Stress and Capitalism ft. Andrew

Andrew talks with us about stress under capitalism

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Uh, it could happen. It could happen here. That was
my Robert Evans impression. Thank you very much. Hopefully that
wasn't an assault in you um drums. But here we
are here, we are I am Andrew, and this is

(00:32):
it could happen here. And this is the podcast where
we talk about stuff that happened in places. And I'll
be yes listening this episode. This is the Andrewism segment
where I talk about whatever comes to mind. So I'd
like to open up this episode with a question, honestly, genuinely,

(00:56):
how are you all doing? Well? There's a lot of
stuff going on right now. Um, you know, not not
the best time um inside this country or really around
the world. Um so yeah, not, I would say, not ideal. Not. Yeah,
I'm everything bad is happening and also being compounded that

(01:19):
I have been. I have been once again awoken at
it a genuinely egregiously early hour by someone pounding a
hammer about eight inches from my head, which is fun
and good and cool without context, without context, all a
wild thing to say. I am giving no context about that.

(01:43):
This is literally true. So yeah, basically it's like that,
but for everything, yeah, I respect that not ideal is
the perfect explanation. Yeah, yeah, not ideal, Not ideal. Personally,

(02:04):
I feel like i'm, you know, cost being pulled in
a bunch of different directions and it's exhausted. And I mean,
let's say up front, I do have the privilege of
having more control over my wealth day than a lot
of other people do. And that's not something I take lightly.
I'm very appreciative of that. UM shout out to my
Patreon supporters. But you know, between all my online responsibilities

(02:27):
and offline responsibilities and obligations and demands and my time,
it really is not easy. And that's not even getting
into like the social and political stitt to the world
right now. It's a coach and Smith, you know, that's
that's something I think we can all relate to on
some level. Yeah, I mean, some weeks are much harder
than others. But the through line has been stress, and

(02:52):
that is the subject of today's episode. That's so stressful
that we're going to talk about stressful. Yeah, a discussion
about stress. It really could happen here. Um. Stress is
not something that's new to me already to most people
me personally, my personality is very much lending itself to

(03:14):
that um sort of outcome because I'm constantly like spinning
a bunch of plates at the same time, and every
time like I dropped one or I put one down,
I pick up the next one. And I'm not very
good at relaxing usually. All right, I've basically been going
on stop for a long long time. And I'm not

(03:40):
alone because of adults suffer from chronic stress, and sevent
to night to percent of doctors visits are stress related.
And it's trash. You know, you feel it in your
skin and your muscle, in your bones. I remember this
one someone was working at that same winery I was
talking about in recent episode. I was in UM and

(04:02):
I was just sharing my experience. It really felt like
my blood was running into water, like I was barely eaten.
It wasn't getting enough water. I wasn't perfectly hydrated and
just go in. We call that. We call that a
reverse Jesus when you're when you're I mean, I think
when Jesus was stabbed, he did like bleed water for

(04:25):
some reason. Sure it did. Yeah, tree rings, you know,
they tell a story, and I think our body is
tell the story as well, and for a lot of
us that story is stress rather because of events or
thoughts or circumstances, but it's frustration and go new business,

(04:46):
do you mistress? What would you guys say, is some
of your like mean stress triggers. I was going to
say family, most of it's probably work related, based on
the type of things I surround myself with for over

(05:08):
twelve hours a day. Yeah, I think for me it's
it's work. And then it's a lot of just sort
of like personal life stuff. I have to do stuff
which is just like like I'm trying to move right now,
and that's like incredibly stressful. And yeah, as medical stuff,

(05:30):
that's been a that's been a holy hell. Yeah, we
are excited that Chris is finally moving out of the
hammer factory into the into the into the electric drill factory.
So the audio will still be a bit weird. I mean, look,
if if if it's if it's anything like college, it'll
be twelve hours a day of a guy with a
jackhammer directly below my window, which you'll all get to

(05:53):
hear an incredibly large amount of It's gonna be great.
That's fantastic. That's a perfect encopsulation, and that the exactly
the topic we're talking about. It's like a jackhammer on
your brain constantly. I mean that's on the only form
of stress. I mean, there's a stress that comes from
like loss stress, it comes from like social drift stress.

(06:15):
It comes from this consumers rat race um, you know,
mental illness, just general uncertainty and change and grief and
guilt and trauma. Um. You know, dictatorship that a lot
of people are subject to. And of course climate change good,

(06:38):
it will climate change. I think more more people need
to realize there was a stress is a symptom of
like systemic violence. You know, when we're dealing with these

(07:01):
headaches and sleep problems and muscle pinions and digestive problems
and sex problems and blood pressures, use and moodliness and
restlessness and demotivation and irritability and substance abuse and all
these other responses and consequences. It's just the outcome of
daily systemic violence, of the way that this system deprives

(07:24):
us of support and care, that how it atomizes us,
how it controls us and really squeezes us forward word.
I mean, it's not to say that like there's no
stress outside of capitalism, or that stress is a capitless invention.
Absolutely not. I mean, stress in um small doses to

(07:49):
be a good indicator in certains vibal situations that need
to change the situation um motivation to act, you know.
But and the capitalism is really pathological, and yet you
gotta keep playing normal. You have to keep on pretending

(08:10):
that everything is okay. I mean, we all know how
deeply unhealthy this society is, how deeply and equalist society is.
Many people dealing stress related illnesses are people don't like
hyper vigilance are We are constantly scanning this urban jungle
for threats, for of of insecurity and decimation of public

(08:34):
life and of entire equalmies in sectors. And it's like
well held in captivity. I will say one thing, and
that is that while capitalism produces a lot of stress,
it was so alleviates stress by producing an economy organized
around the production and circulation of addictive substances and practices

(08:56):
of all these different vices that you know, people pick up.
I mean, if you look at the roots of capitalism
and how capitalism really funded itself initially through the plantation
economies and the Caribbean and the rest of America's um,
you know, growing like sugar and tobacco and you know,

(09:17):
producing all these spirits and chocolate and coffee. The thing
that that that that helped bring capitalism to fruition and
helped fund industrial capitalism is the thing that people are
using to self medicate in response the effects of the
now global capitalist dominance. And people love off their chocolate

(09:42):
and their coffee. Personally, I'm not a big fan of coffee.
I think it's tastes disgusting. But yeah, you know, yeah,
I tried it once and it was like it tastes
like the sensation of burning. You know, I just wasn't
having it. I like the smell for some reason, like

(10:02):
the smell of coffee beans, but the actual taste is
like nah, and surprised. I mean, I actually used to
not like chocolate as a child. It is only when
I matured my taste, but that actually came around to it, ironically,
And of course we don't think of these things as
you know, vices or medications, but they're like small pleasures

(10:27):
that help us get through our day. Practically everybody is
at some level of alcoholic these days. And of course
there's social media, which is like algorithmically Teelered and tuned
to keep us on it, to keep us like it
basically like like a puppet master controls the highs and
lows of all emotions on a deally basis. It basically

(10:50):
functions as an addictive drug. It just the drug is
just is caused by chemical reactions in your own brain,
but it's manipulating your brain into causing it to happen UM.
But it's it's a very similar addictive process that has like,
you know, a reward system. You know that. That's why,
like around a decade ago, a lot of social media

(11:10):
companies changed their UM loading style to be like you
like scroll it down and it flicks back up, which
was specifically it was specifically copying a slot machine because
it is it's it's like an addictive pattern that's ingrained
into what we find pleasurable. So it's it's all like
none of this is this probably isn't new information to

(11:31):
a lot of people, but like it's all obviously very
intentional to why it's designed to be extremely addictive. Yeah,
and this this is just like this is just like
what like most of gaming is now too, where it's
like I mean, okay, like you're playing a video game, right, yeah,
but like yeah, and now and now literally like the
the the revenue model of the gaming industry is selling
gambling to children, you know that. That is My one

(11:54):
complained about casinos is that eight year olds couldn't spend
thousands of dollars with their parents money on skins. You know. Now,
thanks thanks to the wonders of gaming, eight year olds
too can basically just live in a casino in their
own bedroom all the time. Modern society. Okay, there's there's

(12:15):
there's conflicting accounts about this, but there's there's a new
like free to play Dio Diablo game, and well, yes
I heard about that. The amount of money it would
take to get like a max level character in this
game I have seen. Okay, I I've I've The latest
calculation I've seen is saying it would take over five

(12:35):
thousand dollars. The lowest range calculation of how much it
would cost I've seen was about fifty tho it's probably
at least a hundred thousand dollars to literally get the
guys level character in these games. It is like, like
this is problem. Where that's problem is exactly why, um,

(12:56):
the only mobile games I play us to do a
goog on mine. Yeah, and even those have ads. Yeah,
I did have a brief for it until among us,
but that, um, that period has has ended. And plus
this is also why I tend to you know, sail

(13:18):
the high seats as you know what I'm saying. The
funny thing is that we don't have to do this.
And I mean it's kind of obvious. It's kind of

(13:40):
like it's a phrase looking forward, like it doesn't need
to be said, but it was a kind of needs
to be said. That we built. We built this society
and as people within it, we do have the power
to change it. We don't have to work as much
as we do. We don't have to you know, structure

(14:00):
and attend school the way that we do. I mean
even under capitalism, there there are people who are starting
to shift from that eight hour week day, which we
had to fight for a lot of people died for, um,
to you know, three to six hours a day, which
or four hours pertty, it depends. Um. I think that

(14:24):
some one on experiment was like six hour days, four
days a week or something like that. But despite you know,
studies coming out and saying that humans groling be is
super productive in a certain period of time uninterrupted. It
doesn't matter, you know, despite the fact that you know,

(14:45):
productivity decreases, it's not like productivity rises and amount to
hours you work. It doesn't matter. I mean, I remember
when I was working in a um an insurance company.
I was people pusher, just like scanning documents and uploading
documents and then scanning some more documents and then uploading
those documents, and then every once in a while I

(15:07):
got to print documents. Exciting um but I was dealing
with like a backlog of documents, and I was typically
able to get like a decent chunk of the work
done within like the first two to three hours, as

(15:27):
in like having it fully sorted, scanned, uploaded, completed, you know.
But unfortunately I had to be there for eight hours,
and so I had to drag out my day, you know,
typically by listening to like the Communist Manifesto an audiobook, yeah,

(15:50):
or The Conquest of Bad and audiobook. I had to
find things to do, is like make myself look busy,
um what to like divvy up my tasks and extend
them and spartificial they stretched them out because instead of
doing this BS job, instead of not doing this B
S job at all. Well, instead of doing this b

(16:10):
S job based on tasks completed rather than time spent,
I had to rely on the time spent in the
contractual I was And of course the pay was terrible,
but I mean that's expected at this point. But the
whole point is really to like squeeze all our time
and energy, so that's we're stressed out so that we

(16:33):
don't have any leisure, so that you know, we look
for convenience, and convenience is profitable. I mean, who really
has the energy to fight for their rights when they
don't even have the energy to cook a meal when
they get home, you know. And it wasn't always like this.
The social bond was broken by capitalism and replaced with

(16:59):
the on to money and until we like sever that bond,
nothing's going to change. The question is how can we
address stress? Right, and so capitalism has an answer, um,
And then there's like an actual proper real systemic and
so increasing the ideal was stressed by just not thinking

(17:23):
about it, um. But I mean, what what do you
guys do be really sad? I'm talking about like like
mitigation strategies, you know, Like I don't know, like when
it's nice. Like I go take walks, um walks are nice. Yeah,

(17:46):
I have a have a shark that I got from
somewhere that's like it's like the like the Squacy phone material,
just a shark. It rules. Do you have an idea shark? No? No,
no, no no, no, it's ok. It's all right. It's like
stall but about to just like, yeah, that's very funny.

(18:07):
I don't have a whatever that I don't know what.
I don't know how to say it either. I don't know.
I've been trying to get back into doing more park
or training when I'm stressed, But honestly, it's a lot
of the time I just do stuff that I know

(18:28):
I am capable of, which oftentimes is the same things
that kind of caused me to get stressed in the
first place. Looking at nonsense propaganda, writing about it um,
writing about like different like philosophies around Dumerism and like
because those are things I just my my brain can
just do with little efforts. So it's almost it's almost

(18:51):
peaceful in a way. Yeah, it's it's it's bizarre. I mean,
in some ways you would think that these things are
what's causing me to have problems but also in a
lot of ways that kind of calms me down, Um,
to look at a whole bunch of this type of thing,
or to write about it, or to like try to
like you know, just do like formatting inside like a

(19:11):
Google doc about it. Um. I don't know. It's like
it's like sorting out the stuff. It's almost like there's
this idea. This is like um thing called knowling. It's
when you get a whole bunch of stuff out on
the floor and you sort of into piles. It's done
with like Lego a lot if you dump a giant
like box of Lego for all these different legal pieces. Um,

(19:31):
if you're gonna annull them, you're gonna take all the
pieces that are like the same color or size and
sort them into their little places. It's it's it's so
it's I kind of do that but with like ideas,
um and like with and like with writing projects, I
dump out all the things I'm currently thinking about into
like a spreadsheet or Google doc and sort them into
related topics to be like, Okay, here's how this thing
leads into this thing. And I just I it's like

(19:53):
that kind of like organizational thing. Um. So like like
how organizing is kind of like a therapeutic then, so
it's like I can do that with all of the
random stuff floating around in my brain. Sometimes I'll try
to like just sort of out. Even if it doesn't
get turned into like a work project, it's still like
it's like an external way to sort out my thoughts, right, Suphie.

(20:18):
I have a dog, very good dog. A dog. We
listen to music. We go outside, well, like to go
to the park and listen to music outside. You know,
that's the basic. I work a lot, but work is
also like if I don't work, I'm more stressed exactly exactly. Yeah,

(20:40):
I definitely I relate to that, which is like a
lapdog for Cole. I know, right, it's not something that
like proud of, but also like, you know, I'm lucky enough.
Nothing that's indicative of the problem, right, Like it's not
like people don't necessarily like to wooh do necessarily like

(21:01):
to leave? Yes, she was like not having what's one
to me? You know, because I mean if most of
the things I do for work now are things that
I've been doing for years unpaid because I was just
interested in them. So you know, if we're talking about
theorizing about like a post work world. Yeah, people are

(21:21):
still going to do all kinds of ship. Obviously, there's
questions around you know, tasks which are not like not
the most fun to do, as we've had discussions on
like antiwork stuff before. But for a lot of stuff,
everyone has little interests in little skills that they find
kind of slightly therapeutic. And also like you know, it's
in terms of tasks that no one wants to do,
like I fixed my own plumbing in my bathtub a

(21:42):
few weeks ago because my landlord's not going to do that.
So like you know, people when you when when you
have to do something, you kind of become capable of it.
That's fair. I think one of the most popular responses,
like the stresses, acomplism and pooses, is like this concept
of self care, you know, this way of keeping from
the grind of it all and sure dealing with you know,

(22:04):
with issues by like getting to bed early and eating
well and physical exercise which I've been doing a lots
of um and and all that. We'd have to change
your little drug into like into like the chat version.
Well I actually did that recently. That's great. Yeah, it's definitely.

(22:32):
You know this thing also things like like joran and
meditation and yoka and all that jazz. I mean, you've
never really got into meditation because I tried it a
couple of times and every time I do, I kind
of fall asleep. I definitely do some meditation stuff. Um.
But that's what's kind of slightly part of my like

(22:53):
metaphysics interest, UM. And I mean also mean in terms
of like self care practices in that vein that can
help you kind of relax is obviously stuff like you know,
mushrooms are m D M A, which if done and
you know proper, you know, it's space spaced out, not
not doing them all the time, but doing them at
certain intervals, um, can definitely be be therapeuticum in their

(23:16):
own way. Audrey Lord, one of the foremost Black Finer
scholars of our time. One set and I returned to
the school to lot um. Caring for myself is not

(23:39):
an act of self intelligence. It is self preservation, and
that is an active political warfare. Self care used to
me in presuming yourself in a world hostiles are very
identity community. We have life event not we give yourself
to an early grieve, you know, practicingcy and new and

(23:59):
be mindful of your sensitivities and triggers. And then you know,
as white corporate feminism does, White corporate feminism appropriated it
and turn it into a industry now worth a start
and eleven billion dollars. Yeah, I mean now self care.
When people think of self care, it's all about intelligent

(24:20):
cosmetics and like serious bodies and overpriced candles and quintin
expensive qualities and subscriptions to social media apps that are
about like and it's it's turned into this own like
grifting industry almost like that, the self care industry. It's
like self care influencers and self care content creators and

(24:41):
like it's just like it. It just gets It gets
the same icky de realization feeling that everything else under
capitalism is slowly getting. Yeah. I mean they even have
like their own self care funds, like if you not.
Just a lot of self care content has a very
specific visual style. Yeah, you know, I mean hashtog, self
can Instagram just like a bottomless screwl of graphics and products.

(25:06):
It just makes me feel kind of unsettled. It kind
of has this like uncanny aspect to it. Yeah, because
it's almost of self care is unaccessible to the wise.
It was creepy to help the moves. Yeah, yeah, I
mean there's there's that. I mean, the fundamental part of
the uncanny is that is that disconnect where the gap
between the phenomenon and the thing is really is really big.

(25:28):
And you can't really understand why it's uncanny, but if
you think about it, it's because that gap between the
thing what's supposed to be doing is so large. So yeah,
this thing that's supposed to help all these people is
now of white millennial like like up like middle upper
class like aesthetic. Now, um, and that sucks exactly. I

(25:54):
mean these days the people like it's mostly a salve
for like white collar ucas whose jobs are also stucked
them with their time managing creativity. But the people who
are actually in the blue collar workers, they often have
the time or money to be able to invest in themselves,
not read self care and workhollars and basically two sides
of the same coin. Right, it's preserve yourself so you

(26:16):
can produce small it's a solution to capitalism. Within capitalism,
the solution doesn't actually alleviate the conditions and stress, but
lines pockets and fuels the economic system that creates it
in the first place. I mean, if you're selling self
care helps that you've got a constant supply of customers

(26:39):
living in perpetual anxiety and wellness. Rather than means of
resistance to the system. It's been weaponized by the system.
It's become this performative thing we put on, this image
of put togetherness where you carefully curate your feed and
your Instagram stories in your highlights, and as an individualized
solution systemic issues is it's like the system turning to

(27:04):
calm down. Why I continue to denegrate and and exploit you.
None of these things address stress systematically. I'm not saying
that it's necessarily bad to address stress individually, because everybody
has their own personal conditions, but without dealing with the

(27:24):
broader material conditions, without addressing people's lack of free time,
lack of access to social connection, lack of access to
housing and healthy food, and full of medical care, you
know it, it misses the point. And I haven't I
haven't read much um in the field of I believe

(27:47):
there are some articles spend a lot of time writing
and talking about it, but I haven't read much in
the field of like psychotherapy and that sort of thing.
But it's it's kind of a realization of me that
therapy is basically focus in on fixing an individuals would
a just to a sick society, rather than healing the

(28:10):
society itself. Fixing the society itself. I mean, so much
about their therapy is about, you know, addressing things that
are impairing your functionality to complete your work. Yeah, Like
it's it's all the base of mental healthness is is
it inhibiting you from doing your job? And that's when

(28:31):
it becomes a problem and the only way to solve
it is through it. Like, like what what deems a
success is if you're able to complete your job at
a high level of functioning. Again, it's not actually about
your mental state, it's about how much you can produce
such of the capitalist framework. Yeah, and I mean not
to say that that medication is and how a tremendous

(28:54):
benefits in people's lives and you know, helping them get
back on track and so he can true the circumstances is,
but you know, when you have a society that has
distress and misery and loneliness woven into it um into
its core, trying to adjust people and adapt people to

(29:15):
that is just responding to sickness and more sickness. And
you know me, I like to try and keep things
on the practical, um helpful, positive side. You know, it
could happen here genuinely with a smiling face, you know,

(29:40):
like it could happen here. UM. And so I just
wanted to put forward some recommendations. I guess, um. I mean,
obviously we can't afford to wait until capitalism has been
abolished to be happy. That's just ridiculous. I mean, that's
long term cure for a lot of the moralities and
and it's us their face in um. But meantime, when

(30:07):
assigned the roots of our stress in these systems can
make the personal political and drive us to act and
connect with people who can support us. I think that
in organizing spaces they need to be special attention but
towards creating support groups that have allowed for solidarity to
be built, you know, allow of people to share their
feelings and work through the challenges together. Self care kind

(30:30):
of frames things in a way that makes it seem
as though healing has done on an individual level, when
healing is communal, Like you don't have to go through
all this alone healing. It's an act of communion and
the world must be forced to change to reflect that,

(30:51):
recognize that we have each other, and recognize that self
care and community care and extricably linked. And once those
facts at the forefront, once we put community care at
the forefront, outside of the close of the market, accessible

(31:12):
to all um, I think we can find hoope, you know,
and it really it can start with something as simple
as just reaching out, you know, um, grabbing groceries or
twin dishes or watching kids. All the care work that
is stept to the side when we think about organizing

(31:34):
what it means to organize, but with an your home,
on your neighborhood, or at work or at school, because
I think in especially neighborhood settings, developing that sense of
new bliness consideringly help even something like a community garden
being able to connect with nature again or at all

(31:54):
for the first time, you can really help life heard,
and we don't have to make it harder for each other.
So you can follow me on Twitter. I don't discore
seeing Drew on YouTube dot com slash Andrewisulm Patrion dot
com slash seemed true and I have been your host

(32:15):
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(32:36):
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