We all know it is better to do things than not do things, but the problem is that The Capitalist Hellscape Which We Inhabit would also like us to be doing things, often in a way that hurts ourselves.
How do we ensure we do things, making the most of our finite lives, without falling victim to productivism? And the dreadful toll it inflicts on our mental health?
This is really important to me, because I do love my work. I love developing MRI, and I’m about to have 4 years where crawling around in there is my job. I want to enjoy it, and I still want to do other things!
See https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/marvelous_pursuit.html for more? The marvelous pursuit is THE REFUSAL TO CONCIEVE OF HUMAN ACTION AS DIVISIBLE.
Side note: I want a randomly generated motto marquee’ing across my website… changes once per day –> use the hash of the current datetime modulo N where N is how many there are.
This guy started doing comedy as an outlet for the depression imposed by productivism. He could manage his time, do all his tasks, “win” at being a comedian. But by his account eventually he realised that he’d lost the joyful spark of creation, and that it was just grist between the millstones.
Apparently someone shared an essay encouraging its readers to try to achieve photosynthesis, to live like a plant. Okay so then this guy started starting his days with like, (im about to cringe typing this sorry) a meditation/intention setting session thinking like a plant. I mean, I guess.
Let’s see what that’s like…
A plants main urge is to continue to exist tomorrow in the same way it does today, but also to grow and develop in some way over the days. Plants need soil, water, sun and air.
Soil
Local and unmoving. This is where you live. Stops you getting swept away, contains minerals, you are healthier the deeper into the soil your roots go. Also, it seems plants can communicate via soil root fungi networks?? (rad as hell)
So, soil could represent our local communities and also the traditions within which we work. By “doing” them, we deepen our roots. Okey, sure.
Water
Water flows and comes from multiple sources at once. It moves in a cycle and so brings parts of everywhere to you (the plant). This is the nurturing global culture that we get to experience through the immigration, translation and the internet. Vitalising! Also the entire human tradition before you, nourishing!
“Consuming” culture is a vital part of being alive! Going to gigs and reading books and meaning to, not just doing it as a passtime (INDIVISIBLE HUMAN ACTION)
Don’t overwater!
Sun
Heat you take in and turn into food. Stuff like exercise, food, sex, sunlight and… magic? oh no. This guy believes in magic :/ . We will skip over this and presume he means it in a way I don’t find objectionable. “It is simply being good to your body with the things your body needs, without thought.” I also really don’t like that framing!!
Air
This is the giving out of stuff, the sharing, the “output”. Kindness, publicising art, mutual aid &c.
Flowers
(I liked this bit). There is a sense in which the flowers a plant make are innate. They aren’t constructed, a plant doesn’t count in advance how many its going to make (that depends on the previous year, the winter, the weather, climate, the four parts above) it just does. They are somehow a synthethis of the elements above taken in. “I have been fed by the world and this is how the world shows itself in me.”
And then he described like an imaginiation/manifestation exercise which, good for you! I also like to imagine myself as a tree sometimes.
The goal is basically feeling happy without effort, and living as a complete human animal. Snazzy. This is an interesting way to get there, and I’m glad it works. I don’t appreciate the framing, but I’m a different person.
Yeah I don’t really like the framing haha I thought it was gonna be less spiritually/woo-y. I prefer the xxiivv one.
This seems to rhyme with like how 100r Do Stuff and how lots of Authors I Like Do/Did (GNU PTERRY) Stuff, which is you [just] sit down for a few hours and do your thing, well, and then you spend the rest of the workday on supporting activities for that. So have 3-4 good hours of physics in the morning, and then do meetings and track down papers and make slides the rest of the day. That sounds dreamy… lets try to do that :)