Serious question Holla Forums

Serious question Holla Forums

Do any of you feel like intellectual work and occupations are MORE exploitative and alienating than menial or manual labor, especially if they're low paying? I utterly hate the idea of giving my thoughts and intellect to a job which an employer benefits from. not only does it rob me of the fruits of my labor, but the fruits of my thoughts. At least in my wagecuck service job I can zone out in my own thoughts. I also say this as a college grad who felt utterly disgusted when a college professor gave us GRADED homework where he had to make up experiment ideas. HE ACTUALLY MARKED me down on assignments if i came up with bad experiment ideas. Its quite fucking clear that the good ones thought up by his student were used for his experimentation. That whole dynamic continues to trigger me to this day.

t. never worked in a factory. Intellectual labour is white collar work, usually petite bourgeois

also i ask this question because nowadays people tend to praise intellectual jobs as if they're the future for our economy and are necessary to raise one out of poverty.

you're right. I can see factory labor as utterly exhausting. But is it really so nowadays? An assembly line or something like that is just repetitive boring task. Why not just listen to music on your headphones or something? Sorry if this comes off as naive.

So basically doing a white collar job is bad.

because standing in one spot for hours on end gets really fucking painful.

I wouldn't say so for applied sciences such as engineering. However if you were in design or research then yes. You likely work more than 8 hours a day to design a circuit or something something or make a breakthrough, then once you do fucking porky owns the rights to it, from which he could make millions, and at best you get a bonus and a pat on the back. The same goes for Music, Film, Games, etc. People work for months or years on these, then at the end of it the one who benefits most economically is some cocksucker in a suit.

also can you break down what this means, and why it's any less worse than manual labor? As I say the robbing of my internal thoughts for the sake of teamwork, cooperation, conformity strikes me as totalitarian


i've been working as a cashier and it's honestly not bad, but this is the least physically demanding wagecuck job possible.

Graphic designer here. This is literally how everybody in art school thinks, especially kids straight from public school.


Sorry to be cynical, but there is much more value and warm feelings when you are able to create things that people genuinely value. Write stories that people like to read, create art that celebrates a scene people want to participate in, make music that people would pay to listen etc. Nobody would feel comfortable being in a position where they are forced to put their innermost thoughts into public projects, but everyone wants to feel their talents matter to the community, and you should rely on this instinct. For example I often write stuff on imageboards I wouldn't even reveal to my own family members or closest friends, while being most creative just doing daily job and personal portfolio projects, meaning that I keep honest thought and creativity separate. For example, I would NEVER do anti-capitalist graphic design project for the public and be able to handle the immense amount of publicity/attention this would generate on me, possibly backfiring and forever ruining my chances at the job market. However, I think this is completely fine by me, I honestly don't enjoy being under such immense pressures, but I do enjoy just giving to the world my humble talents and getting better every day, and possibly even teach others once I get old.

I want to add that my text only applies if you take creative/intellectual passion seriously enough to turn it into your profession. If you only want this to remain a hobbie, you can do whatever the fuck you want.

Give it a few more years…

It is. Became a programmer, it's increasingly common that employees are forced into "neoserf" contracts, where they are not only spending 8 hours a day thinking about what their employer wants, but also all creative work made in your free time belongs to employer.


Working in factory is hard, and I believe that some of them are designed in a way to dumb-down workers more with that repetition and same songs from radio playing again and again. But I would prefer working in factory if I could earn as much money there.


Nigga what?

I obviously can't tell you there is an "ethical way" for doing creative/intellectual work that won't lead to alienation under capitalism. Just saying that it helps so tremendously if you could keep self-expression and creative/intellectual work separated. If you combine them both, be prepared for a lifetime of disappointment because only under Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism you'd be given both recognition and complimentary basic standard of living just for practicing authentic self expression all day long.

For example, do you think that Taylor Swift does music that is most genuine expression authentic to her? Or perhaps she does music that she is capable of performing and follows music trends that cash in the most at a given moment?

Leave tay tay out of this you piece of shit.

That's not what that means. PB's are people with some amount of income bearing private property - small business owners and landlords - who also do some work. Lot's of white collar workings have dick in that regard.

Hey man they've got Krispy Kreme down here in the breakroom. Want me to bring you some on my way back up to the office?

They are both worse

You guys are literally "bright but underachieving millenial stuck at a dead-end job" in the making. Seriously, get real and stop putting a marxist twist on a question that is obviously related to career development instead.

You are responding to the wrong poster?
I was only defendind tay

Then go back to /mu/ because here in Holla Forums, comrade Taylor is often regarded as a revolutionary subject.

OP here. That's the thing. There is an argument to be made for dedicating leisure time to intellectual pursuits, but to actually spend my working hours on FORCED intellectual pursuits– not at the pace I want and to be extracted for the pleasure of an employer– that to me is nightmarish. I'm entirely fine if some people can handle that reality, but I don't think I have the mental and emotional discipline to block that feeling of utter helplessness that comes with having to conform your inner most thoughts and urges to the will of an employer. Manual labor does this in its own way, as physical discipline indeed can affect your mental life, but the idea of mental conformity that comes with white collar and intellectual work, again, is fucked up.

To me, I'm also how this "dedicating mental work" to a hierarchical arrangement is what led to the excessese of Nazism and Stalinism. Your become no more than a mental processor for your masters and in the process come to internalize those principles yourself through sheer repetition.

Absolutely agree

UPHOLD MARXIST-TAYLORIST THOUGHT


I know this feel, I sometimes experience it but not so much. There is a good movie quote for this from Gladiator (2000) on how to stay sane on any wage slave job:


I personally think wage slavery can be tolerable if job doesn't completely suck ass, if you have some future goal to be optimistic for and if you have a channel for self-expression separate from work. For example, I channel most of my socially creative energy towards a FB meme page where I craft memes made in particular style towards niche audience. Managed to get organic following of 3000 page fans so far, quite gud considering I don't even make them in english.

Graduate students are certainly one of the most exploited work demographics in the country.

Both factory enviroments I worked in disallowed listening to music because it would violate some safety protocols.
Thanks unions!

That's just Leninism.