The Beast

This post is about a vlog from Philosopheasy on YouTube. I know a little about Simone Weil and found the discussion on The Beast to be interesting. From a practitioner's perspective, I've dealt a lot with The Beast at work, but it was really big and angry around 2020 when the pandemic was in swing. The whole planet went crazy and by the time the jabs rolled out, it had become apparent that most humans are very easily devoured by herd instincts. It's one thing to talk about The Beast abstractly, it's another to wonder if your employer is going to order you to take a poison as commanded by POTUS or lose your job.

I'm grateful for the pandemic since it made me question things related to mind, how it works or doesn't, what drives it.

Much of work is about keeping people in tightly controlled systems which are easily monitored and, as the video points out, deny a laborer creativity and self-direction by keeping him busy doing the same exact fine, repetitive motion for eight hours a day.

Philosopheasy mentions the open office space, connecting it to the spirit of surveillance that pervades Western capitalism. Work from home (WFH) is being pulled back because there is a deep suspicion on the part of managers that work is being neglected by employees who spend all day walking dogs, etc.

The thing about a bad conscience is that you begin assuming other people are acting the way that you do, and while most white collar professions provide any number of ways to quantify and assess work output on a daily basis, most managers within capitalist system are not interested in this because it involves engagement. Calling people back to the office and having them sit at large tables in atmospheres permeated with distractions and noise is seen as the smart move. Capitalism's managers aren't interested in productivity, quality of life, etc. They have a bad conscience. I dick others, so you must be dicking me on the company dime. The bad mental condition of management means they become monitors unwittingly and produce the kind of society where surveillance is normative, accepted.

The West is run by extroverts, the kinds of people who set up open office spaces/distraction factories for people who need to get work done, because they fear silence or the responsibility of self-direction. The extrovert draws energy by being engaged with people and for the extreme versions, this means they need everyone in a big room under monitor. If productivity buckles as a consequence, it doesn't matter because the quiet work is worse psychologically.