Could you recommend some books on wageslavery, or on workplace ideology in general?

>the guilt associated with modern office work and the pressure to work long hours and sacrifice yourself for the sake of productivity.

how do I opt out

What do you expect though, wagecucks don't have the time or the spare mental energy to create books worth reading

Sexy cover, is it worth reading?

I hate this fucking argument.
>Like, consumerism makes you work!
>Dude, capitalism is terrible because it like, makes life boring, don't be a wageslave
What fucking conceivable system could possibly exist in which I wouldn't have to work?

OP here. No idea. I am a very guilt-prone individual, probably in part due to being raised by a depressive single mother in near-poverty. Every time I take time off work I feel guilty as hell and fear some kind of punishment. It's pathetic really. I am planning to try and find part-time work next year so as to focus on my writing however, though this will probably have long-term negative consequences.

What I mean is that if an author who has worked full-time for many years and then became a full-time author and still advocated full-time employment and being a sort of silent guardian of the social structure then great. But the authors who do have this experience tend instead to publish books like The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller or Michel Houellebecq's books wherein his protagonists are depressed office workers deprived of joy. It's frustrating to hear writers who have had it rather easy their entire life (DFW was raised by academics, only got into Amherst because his dad was alumni, knew he'd have the money to attend grad school, wanted to find a job while living in the Boston halfway house to immerse himself in real life ut quit as a security guard after a day because he didn't like getting up early, quit his job at a country club because he saw some poet there and felt embarrassed, and so on - not undermining the effort he put into reading and writing etc however) to stand on stage with all their wealth and influence and years of relative leisure and tell the audience that the best thing they can do with their lives is to submit to the system and have the decency not to be upset by the stress it places on them.

a system in which you aren't expected to work in excess of 60 hours a week

Pynchon worked for Boeing when he wrote V.
Wittgenstein wrote Tractus while in the military.
Dostoevsky continued to write while in Siberia.
You're just a bitch.

>slavery

Fuck this shit. It's not even close to slavery. Noone is holding a gun to your head, you are free to leave your shitty job any time you want. Find a job with lower pay and live with less, or find a way to sustain yourself outside of capitalism. It's not impossible and it's certainly been done before.

Jesus christ

>60 hours a week
>Dude quit being productive you're triggering me

None of those are comparable to modern wage cuckery

Communication technology has rendered your spare even more dismantled. There was a time when people believed in a five day work week

>there was a time
You mean literally right now?
This time?
Unless you're working at a law firm or an IB, you're not working 7 days a week.

>he hasn't been to grad school

>my personal choices require from me a large portion of my time
>that's oppressive somehow

The fact is to sustain the current economic system, which relies on mass production of inessential goods and mass consumption of inessential goods, requires a man to essentially adapt himself to its demands, which means working long hours, and continuing to view technological (((advances))) as a virtue, despite the fact that modern technology only increases the stresses and pressure on him due its capacity to democratize access to the competitive field. Many of us don't consume much yet we are still forced to work full-time simply to pay extortionate rent and appease the ideological demands of our system. The workplace has become a surrogate home, our colleagues a surrogate family, the desk has become a dinner table, the lunch hour has become an arena in which to prove your loyalty to the brand by working without pay throughout it each day.

>dude, just drop out lmao

>productive

Yeah, nah. If you had actually ever worked a full-time job you'd realize that much of the day, especially those extra hours, only exist for the sake of posturing and proving what a good cuck you are.

>people need to stop wanting things because I don't like it
>how dare people like things that I don't like?
And no, you're not forced to work full-time. Go live on an anarchist commune, there's literally nothing stopping you.
And no, most companies with a good culture of climate will not require those things.
I was in the military and simultaneous constructed a robo-trader for derivatives with my friend, but okay.
No-one is making you do shit.

You have to get the Marxian framework in order to understand it.

It's not about "work" in some general sense. It's about the commodification of work, and of the human being.

Precisely Adorno's point about hobbies is that they don't make any sense. They're an incoherent and condescending concept. Work before capitalism was more conceptually complex, and involved things like civic engagement, exhausting but rewarding effort, real "care" about things. Work under capitalism is productive labour abstracted to the highest degree possible, deforming the human being into an appendage of capital, and allowing the "machinery" the minimum necessary time to "cool off," by commodifying bits of culture and leisure activities and selling them back to the machinery for his wage.

Adorno says: He doesn't have "hobbies." Even his enjoyable diversions and sideline activities he approaches seriously, as a full human being. Capitalism would prefer he go to orgyporgy.

I'm aware of the argument, I've read Engels, Marx and Hegel. I just think it's a dumb argument that's separated from the reality of it. At no point in communism does work become "rewarding". A menial shit job is still a menial shit job. Some dude that goes out and collects crops all day long, or constructs shit on a factory line still has a mundane shit life.

At the end of the day owning the means of production doesn't change the fact that I'm doing boring as fuck drudgery day in and day out. Industrialization caused this, not capitalism. Neither ideological system is going to change this.

See, there's the issue. You had one of the rare fulfilling enjoyable jobs. The vast majority of existing jobs can be done in 2-3 hours and yet you're being held there most of the day pretending to work.

I worked in an office for a van rental company for a year recently and I had never been more miserable in my fucking life. On a daily basis there was maybe 2 hours of actual working to be done. The boss didn't like people not working on the clock either, so I had to stagger what work I had to do around his schedule, so I would be working whenever he walked into the office, lest he become displeased. Most modern jobs are like this, held together only by the old fashioned notion that a job should take up most of the day, and not just the time it takes to complete the actual fucking work.

>>people need to stop wanting things because I don't like it
>>how dare people like things that I don't like?

Hmm, that doesn't seem to have been implied by that post! You seem to be illiterate. Try /pol/, /tv/, or /v/; these boards do not require reading, and may be more your speed.

>find a job

You have any idea how difficult that is, unless you go all out and develop skills necessary to appease the Jewish overlords?

I'm 36 years old and hold a PhD in Philosophy focusing on the philosophy of Husserl and guess where I'm working? I work two jobs for 65 hours a week, both minimum wage. Each night I stumble home into my lonely, squalid apartment and sleep for five ours before forcing myself to travel to work again. I'm the greatest Husserl scholar in North America yet I am forced to live the live of a bucktoothed retard simply because my skills and knowledge have nothing to do with the acquisition or reallocation of material goods or physical matter. I met a grad student on tinder recently who was studying EngLit and when she discovered how I'd been living since graduating she ended the date part-way through after making an excuse about her sister being unwell, which WASN'T TRUE since I followed her to a Red Lobster where she spent over an hour with a group of girls who were eventually joined by some guys. This is capitalism. This is the system you worship so intently. This is what it does to masters of the mind.

>You had one of the rare fulfilling enjoyable jobs.
>Most modern jobs are like this, held together only by the old fashioned notion that a job should take up most of the day, and not just the time it takes to complete the actual fucking work.

Hahahahahaha. The military consists of a 12 hour long work day of sitting around on your phone and occasionally sweeping the floor wondering where your million dollars in training went to.

Outside of actual specialized professions that people enjoy, almost all work is shit. It's going to be shit regardless of if it's communism or capitalism. Capitalism transforms you into a communal capital, communism sub serves you to the community.
>Oh that's nice user, I'm glad you want to be a writer, but you're gonna have to come in on Saturday this weekend or you're fucking fired and you're gonna starve.
>Oh that's nice user, I'm glad you want to be a writer, but comrade the fields need to be plowed so go ahead and get out there or we'll put you on the wall.

>I've read Engels, Marx and Hegel. I just think it's a dumb argument that's separated from the reality of it.

So you read The Communist Manifesto and The Philosophy of Right?

>Industrialization caused this, not capitalism.

L O L
O O
L O L

>Pynchon worked for Boeing
Pynchon was offered a scholarship and turned it down to work at Boeing since all he had to do was research and write for the in-house quarterly publication. It was by no means a stressful job, and he quite within two years to live as a NEET in Mexico to complete his novel.

>Wittgenstein
Incorrect. He wrote it while living in a secluded cabin in Skjolden.

>Dostoevsky
Wrong. He wrote very little in Siberia, and finished whatever he did begin to write after returning to society.

You're naive, which is even worse.

want to play cs

>I'm the greatest Husserl scholar in North America

i sincerely doubt this. you finished your phd, whoopiedeedoo

people need to work just to fight boredom

60% of Americans don't take their entire year's worth of holiday allocation due to fear of being fired. Most people now eat at their desk for the same reason. Don't be so naive.

>robo-trader for derivatives
You obviously don't belong to the genius subtype, because if you did you'd appreciate that extended social interaction and / or exposure to external stimuli ruins the sensitive internal balance we struggle to uphold.

>Dude Boeing doesn't count as real work
>In the summer of 1918 Wittgenstein took military leave and went to stay in one of his family's Vienna summer houses, Neuwaldegg. It was there in August 1918 that he completed the Tractatus, which he submitted with the title Der Satz (German: proposition, sentence, phrase, set, but also "leap") to the publishers Jahoda and Siegel.[119]
>Dude Dostoevsky finished it when he came back that doesn't count

I only play Pharoah (1999)

>60% of Americans don't take their entire year's worth of holiday allocation due to fear of being fired. Most people now eat at their desk for the same reason. Don't be so naive.
Okay, so people are retarded and make dumb choices with their time. They are perfectly free to not do these things.

>since I followed her to a Red Lobster where she spent over an hour with a group of girls who were eventually joined by some guys

If you don't like the work, where it's taking you, or anything else about it, why not?

My Work is Not Yet Done is workplace existentialism bundled with a raving depression. A bit clichéed in spots, but a great read imo.

Thomas Ligotti has a bunch of other corporate horror stories, but they don't reach the heights of My Work...

Not only have I completed my PhD, I have also written a lengthy, detailed biography of Husserl himself and a studied critique of his major works in addition to a study of the historical context in which they were written. Yet here I am working yet another last-minute shift at Wendy's in Lafayette and being scolded by my 23-year-old manager because I took an extra five minutes during my lunch break to call my the regional suicide hotline YET AGAIN to cry about how depressed I am only to be ACCUSED of hoaxing them since she recognized my voice. This is where I'm at. One hundred years ago I would be strolling across some leaf-strewn campus clutching a pile of hardbacks and winking at the giggling red-cheeked freshmen girls, but in this corrupt modern age I am forced to stand there and apologize repeatedly to some obese black woman who insists the food we offer was cheaper the last time she visited. EFF YOU KID.

But they aren't. They face demotion or being let off. Many have families and can't afford that risk.

I have only read one of his stories (about some dude in a factory where the boss is a tentacled monster behind the frosted glass) but I really, really like the idea of corporate horror. It's the perfect successor to Lovecraft's space and ocean autism.

>Adorno says: He doesn't have "hobbies".

That much is clear.

>demotion or being fired
That's the quickest way to a lawsuit.
>yeah hey I was fired because I took vacation time
>here's 3 million dollars

Not him, but because then I'll no longer be able to afford rent and be forced to either move back in with my parents, where the judgement I will recieve for not being gainfully employed, on top of being in the middle of fucking nowhere unable to engage in my interests and communicate with the people that I like may force me to kill myself.

This. I have a masters degree in biotech from the best university in my country. It's top 150 and yet I'm working behind a fucking shop till.

You're trying too hard to sound as if you have a clue kid.

>top 150

Notice the following contradiction...
>most of the time at work is downtime.
>want to be a writer but have to work

The modern work style is a godsend for anyone with writing ambition because you're literally getting paid to sit around and do nothing which is time you can spend to write. People will always find an excuse for their failure but in most cases it comes from their own inability to commit themselves to what they need to do.

It's top 50 in Biotech

>working on getting my JSD
Yeah, fuck would I know.

Idiot. Do you think most employers will let you write in your """free""" time.

No. They expect you to be working the entire time, while not acknowledging that you have nothing to do. I can understand the mentality even if it's retarded. He's not paying me by the hour to sit on my ass.

>top 50

Who gives a fuck what you're working towards. You're naive. Go peacock on facebook.

Yeah, I know desu. This wouldn't have been a problem if I'd gone to Harvard, MIT or Oxford.

I literally can't express how much better my life has been since I attended Oxford. I went to a state school and gradually became the stereotypical moody, withdrawn sensitive type who both despises the quality of his immediate culture and feels a weird pride for having been raised in a sort of anti-intellectual and brutal environment. I was all set to take my Russell Group humanities BA and spend my life working as an anonymous, insecure wageslave forever thankful of being offered a job and forever too insecure to pursue my creative ambitions. The chip on my shoulder had become something of a wedge, and I felt too out of place regardless of my environment, too resentful and bitter to even attempt to make it in the artistic world. Then I finally applied for Oxford and got in to study an English MA, with reassurance that should I work hard enough a career in academia or within one of Oxford's affiliated companies would be almost guaranteed. I turned up as apprehensive as usual, and the first few days were spent regretting my decision and desperately feigning a cultured personality. But then I realized that the people there were just interesting and that the snobbery and exclusivity I had anticipated was just a myth borne out of my working class upbringing. I've since graduated, having spend the year dining in grand halls with groups of interesting people, dating several girls (one of whom, a petite Russian whose family traces back to the aristocracy, is now my fiancee). I work four days a week at a publishing company and earn £38k a year. I regularly meet up with friends from my college and visit Oxford for nights out and for meetings with my professors. The Martin Eden-esque novel I have been writing for two years has been selected for publication at a major British publishing house and, honestly, I could not have imagined a few years ago how great life could be. I come on Veeky Forums and see how pathetic you all are and just shake my head and chuckle. If I saw you guys on the street I would of course throw you a penny or discuss Bukowski or whatever "realist" writers you enjoy, but ultimately I would be able to tell within ten seconds if you're an Oxbridge grad and would dismiss you as a potential source of good company if you are not. I never thought I'd know what it was like to be objectively better than somebody else, for the value of my existence to be superior to the value of a stranger's, but now I do and I've never been happier. People are awed by power and prestige. All I need to do is mention the university I attended (if only for a year) and they immediately begin to hunch and look at their feet because they know they are in the presence of greatness.

You can gey fired pretty easily just for not being "productive" enough. Of course they won't tell you its because you took vacation time. They'll wait several months and then say you weren't productive enough.

I working today despite the fact that I should be taking off because my boss said "We want this stuff done by Friday the 23rd," and I'm afraid of what might happen if I don't deliver.

So quit and work somewhere else?

>implying everyone on this board had an opportunity to study in the US

>trying this hard to give the impression of being successful
>spending your evening arguing with a bunch of autists on Veeky Forums
something doesn't add up because you obviously don't have your shit together and you seem to have no idea how a modern workplace functions.

nice trips senpai

You are seriously irritating. Don't you have a game of hackysack to be playing on the campus lawn?

user literally said military spend hours on their phones, other user mentions he only works when boss is there. Most workers are not in full view of their supervisor at all times. I know you cannot manage to get away from 'boss' in your dad's garage but the fact of the matter is its on you bud. No ones buying your excuse for not having the time to accomplish that little dream of yours. Especially if it's writing.

If your just pretending to work anyway, why not just write during that time? Have another window of important work related shit you can open up if your boss walks by. I mean, right now I'm browsing Veeky Forums pretending to work. I might as well just be writing the next great American novel.

You're a fucking idiot. George Saunders was forced to write during his work hours and he admitted he was allocated to the lowest position on the totem pole and ostrichsized by his coworkers after they found out. Jeffrey Eugenides tried to write on his job and was fired for doing so.

Because you're often seated in the middle of an open-plan office with people walking by all day, people talking loudly, your boss prowling around, and so on. It's not as if you have your own comfy office and can type away pretending to write. In an office you're usually surrounded by people due to rent and space issues.

He is right in some sense. This workers as slaves mentality won't end without protest, without people collectively not taking shit and just quitting when their boss acts like a cunt.

Not my diary, desu

:(

But that won't happen, because people are rightly too proud to quit their job and take welfare payments due to their principles. We Whites are a stubborn lot more than willing to take out or unhappiness on ourselves rather than express our anger outwardly. And there will always be a ready supply of stolid drones who simply repeat ad nauseum the phrases which keep the machine running, e.g. "suck it up", "toughen up" and so on.

The term literally comes from the of chattel slavery. Former slaves used the term.

This is my favorite meme.

You make papa John Dewey happy as a clam.

I'm making decent money given that I just graduated, working at a somewhat impressive looking job where I'm using my degree. Jobs aren't that easy to find, especially jobs where you actually use your college degree. Most of my friends work at Staples or Wawa or some shit like that. If I quit, I'll be in the same boat as them.

Fear of shame from peers and family, fear of wasting my college degree, ambition, and fear of not making enough cash to secure a decent future for myself all keep me in the job I'm at. The problem is that I know I have a relatively good job for this time in my life, but I'm still miserable doing it. This is just the way the system works. You work hard to get a good job and then everyone tells you how lucky you are to have it while your considering suicide.

My dream is to save up enough to buy a decent sized plot of land, build a cabin, install solar panels and go off the grid. Spend my days hunting, fishing, maintaining the land, and writing. That's the only solution I can think of that could make me genuinely happy.

Dewey was when pragmatism went bad! Go fuck yourself!

If you actually enjoy writing, why not work for a trade magazine or a newspaper?

I write for a pharmaceuticals magazine, and though the work isn't as rewarding as my freelance political journalism or my novels (all unfinished), I at least write for a living.

>he cares about ideology
Dewey was one of the best things to happen to my country. I'll fitgh yuo cunt.

I have a cubicle. People walk by but they never really take a good hard look at what I'm working on. My job involves some writing anyway some if they just see Word open and a bunch of text they'll likely just assume its work-related.

Basically I'm just trying to talk myself into writing while at work.

Former van rental worker here. The boss at that place was a real dick. He would give out horrific amounts of abuse for pretty much any perceived failing. The place also worked as a mechanics garage and a dealership, so there were quite a few employees. Turnover was very high because he was such a prick.

The guy who worked there the longest (3 years) was among the most beaten down people I'd ever met. He would be given a torrent of abuse, meekly take it, and go about his day mumbling little capitalistic feel good phrases to himself like "the early bird catches the worm" as he went about his work for the rest of the day.

I distinctly remember one morning where I was talking to him and he was complaining about the boss. He was saying that if the boss came in and gave him any shit today he'd leave on the spot. The boss of course game in and started ranting at the guy for fucking up a car sale, and that he was spending too much time talking to other co-workers and not enough time working and made him move his desk away from mine to the other side of the room, as if he was a disobedient school child.

Most of the rest of the people who worked there would just leave or argue back at the boss until relations got so bad that they were fired. I drew a personal line in the sand that I would quit if ever I was personally insulted and did so. That guy won't ever do that.

How do you go about getting a job like that without prior experience? Can you just submit your writing and get hired? Genuinely want to know because I'd like to write for a living.

Brother, sometimes you have just to be b urself. See the world, go wild, have sex, get drunk, stay up and watch the horizon, dance like nobody is watching, burn the candle at both ends, enjoy your youth, go crazy, wear mismatching socks, take a road trip just because. Love, laugh and live! You're worth it ;)

I forgot what the point of that was when writing, namely yeah, there are people who will take literally any shit thrown at them and just get beaten down.

I work in the industry.

Either study journalism in college or apply for an MA in Journalism or earn a certificate from some kind of journalism school. The most important thing is getting some internships and having a portfolio that you can show to potential employers. Having a social media profile is very important also.

>without people collectively not taking shit
Thank God then that the political establishment has spent the past 20 years erasing the power of unions to organise labour.

I don't give a fuck about your specific situation Gordie

>Work before capitalism was more conceptually complex, and involved things like civic engagement, exhausting but rewarding effort, real "care" about things.

This sounds like a bunch of bullshit

Are most offices really open nowadays? I've worked in a couple offices and they all have cubicles.

Personally, I've really come to respect the bums and slackers of the world. People who are content to bounce between shitty low end jobs with just enough money for rent and weed. I've met a lot of people in bars who just wait tables or work retail and spend their free time playing music with friends and getting high. I wish I didn't care about my family and didn't have any ambition so I could just be happy drifting aimlessly through life.

...

Most people at my magazine either had a science degree and demonstrated writing ability with a portfolio - preferably consisting of published pieces (most of mine were articles written for my University newspaper). My boss had a creative writing degree and got a job at a random confectionery magazine before switching to pharmaceuticals.

The most important thing is to have a portfolio.

I'm currently trying to break into political journalism by getting a few freelance articles published, but it's coming up with the ideas.

More and more offices are being "modernized" and are thus more "casual" in terms of officewear and also the layout of the office floor. The theory is that blurring the boundary between workplace and private life makes people happier, which means quirky table tennis boards in the office, fewer cubicles, more denim and flannel and more outings with the gang at the local sports bar.

Is creative writing minor good enough? I don't want to go back to school.

A huge pro-tip about the adult world is that what employers really care about is experience and evidence that you give a shit. At the moment you don't appear to be able to prove either. What I would recommend is looking around for some journalism certificate courses or, even better, contacting the editor of a regional paper or local trade magazine and ask them if they can advise you as to how to get into the industry. Offer to work for free for a month if you can afford it. Being able to write about how great you are at writing and how ambitious you are means zilch. But wages in journalism are plummeting and job security is very scarce these days. It's a dying industry, and if you want to make good money you'll be competing against people who attended NYU and studied for a MA in journalism and bagged internships at large publications or newswires each summer.

teach community college composition you pussy.

*draws switchknife*

The goddamn HECK did you just say!?!?

tfw just got promoted to $500k/yr at my triple integrals job

>(((free))) market ideologues actually believe this
>>they call people who disagree sheltered

Great, now you can retire after a couple years.

Or will you keep going until you're a self important fat old man who think's he's better than others because he moved some digits around on a computer for half of his life?