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failtoplan · 5 years ago

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Future Imperfect - On Capitalism, Technology and Ideology

Looking out from the 31st floor balcony, it doesn’t seem high until you look down. Shenzhen stretches 80 kilometres east to west, but is only 10 deep, North-South. The city snakes laterally, littorally, between the hills of the Hong Kong border, along Shenzhen Bay to the Pearl River delta, like a badly kept concrete lawn, with clumps of seventy and eighty story towers sprouting like steel weeds. The 115 story Ping An Tower, the worlds 4th largest, the town’s own tall poppy. When night falls, the entire town lights up like a circuit board, streaming with steel and light. The immaculately kept, perpetually swept, cycle path along the Dasha river is filled with office workers on dockless rental bikes, hired by the half hour, headed to one of the city’s many tech clusters, downstream, deeper into Nanshan district. They’ve phased out almost all the old taxis, replaced with a fully electric fleet. The same for the buses. Pretty much every transaction, from street-corner noodles to legal fees are carried out with QR codes and digital wallets. Cashless, silent, sleek.

This is not ‘The Future’, but it is ‘A Future’. Two days a week I commute from Shenzhen to Hong Kong. The journey takes around an hour and a half, but the time travelled is greater than the distance covered. After getting stamped out of Mainland China and into Hong Kong at the vast Shenzhen Bay checkpoint, coaches and cars spiral up onto the five-and-a-half-kilometre bay bridge to cross over to the New Territories. As we roll up the overpass onto the bridge, the plaiting of concrete weaves carriageways from right-to-left and left-to-right. The first sign that they do things differently here. At least for now.

Hong Kong, like Tokyo, represents a certain obsolete near-future in the collective imagination. Having had its image and form repeatedly appropriated by Hollywood as a stand-in for numerous dystopias, the familiarity can make it seem almost underwhelming. Hong Kong looks exactly like ‘Hong Kong’ - a trait it shares with New York. It also feels like yesterday’s vision of tomorrow. The stuttering neon signs and diesel-streaked streets, PoMo towers and marble-lined lobbies are a particularly sharp contrast with Shenzhen’s unironic modernity. From its peak in 1993, Hong Kong has declined from twenty-seven to less than three percent of China’s GDP. But beyond the numbers, it feels like a city in decline. Slowly, megaprojects such as the Hong Kong-Macao-Zhuhai bridge and the China High-speed Rail Link are stitching the territory together with the mainland, bringing Hong Kong’s greatest fear ever-closer, becoming just another mid-sized Chinese city. With the perceived erosion of its Rule of law, the Special Administrative Region has become a contested space. The acute confrontation over the ‘two systems’ principle, is also representative of a bigger conflict between two ideas. Two visions of what the future could be.

Words can be problematic; they are both the obstacle to articulating a thought and the best way to try. This clash of ideas, in which Hong Kong is just one front, isn’t easily reduced to opposing pairs as the Cold War once was. Capitalism’s ‘victory’ over Communism was always an artificial, lexigraphic binary that pitted an economic system against a total political, social and economic order. ‘Capitalism’ is synecdochic, an easy shorthand for ‘democratic capitalism’ and the free and limited, markets, open societies and shared small-L liberal consensus regarding the primacy of the individual. Democratic Capitalism is Limited Capitalism. And it was ‘Limited Capitalism’ that ‘won’. The front line crossed by the arcing span of the Shenzhen Bay Bridge is not the battle between capitalism and communism. Socialism with Chinese characteristics is Capitalism unencumbered by Democracy. It is the front line between Total and Limited Capitalism.

Limited Capitalism was never an outright winner, but in its rhetoric, it strived to achieve the illusion of permanence. The rights of the individual – the societal sidekick to the economic superhero - has never been inevitable and maybe not even natural. Increasingly this relic of our post-Enlightenment experiments feels like a humanistic blip. In the face of Brexit and Trump, Bolsanaro and Orban, I have found myself increasingly having to defend the ‘pragmatism of the primacy of the individual’ to friends not just in Singapore and Shanghai, but Boston and Berlin. Yes, it is the freedom to screw up, but it is also the freedom not to be screwed with.

When measured in terms of human development Limited Capitalism has been a great success. But ‘Capitalist Democracy’ is a productive tension, not a synonymic pair. Capitalism privileges results, Democracy, the process. One is fast, the other is slow. The market is majoritarian, while the democratic enshrines the individual, not merely responsible to a simple majority. This makes elections, perversely, the least important aspect of a democracy. Limited Capitalism is an uneasy hybrid. You are free to consume, you are free to participate, but the between the two there is no equivalence. The human flourishing this has propagated cannot be measured by statistics alone. It is this tension that universalised the franchise, enshrined judicial independent and – aspirationally -declared Universal Human Rights. Less tangibly and more significantly it gives each of us a hope of genuine human dignity and all of us some faith in a societal-level trust. Maybe it was easier to win hearts and minds in the late 20th century with Right to Buy than the Rights of Man, but failing to promote the civil alongside the economic conflates consumption with participation, creating the opportunity for Total Capitalism.

-- Shenzhen’s subway tunnels are lined with motion-synced LED screens that animate adverts outside the carriage windows selling pizza and pet food station to station. My connected TV won’t switch on without first showing me a short film promoting the latest toilet paper or plastic surgery procedure. Pop-up ads and promotions are a pervasive part of every single product or service, physical or virtual that I use. Upsell, cross-sell, resell. The imperative to consume is everywhere, the Chinese Dream constantly reinforced as the route to individualisation and self-actualisation. Judged by the old Communist clichés of a “decadent West,” focussed on temerarious consumption, contemporary China is the most “western” place I have ever lived or been. One where I am no more and no less than the sum of my purchases. I buy therefore I am.

At the same time deep integration of seamless technology has evolved a new species of human as consumer, Homo Emptus. The local branch of KFC lets me buy a Family Bucket with nothing more than my face, using cameras linked directly to my virtual wallet which holds my credit cards and fictive cash. Recently I was walking through the precinct by my block, when a young woman ran up to me, apologising. Her cleaner’s phone had stopped receiving transfers and she didn’t have the cash to pay. Did I have any? Pulling a handful of 100 yuan notes out of my pocket, she pulled out her phone, scanned my wallet and transferred me the 300 kuai which I had in cash. In less than a minute I had become a human ATM. It was demeaning and thrilling at the same time, I imagine not dissimilar to the excitement felt by the freshly humiliated submissive.

Sometimes living here can feel like magic. But if you only immerse in the wonder, you miss the cost. Recently, a group of cyclists in Shanghai rode past a police officer, stopped by the side of the road, deep in an animated discussion with the driver they had just pulled over. The group, aware the policeman was otherwise occupied, slowly rolled through the red signal ahead, traffic light on a quiet Saturday morning. Fifteen minutes later by the time they had reached their café stop and pulled out their phones to pay, they had all been fined. Facial recognition cameras mounted on top of the police car had ID-ed them and then allowed the officer digitally ensure justice was done. When we are defined only by our consumption, this make complete sense, our economic life is simply ‘life’, giving the state unprecedented control in return for our convenience. Seamlessness may be fast, but to protect Limited Capitalism, we need seams.

The reality is though that our willingness to conflate commercial choice with civil freedoms has makes it easy for us to walk backwards into Total Capitalism. Using ‘Capitalism’ as a shorthand for so long has meant a lack of focus on the social and political dimensions that has allowing the market to perform as a poor stand-in for the whole. This has led to declining trust in the very institutions that underpin both our societal freedom and our consumer choice. The recent World Values Survey shows a minority in both Europe and the US of people born after 1970 believe it is ‘essential to live in a democracy.’ If this is the case then we have collectively failed to remind ourselves what ‘democracy’ really entails. It has also led to the bizarre inversion for many on the neoliberal right who see any democratic limit placed on the market as ‘undemocratic’

The rising indifference to the democratic can be seen in part as a consequence of Limited Capitalism’s success. Just as a fish does not know that it is wet, we take for granted the protections afforded the individual. We have collectively and systemically failed to remind ourselves of the importance of the water we all swim in. Political leaders and populist demagogues who owe their very existence to the small L liberalism that underpins Limited Capitalism have failed to give credit, choosing instead to pee in the pond for short term gain. Taking our collective socio-political foundations for granted has led to their erosion. Ignoring them has also reduced the success of a state to its economy alone. Whilst freedom of speech won’t feed my children, GDP won’t make them happier or more morally rich. This tyranny of the economic means that states which favour the fast and the outcome will be judged the best performing, outshining those that optimise for the slow, the process, the individual. By judging a state by its economy rather than their humanity, we set up a framework in which the Total Capitalism is not only increasingly easy to admire, but objectively ‘better’, with no way to quantify its glaring qualitative flaws. The fallacy that our economic lives are an adequate stand-in for our civic ones provides the ideological misdirection to pull the trick off. Only what is counted is valued.

Total Capitalism, by succeeding on these terms, promotes a worrying model of growth and unfreedom, chipping away at the old liberal consensus. As pervasive technologies allow ever-greater accumulation of information, we are reaching an inflection point, two divergent versions of how this data is used and its implications for how we live. Progress marches an there is a decision to be made, inaction is not possible. A battle that is waged by only one side, even one of ideas, is not without bloodshed; it is a massacre.

Unencumbered by the limits that the state apparatus of Limited Capitalism places on it, technology can quickly become dystopian. The Limited Capitalist model is not just a check on economic entities – as the EU has proved with its fines on Google and Microsoft - but also on governments. And it adds an implicit societal dimension to the economic role. When Apple refused to provide a back door to iPhone for the FBI, it was asserting its social responsibility, not just its economic function. It helped that these two impulses were congruent here, but the difference between that and the case of the Shanghai cyclists is stark. Tencent, makers of the ubiquitous WeChat Wallet in question, were doing nothing wrong by allowing the state to pick pockets; they were fulfilling their duty, legally obliged to do so in the People’s Republic. The FBI’s response to Apple’s refusal was that American lives might be lost, but people died enshrining the rights Apple was upholding. Do we still believe the defence of the individual is worth dying for?

It would be worth asking that question to the millions of minority Muslims constantly surveilled, or interred in camps in Xinjiang. Advanced monitoring technologies, sharpened to scalpel-like precision, have created an unprecedented digital panopticon. The whole region is monitored at a level of detail that previously would have taken vast armies of watchers and handlers. Now instead, the state has the ability to micromanage human life at a macroscale; facial recognition, device tracking and digital monitoring turn an entire country-sized region into a prison colony. Xinjiang is not just a tragedy though; it is a testbed. China has rolled the same systems across the entirety of its domestic train network as well as at every airport, port and major public area. More disturbingly, it is a showroom for the implementation of its own particular strain of Total Capitalism. A sinister demonstration of how to unshackle the market from democracy, providing economic liberation whilst maintaining total control. For parts of the world that were previously faced with the choice between an all-inclusive version of modernity, open society and all, China offers an alluring alternative, a cake-and-eat-it model powered by pervasive technologies and financed by Belt and Road loans. And it is one that has succeeded by our own ‘Capitalist’ yardstick.

Total Capitalism is by no means inevitable, and its vision of the future not the only one. Technology is neutral and can be used co-opted for community as well as commerciality. The liberal limits within Liberal, Democratic, Limited Capitalism have allowed it to do both. But our willingness to collapse the social, political and economic into one big flat now have left us at a critical juncture. Hong Kong’s fight is an imperfect allegory for the decision that we need to make about what we should measure and what really matters, particularly in the developed world. We cannot take for granted what we already have. An era is only named after it has long passed. It is up to us to decide if we are to witness the end of this one.

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logisticalandrewthinks-blog · 3 years ago

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and imma do it agaaaainnnn woooo

idk sometimes i just wonder why im so retarded, like its just so fucking simple andrew. Dont get attached to people, theres literally nothing to be gained from attaching yourself to people, especially people who are online. You think oh look theres some friends that i really like hanging out with, i think they actually consider me one of like their close friends as well, til you then realise, no everyone in that group is just really nice to everyone and really mature. But you’re not, youre an immature retard that can’t help but think everyone actually just tolerates your existence because lets face it, what are you known for, you’re literally unironically the token asian dude it feels like. You’re not particularly funny like some of the others, you’re not particularly kind to any of the others, you’re not even particularly interesting. How you’ve managed to make it this far into being friends with these people is indeed a fucking mystery since it definitely seems like you need to take a step back and go back to being alone. None of these people will care for you after a month or two of you being gone, literally why would they? There have been plenty of people like this already, you just watched them all fade into obscurity while you pretended that you were special, that somehow you would be the person whos actually worth extending a hang to. I literally don’t know how you lie to yourself so easily and play along. Actually its not even like you don’t know that they’re lies because you know its a lie that you live and yet here you are living the lie. Its not really so much living as it feels as though im trying to remain relevant to be honest though. I wish there was a way to just erase my memory from everyones heads, but its weird because theres a selfish part of me that wants them to know, im a bitter person. Even when theres an obvious morally good choice of wiping peoples memories, i couldn’t take it because somehow i still have some ego in a weird selfish way that i wish they would miss me, i wish that people would hurt for losing me. But in 22, nearly 23 years of life. I don’t think anybody has missed me. And that kind of hurts. Really bad.

Last while has just been really painful i dont know i might self harm again just to try and relieve some of the tension cause it just hurts mentally too much, i wish that i was just ... more, im so inadaquete that i can understand why people would forget about me in, not even a month, a couple of weeks and i feel fairly certain the initial “what happened to that andrew guy” or “what happened to our token asian” would just disappear.

I just wish i was actually funny or interesting or something idk, ive had some people tell me im funny, but having to try and make people laugh i feel like isnt quite the same as what im talking about, theres some people that out of their pure charisma or maybe their looks, can just make joke after joke and i cant, im not funny, i have nothing going for me, i have maybe like 3 friends that id trust to always be there for me???????????????? maybe not even 3, probably 2.

it just sucks i guess, i felt like i poured a lot of time into this group , but to be fair looking at it like that is super not good. Its not a matter of work, its just you either are or aren’t, and pretending that you are owed something just because you tried on your side is just asking for some sort of creepy image of a beg.

i actually need to self harm or get drunk soon or something it hurts me too much these days, i try i really do, but its just so hard to try when i don’t want to live like this and yet i feel like i have to. Cause im just retarded, i don’t understand why i have to be alive i dont understand why im like this, i dont understand why i even try to be honest. Why do i try to live when its so much easier to let go?

I found out i might be aro spec recently (a year ago), its helped clear up some things and explain things but it doesn’t make the hurt any less when i see friends idk what im even saying, im literally overthinking thought spiraling myself into oblivion, literally nothing any body in the group has done anything remotely wrong, im just retarded. if there was a button to just switch off emotion or switch off parts of the brain at will, wow life feels like it could be a lot easier.

Nobody cares about you, nobody cares about your existence, you are trapped in a void, with no mouth, and you are trying to scream.

[sfd i]agngadsn;gsa’kngsalk’ndfa’lknfdh’lvslgdlfbg nklKFB;DFSLKMHN;SJFNH ‘ALG\

k;f alng;zl’scff ;klgsda[fdng gaskXEOLGDGFD SWXADSGFRWCSDGS ;KJfdal# sfdasGFDSTdga kfw[el]fFW[EL]GS/,

ill update after selfharm i guess or maybe after hospital if i go there again. God you’re such a fucking attention seeking twat andrew, just fucking off yourself, you literally don’t deserve the specs of attention that you get. Literally who would miss you when you’re gone, like 3/4 people. I doubt the people in the discord would even know til way later anyway, and by then idk, id probably have left the discord if it affected me that much that id actually attempt, cause god knows despite all i type, i am just too much of a coward to do it.

Suicide requires the either the weakest will or the strongest bravery it feels like.

i just need to cry for a few hours, i wonder how i can induce that, i just wanna let it out before i just start self harming uncontrollably, cause not gonna lie, i feel like that is coming on real soon, the thought is looming over my head, currently just thinking of where to self harm so its not as visible to the public, maybe not my arms again, tho that doesnt leave much, perhaps a thigh or smth, then i can wear shorts to cover it up or something.just... i cnat anymore i want to scream help me im drowning to whoever is up there. Cause i dont know what ill do if nobody does.

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republicstandard · 6 years ago

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Arbeit Macht Goy

In our travelling circles the question of the value of labor has been finely discussed. There are even subjunctions of the movement entirely dedicated to its cause; you have National Socialism and National Bolshevism, with individuated parties ranging in size and scope. The Traditionalist Workers Party is the most notable example that comes to my mind.

More often than not, the analysis directed toward the question of labor is (unsurprisingly) one of critique and pragmatism. It is noted, with acuminous alacrity, that a man’s identity is tied into and integral with what he does. It could be further said that a man *is* what he does. The main problem with this associative thinking being that when a man is, say, robbed of his work or his lot, than he shrivels up and blows away in the industrial gust.

That, obviously, is a serious concern. To that end, many of our guys have, with beneficent intent, stipulated that man must have a core identity beyond mere work and lot. A man may work, he may be married, but he is more than that. One would, I think, be a fool or the worst kind of AmCap to legitimately and unironically argue that point.

However, there is an opposite side to that coin. In the wake of Modernism, in the wake of Post-Modernism and the increasingly futile isms that have come in their wake you delve increasingly, and by necessity, into the reactionary realm. I do not use the word flatteringly. In this case reactionism is a harmful influence, for it causes a pendular effect on the White psyche in which decidedly extreme outcomes are repeatedly traded in an utterly futile attempt to reclaim the now forgotten center.

You cannot reclaim the center from the extremities. You have to, and follow this revolutionary thought Brothers, meet it in the middle. What is the center? It is balance, equanimity, stability and consistency – overall. The center is not a particular ideological component beyond the necessity of having an even keel to retreat to, if for nothing more than to formulate your direction and directive. The center is a state of being. It is one of the major contributors to the formation of a lasting Folk Soul which have all been robbed us.

In the life of an individual man there are a collective of passing achievements that God or Nature, or Nature’s God have conditioned him to measure his worth and progress by. A man should have a stable, productive and contributory job. A man should have a stable, productive and cooperative marriage. A man should have a stable, positive influence in his selective community. These fulfill basic sociological needs as imposed by Maslow’s Hierarchy; they should also satisfy the ego of those who tout “common sense.” (As if there were such a thing.)

Evolution inclined man to labor. To the same degree that ideologically, society is owed the artist and philosopher, society is likewise owed structurally to the workingman. The workingman is the Greek Atlas to Rodin’s Thinker. The Workingman with his hands has built everything. I may begin with the house in which you sit, the chair upon which you read this article from. If you sit in your car and read this on a phone, the end is the same. There should be a degree of glory involved in the realization that we, workingmen, build the physical trappings of the world.

Of course, you may enter tragedy. The workingman is a slave to the capitalist system. There is little way around this. Unless you are some (((magnate))) of some kind or other, you are a slave. Even the (((magnate))) is a slave, for their worth is wrapped up in the acquisition of shekels. Your skills are utterly neglected: society refused to acknowledge the contributions of the worker. He has no respect. On the basic, preconscious sociological level, the implications cannot be overstated. A man who works with his hands uses his body. His entire physical being is his primary tool.

I am a carpenter. I enjoy decidedly real aches and pains – they are the primary reward for my efforts. Men who toil, they hurt. And pain, in the long term, can erode you. It can wear you down. When you go to bed in pain, and wake up in pain; day in and day out, come spring and winter gone, in pain, you begin to lose your sense of humour. A clever man like himself reminds himself that this pain makes him stronger, that he is better off than soft-palmed weaklings. And this is true, I endure what lesser men recoil at. An injury that would make me grunt, I have seen stop weaker men for the better part of a day. Workingmen are a breed upon themselves.

Yet, no credence is given to this. Our strength and our endurance have no merit in a victimocracy, nevermind the pain. Society values transvestites. Society values visible minorities of every stripe. The workingman knows his blood and sweat have paved the way for this pathetic spectacle. His efforts contribute to that mess. His taxes, the token of his hard work robbed by a greedy, filthy and unquestioning monetary (((system))). And what does the (((system))) do with his wealth? Redistribute it, of course.

There is no amount of niggling, dickering, mansplaining or Boomer TALKING LOUDER THAN THE OTHER GUY AND REMINDING HIM HOW WRONG HE IS EVEN THOUGH HE HASN’T SAID ANYTHING BECAUSE MIGHT IS RIGHTing that will change the fact that this is true, and proponents of welfare statery are wrong to imply their will in the form of such taxes without consent… and certainly without representation.

So the workingman shrinks into an abyss of ingratitude. He becomes angry, bitter, cynical and despondent, effete, and flagrant. Why wouldn’t he? He must put his body on the line to support a world that certainly neglects him, if it doesn’t outright hate him. After all, the White Workingman can count on this: to at some point hear about the evils of White “Supremacy,” White “Privilege,” and White “Advantage” while the blisters inside his calloused hands are festering, his knuckles bleeding and his migraine quite throbbing. He looks at his gnarly hands where his hard earned money should be, sees an ungrateful indigent in his mind that the government saw fit to redistribute his wealth to for “social justice.”

It is easy for the workingman to despair, in this world. If the White Workingman protests he is met with the battlecry of the Eternal Boomer which sounds a little bit like this: “I don’t care if you’re Black, White or Purple if you come here, speak English and work!” Yes. Work. The Workingman knows his lot becomes increasingly harder because of immigrant labor. He knows that his wage will probably be cut someday to keep that edge against the invading foreign, colored hoards. Yet he is preached to by a generation that has secured their existence and doesn’t have to fear so much the colored hoard they invited. If the workingman is clever he sees the irony in the infinite repeat of history that tells the story of a bloated fiscal oligarchy that is destroyed by the foreigners they invited to line their own pockets.

Of course, the ignorant generation that will not see the plight of the younger is not safe in their hubris. The multicultural virus will spare no man. I shall tell you a tale that haunts me even as my callous crusted fingers press the keys that make this article. My Grandfather worked. He worked until he retired. His wife died, he remarried. By all accounts, he was a damned good American. He followed the rules. He donated a fair sum of money to civic causes he believed in. When he was young, he had served in the United States Navy. He had worked as an engineer. I am told he had passed several patents. But like many American he had his stresses. The long and short of it was this, his wife, when he developed Alzheimer’s, condemned him to nursing homes. And this I shall never forget: I went to visit one day. And there are days you know you’re in for trouble, sixth sense, if you will. Nurses were moving in on a scene. And there they were, huddled around my grandfather. His forehead was bleeding. He was hollering: “take me to the Embassy! I am a United States Citizen and I have rights! I don’t know what country this is, but I want to go home!” Oh, the mystery! The nurses all cobbled and cawed as I arrived. “What does he mean? I don’t understand!” I knew. It was obvious to anyone who isn’t a brainless shill. The nurse closest to him was blacker than coal, with space alien dreadlocks, and if she was capable of uttering a complete thought with proper English diction… she wasn’t. What was there to question? When you give a man with dementia a creature that in his honest mind doesn’t look quite right, like a foreigner than you will have a confused man! Astounding.

I have other stories in my arsenal, but let that be a lesson to White Men who think that their defensive posturing to the ‘moral’ authorities on race and relations will save them in the end… it won’t. Our (((greatest allies))) will make sure the last things you see are things you won’t. They will rob your pensions, destroy your retirement – they will then pay for the third world nurses that neglect you in a nursing home you didn’t choose.

Diversity, I’m told, *is* our greatest strength.

I’d ask my Grandfather, but I can’t, because he is dead. But you’re not dead, and theoretically, neither am I. So what do we do with all this depressing truth? It is something to bear in mind, something to help us keep track of all the factors. When some moron with a caved in head entertains the favourite American pastime of feigning ignorance to avoid the plight of being thought to agree with you, you may remind them why the worker suffers. Tell them stories. It might not make a difference, but we can’t let these pixie-faced, limp-wristed know-nothings get away thinking there’s absolutely no reason for a problem. Because they will – if you let them.

We are American Citizens. We have Rights. We will, all of us die. Some at home, some in a home, others, hell, at work. But we have a right to die in America. What did my Grandfather do to deserve feeling like he was abandoned to a third world country?

The average workingman today, though, has no overarching purpose. He did not see the bright, White America my Grandfather knew. So he passes his time for the reasons we have discussed, in indignity. Maybe he copes with alcohol, or drugs. I am told that the Opioid Crisis has reached unparalleled proportions. A comrade of mine by the name of Emil Kraepelin goes to distinct lengths to dispel the myths and educate our guys regarding this plight.

One of the major problems in the laborial sphere is a sense of manifold purposelessness. It is part and parcel with the blackpill phenomenon. You work for people with more money than you to give them things you can’t have. It is a sense of backwards thinking, the fault of early education and a poorly managed modern culture.

Here is my advice to White Workers. Keep this in mind. Learn a skill, learn a trade. You’ll have to start small. You’ll have to weather insult and injury. Keep heart. If the American Dream is ever going to be ours, than we have to start collecting bargaining chips. We need to do that now. The reasons for this are as diverse as the reasons for being depressed. If you learn a practical skill: carpentry, masonry, plumbing, wiring, than you become more solvent. The eternal call for working revolt has never changed. Without us, what would all the pampered, rich and effeminate do, exactly? Here’s a scenario: without leeching off our skill, the rich would die of sepsis in crumbling mansions that they can’t fix, squatting in a shallow hole they dug themselves because they couldn’t fix the plumbing. They would be reduced very quickly. They owe us, dearly.

The present system in which we live will not last forever. It cannot, by definition. When infinity immigrants have finished crippling the labour economy and all that’s left is coding… you will still have your skills. There will unquestionably be other citizens in a position to need you. And, if, God(s) willing we of our persuasion ever achieve a degree of separation… we won’t much be able to survive on coding, computers and being a generic Millennial or Zoomer, will we? No. Civilization is a complex organism that needs every single skill we have to maintain any modicum of resemblance to the comfort and complexity it presently yields.

Unless you want #VargNat now.

You learn a trade. If you’re good, you can go to work for yourself. It may not be immediate, and you might lose a little at first, but any degree of independence makes a difference. That independence makes a difference in your life. Working for someone else can eat your soul. Work for yourself? It’s a gamble. In the current year, there are no guarantees. But if you make a successful business name for yourself, you can hand that off to your children someday. That used to be part of the European Dream. Families inherit from familial progress. It is not impossible to reclaim that. I don’t think any of our ancient cultures ever intended us to live hand to mouth at the will of a globalist agency because ‘muh capitalism.’

If in mass numbers the Nationalists reading this began to take their own reins, rather than being self-hating service workers, became plumbers, electricians or what-have-you than we could, as a movement, increase pour capital gains. We could become self-sufficient. Right now, our bread comes from ZOG. Why is this bad? You know (((why.))) You place five of our guys in one County: one of them is a carpenter, one of them is an electrician, the other three are generic Millennials and Zoomers. The carpenter and the electrician can build business names independently, and even start to work together. Carpenters frequently call on electricians as subcontractors. Those other three chuckleheads? Why not hire them as apprentices. Now you have five of our guys collecting shekels directly, rather than having them handed off by some retarded system job.

Those same five guys, if the SHTF scenario ever happens, would be better off. They not only have friends, but vital skills. With their money they can support our causes. As our numbers grow tighter and larger, we can call on our guys, rather than some guy. That means money will begin to stay with us. This is important because the ability to hold onto material wealth is integral to any cultural reform. Skill and finance are bargaining chips much harder to resist than tattoos and memes.

But more than that, returning to the original point of this article, labour is part of a man’s identity. If you haven’t been proud of something you built with your hands, I’m sorry my friend, but you haven’t lived. I think I shall you another anecdote or two in this vein before I sign off and go make myself and my wife some bacon and eggs.

On a job site, another client, brother to the one we were working for, came to visit. He talked a while before addressing me. “I wanted to save the work for you, because, you know, you’re so goddamn strong.” I couldn’t help but smile, and he went on to say, “ah, I’ll never forget seeing you carrying that big fucking rock up the hill. Nobody else could’ve moved it!” I won’t lie, and I don’t care if it marks me guilty for the sin of vanity. It feels good to know in some cases that my name precedes me. He’s told the story to others, I’ve heard him do it (while I was carrying big beautiful rocks.) On another job I did for a relative, there was concern moving this and that and the guy that hired me said, “don’t worry about the weight, this one’s stronger than an ox.”

So it goes.

It all brings us back to the Havamal. Cattle Die, and so do Kinsmen – God(s) know anyone over age 20 has seen more death than they care to. But we know what does not die: the name of a good man dead. I know that I want to be known as a keen philosopher when I die, but I shall settle for being another Sisyphus.

To a degree, pride cures pain. Knowing my work is appreciated, it makes it worth the while. Knowing my deeds are worthy of someone else’s time in the form of a story told to strangers (to me) is an incredible ego boost. That is why we are supposed to work: our skills are pooled into larger projects and our endeavors are to be respected. Our strength and skill are to be respected. We are not just workers and helpers. Without us, your service economy would have nothing to house it, your wealth would evaporate, and you would most likely not be here to undervalue us.

Something to think about.

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine http://bit.ly/2OYUFbm via IFTTT

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