![\"alienation](\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.johnlaurits.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/alienation-marx-labor-digital-revolution-information-emotional-labor-work.png?ssl=1\" "\\"Alienation")
<\/a><\/p>\nAlienation<\/em>.<\/strong>\u00a0Noun, the state of being an outsider \u2014 a feeling of\u00a0separation<\/em>. The sensation that a familiar person, place, or thing has become unfamiliar, strange, or distant \u2014 like passing through a neighborhood where you used to live. Or maybe it\u2019s\u00a0you<\/em>\u00a0who are the stranger now \u2014 like walking by somebody you used to know without saying a word.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits\u2026\u201d There are many kinds of work. Some work is\u00a0subsistence<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 in fact, for the larger part of history work was mostly related to survival.\u00a0Whether people worked the soil, raised livestock, hunted, raided, or scavenged, most of the toil was only to wrest their daily bread directly from nature. Sometimes work is\u00a0meaning<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 sure, humans can\u00a0survive\u00a0<\/em>without Van Gogh\u2019s Starry Night or the poetic rhythm of Omar Khayyam but wouldn\u2019t it be almost\u00a0inhuman<\/em>\u00a0to say such art was not worth the effort? Some work expresses human values or ideals \u2014 tidying up the kitchen helps roommates show respect for one another and volunteering to cook hot meals for the homeless at a local mosque is one way to fight poverty.<\/p>\n And then there is\u00a0wage labor<\/em>.<\/p>\n And this is when the\u00a0alienation\u00a0<\/em>starts to\u00a0kick in\u2026<\/p>\n If labor improves a worker\u2019s life or if it gives him a sense of worth and meaning,\u00a0the worker is the author of his labor and working expresses the worker\u2019s\u00a0self<\/em>. When work is a\u00a0means of self-expression<\/em>,\u00a0labor not only produces value in an economic sense but also has value in itself as the spontaneous process of self-development by workers. To put it simply, Mondays are not so bad for anyone wealthy or lucky enough to hold a job they would not quit if they won the lottery \u2014 labor like that comes from inside of a worker as an expression of who he is. Whether a person is an iron worker, astronaut, or street musician is irrelevant \u2014 the question is\u00a0whether it matters to him\u00a0<\/em>if a 2-ton beam or space shuttle or voice is even lifted to the sky at all.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026labor appears as\u00a0loss of reality<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>for workers; objectification as\u00a0loss of the object\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0object-bondage<\/em>; appropriation as\u00a0estrangement<\/em>,\u00a0as\u00a0alienation.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d Two kinds of dissociation known as\u00a0derealization<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0depersonalization<\/em><\/a><\/strong>\u00a0are experienced as \u201cestrangement, detachment, and\/or disconnection from the self,\u201d often accompanied by the\u00a0 persistent feeling that a person is\u00a0\u201cnot in charge\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>of her own behavior. These could easily be the words an alienated worker might choose to explain his\u00a0actual experience<\/em>\u00a0of\u00a0not being in charge of his behavior\u00a0<\/em>and of\u00a0being estranged from the\u00a0real part of himself that is meant to enjoy his own day-to-day activities<\/strong><\/a><\/em>!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThis life activity [the worker] sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of life. [\u2026] He does not count the labor itself as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity that he has auctioned off to another\u201d The tragedy of alienation is that it turns part of a person into an object owned by others (and we claim slavery has been abolished!). But the tragedy is not that the person\u2019s activity is objectified \u2014 in fact, every product is just labor in its objectified form \u2014 the tragedy is that it is sold to the highest bidder.\u00a0Until recently, the non-physical aspects of human experience were more resistant to commodification because the value of dreams, tastes, ideas, and feelings was pretty difficult to objectify and control in a material way.<\/p>\n Before stuff like telecommunication, microchips, and the internet, the only ways to store and exchange information were by human memory or physically printing it. \u201cPrinting\u201d sight and sound was impossible until the last few centuries and no real music industry existed until the mid-1900s. Fast-forward to 2016 and there are pocket-sized disks that can store every published book in human history \u2014\u00a0with room to spare<\/em>. During the Age of Industry, new technologies allowed the body\u2019s\u00a0labor-power to be commodified<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0but in the Age of Information a new business opportunity stands at the door and knocks \u2014\u00a0the commodification of\u00a0the soul<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cA squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa\u201d Today, new and strange commodities are stirring in the web-like deep of the internet. \u201cLikes,\u201d for example, can be purchased from Facebook that (at least mostly) are from\u00a0real users<\/em>\u00a0and bundles of people\u2019s search-terms, most-visited sites, and online behaviors\u00a0are sold<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to companies who use them to target groups more likely to click their ads. When Facebook offers its users\u2019 preferences and tastes as commodities on a market, users\u2019 personalities become owned and controlled\u00a0as property<\/em>\u00a0in a very real way \u2014 they become\u00a0capital<\/em>. By exchanging human traits and tendencies in bundles of data, the human psyche \u2014 which is Greek for \u201csoul\u201d \u2014 is objectified and its value is seized by marketing firms.<\/p>\n Could\u00a0the human psyche be turned into\u00a0an alien psyche?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMaterial production \u2013 the production, for example, or cars, televisions, clothing, and food \u2013 creates the means of social life. \u2026 Immaterial production, by contrast, including the production of ideas, knowledges, communication, cooperation, and affective relations, tends to create not the means of social life but\u00a0social life itself<\/strong>\u201d Much of what is called \u201cpersonality\u201d and \u201ccharacter\u201d is\u00a0produced<\/em>\u00a0in the same way that things are produced economically. Goods \u2014 whether iPhones or heaps of grain \u2014 are produced by a certain pattern of actions mixed with a set of specific resources and the same is true about character traits. Social or educational activity often produces new political or religious views and an activity like travel may produce new tastes in food or music and interests in subjects like history or culture. Even highly\u00a0subjective<\/em>\u00a0activities like suffering may produce compassion for others facing similar hardships or the urge to create art. The quirks, tendencies, and traits that add up to form a person\u2019s identity are\u00a0produced\u00a0by labor\u00a0<\/em>in the Marxian sense. And if the\u00a0means of producing\u00a0<\/em>the psyche fall into the Monopoly Man\u2019s hands, humans may soon find themselves in theoretically deep shit \u2014\u00a0if\u00a0<\/em>they find themselves at all, that is.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will be the workers, with their courage, resolution and self-sacrifice, who will be chiefly responsible for achieving victory\u201d The internet is the center for a lot of human activity \u2014 people get their news, discuss their lives, and express their identity and creativity through social media, blogging, and dank memes. In fact, the value of the internet may be greater than any invention in human history but the source of that value is not in the cables or signals that deliver it or the servers that hold it. Its value is in its capacity to act as a medium for the creative power of the species who invented it. But while the\u00a0bias of technology is to liberate people from toil,<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0too often it is used to\u00a0enslave them<\/em>. At the start of the industrial era, many thought the rising productivity would increase the value created by their labor until anyone could live off a few hours\u2019 wages per day. They were right about the value part \u2014 but that value went to people who owned the technology, not the ones who created it.<\/p>\n So \u2014 does history repeat itself? Today\u2019s technology has also vastly increased the amount of value we produce but that value only matters to the people who own it. History teaches us that the only real value is having the power to decide how we produce value. The question is who will control the selves produced by our labor and the value it imprints in the virtually infinite medium of the web \u2014 will the soul\u2019s value be appropriated by techno-capitalists? One thing is for sure \u2014 if they can,\u00a0they will<\/em>. And if they do, the only question I\u2019ll have is what the capitalist could possibly do with\u00a0a soul\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n In solidarity, January 7, 2018 (johnlaurits.com) Alienation.\u00a0Noun, the state of being an outsider \u2014 a feeling of\u00a0separation. The sensation that a familiar person, place, or thing has become unfamiliar, strange, or distant \u2014 like passing through a neighborhood where you used to live. Or maybe it\u2019s\u00a0you\u00a0who are the stranger now \u2014 like… Continue reading ALIENATION:<\/strong>
\nHow the Job-Search & the Search for Meaning Tears People in Half<\/i><\/b><\/h1>\n
\n-Abraham Lincoln<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWage Labor vs. Other Work<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Although wage labor is a lot like subsisting in many ways, wage-earners do not possess the materials, tools, or space needed for their labor while subsisting workers can access the natural resources they need to make a living. Unlike work chosen because someone finds it meaningful or because it expresses a cherished value, the activity of wage-earners is determined by others and what they create does not belong to them. The wage-earner can make 10,000 things in a factory but she does not own a single one until she buys it from Walmart like anyone else. Wage labor is different from other labor\u00a0because workers neither control the activity of labor itself\u00a0nor the goods or services they produce<\/strong><\/a><\/em>.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0How Does a Person Learn to Feel
\nThat\u00a0What They Do Is Meaningless?<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/a>Alienation<\/em>\u00a0happens when a person uses her labor for activity that has nothing to do with herself as an individual or fulfilling her own intention, desires, or goals. In wage labor, the work-activity of employees is decided by an employer and \u2014 since wages are\u00a0the market-price exchanged for\u00a0labor as a commodity<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 a wage-earner understands her own activity as an external object owned as property by another. The worker treats her work as\u00a0an object<\/em>\u00a0instead of a process under her control \u2014 she is\u00a0alienated\u00a0<\/em>from her own actions.\u00a0Labor moves\u00a0outward<\/em>\u00a0as an expression of self-development\u00a0and alienation reverses it \u2014 alienated labor\u00a0invades<\/em>\u00a0the worker as an activity developing\u00a0from the outside in<\/em>.<\/p>\nThe Psychology of Alienation:
\nDissociation & Derealization<\/em><\/h2>\n
\n\u2014 Karl Marx<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>Psychology did not exist in 1844 when Karl Marx described alienated labor but, if he could have studied some of the ideas psychologists would develop, he may easily have used them to support his own. The core concept of Marxian alienation is that workers experience a part of themselves as something\u00a0alien<\/em>\u00a0to them and that sounds a lot like\u00a0dissociation<\/em>, which psychologists described as experiences of detachment from part of a person\u2019s reality. Dissociative states are a spectrum\u2013 on the mild side, a person may not feel a sense of time passing when she \u2018loses\u00a0her\u00a0self\u2018\u00a0<\/em>in a good book or someone may \u201cnot know\u00a0himself\u00a0<\/em>anymore\u201d during a hard time. On the darker side, people can be \u201ctaken over\u201d by emotions that do not feel like their own, lose control of their physical actions, or have no memory of what they say or do.<\/p>\nAlienation 2.0:
\nDisconnected by the Digital Revolution<\/em><\/h2>\n
\n\u2014 Marx<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>In a wage system, the worker is immediately alienated by the act of production because all that is produced is automatically another person\u2019s property, disconnecting workers from work itself and its results. This\u00a0actual loss of controlover the\u00a0material products of labor<\/u><\/em>\u00a0is how people become alienated from what they do and who they are because of it \u2014 but how does this play out now that labor and its products are less \u201cmaterial\u201d today than they used to be?<\/p>\nInformation & Non-Material Commodities<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/a>Psychic Capital<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n\u2014 Mark Zuckerberg<\/p><\/blockquote>\nCognitive & Emotional Labor
\nIn the Production of Identity<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
\n\u2014\u00a0\u201cMultitude\u201d by\u00a0Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe Market Price of a Human Soul<\/u><\/i><\/h2>\n
\n\u2014 Marx<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nJohn Laurits<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"