in the same situation as men, because career vs. family was usually not an either/or for them. They worked to support their family, and their family supported them in their work. But having the choice between giving up financial independence or forgoing family (the deepest bonds most people will have), doesn't really feel like liberation. It seems natural that most people would like both. Or at least, the option to have both, if they wanted. Yet there's such aggressive messaging that you must want only one or the other, and women who pick the opposite are "baby factories" or "shrivelled-eggs consumerist girlboss". You're supposed to pick a side because, like I said above, nobody can just make it so you can easily have balance.

And I wonder if that's why you see more women than men who have the viscerally anti-family/anti-children attitude. Where they're like "I HATE children! All they do is shit and cry, having a PARASITE inside you is such body horror, I don't want to be reduced to a baby factory etc." I support anyone's decision not to have children and prevent or terminate pregnancy for any reason. But I also always found the ease people can say things like "I hate children" a little unhinged too. In my more intimate friendships with women I kind of get the sense that there's a coping mechanism at play. Having a kid would economically break you. One or two inexperienced people raising an infant/toddler on their own without much help from the wider community sounds mentally impossible. You are forced to give up the time and energy you dedicated to your personal passions which feels like you're cutting away parts of your own personhood. Nobody would want that. And things don't need to be this way, but they are, because society doesn't honour motherhood. A lot of people just don't want kids (I have no issues with that), but maybe some of us would have liked a family if circumstances around it were less difficult. But it can be tough to confront that friction, so we lean into the anti-family stuff to convince ourselves we have total agency over our life choices? idk.

Nowadays, at least in my country, our economic model doesn't seem to have a place for family at all. Despite our low birthrates, there is no acknowledgement that mothers provide the next generation of workers and consumers (I hate putting it that way but). I guess that's because it's so expensive to take a worker out of the economy for xx months, put the child through public school and subsidized university, provide universal healthcare, etc... It's much cheaper to braindrain developing countries and abuse immigration, exploit the hell out of people looking for a better life and keep them in precarity but act like you're doing a selfless deed out of your love for diversity. That keeps wages down, rent and real estate explodes. Suddenly no talk about how that hurts marginalized people the most and benefits wealthy employers and elderly homeowners and the demographic realities of all that. Politicians get on live TV and point-blank say we need to combat "wage inflation" (babe, that's you!) and nobody freaks out about it because we're trained to only care about symbolic cultural issues. And the inability to have a family is treated as just another unneccessary luxury you can no longer afford, like a jetski or annual vacation or avocado toast. Or a house, or a family doctor. But I'm off on a tangent.

To end on a lighter note, I am very excited preparing for my upcoming trip. My cat will be staying with my parents while I'm gone. They're going to keep her inside, but just in case, I got her a collar with an engraved tag. She looks very cute and stylish with it! I thought it would drive her crazy to have to wear it but she seems to be dealing with it fine. My parents have a cat who is actually the biological brother of my cat from the same litter. They haven't seen each other since they were kittens so I'm sure they won't remember each other, but I hope they get along at least. (I know they won't, because they're cats). I'd like to get her microchipped too. She actually used to be an outdoor cat before I got her so she at least hopefully still has some street smarts, but she might not consider my parents' house "home" and just run off. I just hope she doesn't get out at all!

Btw, I consider this diary semi-private because I don't expect anyone to read all this, but in case someone is, I don't mean to inflame or hurt anyone when I write like this. It's just a topic which makes me feel alone; I feel like the only one who worries about this even though I know that isn't true. If you have a different view on things, I'm fine with that. We are still friends across time and space!