a terrifying question.
but it's vital that we are all willing to sit with it.
i know that sometime around now, the people who sell corn on the side of the road pack up for the year. but iâm not sure exactly when. and i donât know if itâs changed at all since i was growing up in ohio 20 odd years ago.
i know that the leaves are starting to change around now. but exactly when and which trees change their leaves first? i couldnât tell you.
i know that birds migrate, anticipating this hemisphereâs winter. but i donât know which birds. i donât know when they leave. and if i heard their song, i wouldnât recognize it.
so if i couldnât tell you even the simplest information about the seasonal changes where iâm from, how can i tell you that i know itâs about to be fall?
i know itâs about to be fall because starbucks (and now every other cafe) has started offering the seasonal pumpkin spice latte (which by the way, contains no pumpkin, but it does contain, if i remember correctly from my barista days, about 50 grams of sugar just in the medium sized drink if you get the whipped cream and full serving of syrup).
i know itâs about to be fall because my friends with children have been rushing to get to the âback to schoolâ sales so they can afford all the hot classroom accoutrements and whatever new clothes and shoes their kids need.
i know itâs about to be fall because several stores have already begun advertising halloween.
i couldnât give even the most basic description of the natural event that we are acknowledging. just what you can buy while it happens (or as the climate catastrophe intensifies, while it happens in new and terrifying ways).
and i have countless examples of this.
i read an article yesterday on âhow to signal your bisexuality,â and while honestly, it was a cute article that had an uplifting message, the âpracticalâ advice was just a list of âbi-codedâ purchases you could make.
it made me reflect on my own journey, my own understanding of my sexuality and gender. how ânot feeling like a girlâ wasnât allowed to be enough. my internal experience wasnât relevant if i wasnât working to sell it to the outside world. i had to get a haircut. i was expected to want to change my body. i had to buy mugs and stickers and t-shirts and deck myself out like a woke gadzooks sales rack from the mall in 2002 had vomited on me. i had to fucking do something to signal to the world how i experienced myself so that i would then be entitled to demand everyoneâs validation and participation in legitimizing my niche gender. i had to buy what i was selling. and then i had to sell it hard.
so now we get to the terrifying question, and i hope you can be brave enough and creative enough to sit with it.
who are you beyond what you can buy or sell?
not having an immediate answer, by the way, isnât your fault. not even being able to fully comprehend the hugeness of the question isnât your fault either.
and of course, if itâs not obvious, itâs fine to buy and / or sell things. but not having the answer to this question, while as i said is not your fault, is ⊠i think a little less fine. maybe really, really not fine.
and it is the intended consequence of life under capitalism. or more accurately, of life extremely intertwined with capitalism. to reduce you to what you can buy or sell. to deny you of developing or exploring yourself and the world beyond that. and to slowly privatize and monetize every aspect of life without you even noticing.
capitalism relies on extraction. thatâs what profit is. extraction that doesnât get paid for (or paid what it could be âworthâ but thatâs a little bit more of a complex conversation). but extraction and exploitation is an inherent part of this way of âorganizingâ our world. from any and every possible source. including the earth. including whole populations. and of course, including you.
and this current version of capitalism relies on you being doubly exploited. first in the form of your labor. second, with the crumbs of value your labor produces, youâre given some money. and with the time you pour into your work, you tend to have very little (time and energy) left over to do other things. which creates problems. like not having time to cook and eat properly. not having time to build friendships and community properly. not having time to take care of yourself or your family or your town or even your houseplants.
so it sells you solutions. that you can buy with your (comparatively) little bits of money. it promises you that youâre just one perfect purchase away from being happy, from feeling content, from wholeness.
wholeness.
in the psychoanalytic tradition (one with which i donât always agree, but it is pretty obvious that on the whole, freud was a dialectical thinker), we are all understood to be whatâs called a âlacking subject.â
at the risk of way oversimplifying this concept, basically it means that, in each of us, there is this innate feeling of lack. of something missing a little bit. and in response to that feeling, we desire. things, outcomes, relationships, experiences. and this accumulative process of desire and action becomes fuel for the little motor driving us through life.
in my estimation, this isnât a bad thing. i actually think itâs a great thing, but at the very least itâs a neutral thing. because this motivates us to make choices in our lives. to work toward things. to dream. and not to become complacent or inactive once we have the things we once wanted because with every satisfied desire, a new desire arises.
but capitalism exploits this in a very specific, very cruel way.
because capitalism âknowsâ (to the extent that any system can know anything) this about you. about all of us. but it pretends to sell you the âsolutionâ to this very natural, totally normal tendency. it promises you that just one more purchase, one more subscription service, one more cell phone upgrade, one more âseasonalâ latte, one more, one more, one more, and youâll finally feel satisfied. we promise. this one is the one.
and of course, it never delivers. because it canât. because desire is not something to be satisfied permanently! desire is evidence of our aliveness as well as the very fire that keeps us alive. it's a marker of our evolution and of our intrinsic need for one another. for growth. for experiences. for interdependence.
my own industry of coaching and personal development copies and amplifies this. one more program and youâll finally have all of the abundance you could imagine and youâll never need anything or anyone again, one more âinvestmentâ and youâll finally be free, one more coaching package and youâll be delivered from the complexities of the human experience.
itâs not that capitalism robs you of your wholeness. itâs that wholeness, in this sense, is a lie that capitalism made up and sold to you.
so back to the terrifying question.
who are you beyond what you can buy or sell?
and if this question on its own isnât terrifying enough, here are a few followup questions i hope you contemplate.
how do you demonstrate your relationship to things you care about?
while there will often if not always be costs associated with your passions or hobbies (i.e. hiking boots for hiking, books for reading, cookware for cooking, dues for any group membership), are there ways that purchasing or dreaming of purchasing has overtaken the initial love of and relationship to the activity? are there ways that what you can or cannot purchase has a negative impact on your attitude toward the activity?
if there are causes that are important to you (palestine, animal rights, the climate, etc.), are there ways you live your values beyond what you can buy or donate money to?
are there instances where your participation in a given âcommunityâ is reduced to paying to perform your role in it?
have you ever felt more or less part of a given âcommunityâ based on what you could or have purchased?
to what extent has your paid work become your identity? what parts of you go underdeveloped, denied, or ignored as a result of that?
who are you beyond what you can buy and sell?
who are you beyond what you can buy and sell?
who are you beyond what you can buy and sell?
and now, in an ironic (but not hypocritical) twist of fate, iâm going to sell you something you can buy or not.
i have to live under capitalism the same as you. but i have made peace with the way i âearn my livingâ â not that i think living is something that needs to be earned â in that i do work i care deeply about with people for whom i have tremendous respect.
so allow me to ask: would you like some support around exploring the answers to these questions and implementing your answers into your life? would you maybe also like to do it alongside other people with whom you can build lasting connections?
if so, reclamation is coming back.
reclamation is my 6-month group offer that allows you to explore anti-capitalist thought, to receive coaching through this lens, and to implement your values into your life and, if relevant, your work / business.
to learn more and to join at the earlier bird pricing, please click here. otherwise feel free to email me with any questions.
love and solidarity.