I have realized very recently just why it is that I have grown to hate capitalism. That word -- that very word -- is supposed to mean something spirited and powerful to Americans. It is supposed to represent freedom at its peak and is ostensibly sympomatic of our values of democracy, liberty, and all of those other cliche words that we throw around in official songs and hypnotic pledges. But really...it is something more than that. It is a poison, if you ask me. It is not only a poison in its own right, but the fact that we have let ourselves succumb to all of the brainwashing that men in suits shove down our throats...now THAT is poison! Capitalism is grand. Communism is evil. And let's not forget that if you try to challenge these ideas, you are against freedom.

I hate that money comes before the human relationship. I hate that, in a lot of ways, human relationships are based on money. I hate that we decide who gets what in this life based on their income, and I hate that we have granted such an arbitrary concept (i.e., capital) the full reigning throne in our country. We deny people the basic rights of healthcare and housing, then justify it because they couldn't pay up. We as a society tell people they NEED to do certain things, but then deny them if they can't present the money. There is an undeniable social pressure to perform tasks and duties that only wealthy people can do. Or to buy certain things that nobody needs, but that only the affluent can afford.

It bothers me, because all of those wealthy people got rich by stepping on you and me. They accumulated their massive amounts of wealth by reaching their dirty hands into your pockets and into mine, to take the money that we earned by making them richer in the first place. Sure, to a certain class of people, those obnoxious "fees" or inflated prices here and there are cumbersome. But to others, it ruins lives. The people that can't afford to pay the richest of the rich anymore -- it can ruin their lives.

Who here can honestly say that they work within a venue that pays them for their immediate services? What I mean is, most of us work to put money in the hands of someone else. Me, for example, I work as a receptionist and sales assistant, but the fruit of my labor makes the president of this company rich, not me. All my life I've done work like this, and my work has earned me menial wages, generally what the government mandates I must be paid. And how sad is that? What does that say about the value of my
work? That I am a cog in a much larger machine...more specifically, I am a very replaceable cog.

Karl Marx talked about this separation between a man's labor and the fruit of that labor -- he called it his theory of alienation. His theory purports that workers can never become autonomous, self-realized human beings under this Capitalist system, except in the way that the "bourgeois" wants the workers to be realized. Furthermore, in a world that is privately owned, each worker functions as an instrument, not as a social being. What this translates to is estrangement not only from an economic perspective, but also estrangement from our human nature; separation from our purposes in this world as living, breathing human beings!

To quote Marx himself on how alienation manifests itself within the different classes -- "The propertied class and the class of the proletariat [the working class] present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognizes estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel, in its abasement the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its
condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature. Within this antithesis the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, the proletarian the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter the action of annihilating it." (The Holy Family,)

Please forgive my lack of proper citations -- I am at work and am committing the greatest academic sin -- Wikipedia. But that is because I, of course, didn't bring my college notes with me to work with which to refresh.

I admit, I don't know too much about Karl Marx (that's what Nathan is for!), but I have found that, as I've gotten older, I sympathize more and more with his basic philosophy...one that shouldn't be revolutionary, but unfortunately, it is -- putting the human interest before the capital interest.

How sad it is to see that our species has "evolved" into this.

well i'll be damned....5pm, and it is pitch black outside.

does anybody have (or have access to) a copy of a good program i can have that creates things like greeting cards, invitations, signs, etc.??

gracias.

love from pullman,
stephanie

so whenever i plug my ipod into the computer to update it, itunes freezes and nothing gets accomplished. it's so frustrating! any suggestions????

i am happy with my life right now, and i just thought i would "say that out loud" to affirm it. it's nice to be satisfied. i was particularly inspired by a quote from a buddhist pali sutta...

"If you have little, give a little; if you have a middling amount, give a middling amount; if you have much, give much. It is not fitting not to give at all. Kosiya, I say to you, `Share your wealth, use it. Thread the path of the Noble Ones. One who eats alone eats not happily."

....commence being inspired.

i'm really excited, for some reason, about bravo showing six feet under. i hear it's a good show...has anyone seen it?

on a side-note, i've been meaning to take a picture of this place forever...only in sherman could this go fairly unnoticed by the general population -->



note: this place is right off the highway and in plain sight to everyone...and if you don't understand why it could be construed as offensive, think long and hard about what the nickname for james is...

(nevermind the missing 'E')

i've gotta be the only person in the world blow-drying my carpet at 3:49 in the morning.



i must say...you study hard...you play hard...

alright, here's a question for you computer people -- on wednesday, i downloaded some windows updates, and since then my computer has been running extremely slow -- slower than usual. i haven't downloaded any programs since then, and i'm wondering if it has something to do with this phenomenon. i just want to know if there is something i can do, or, god forbid, download to fix this problem. it's annoying, because it takes 12 minutes to start up.

in general, i just need to find some way or ways to get this computer running faster. it has about a million processes running on it with about 80+% cpu usage at any given point.

HELP!

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

i realize i've been drinking at least two cups of coffee a day (most days, more) every day since summer started. and last night, when dave and i went to the boiler room, i ordered a vanilla latte with an extra shot, and this kid picked up the biggest cup and filled it to the top (i kid you not) with espresso and added a dash of milk. i...drank it. :)

today, i woke up and thought about quitting coffee for a while.

but.

i'll quit later.




i can quit anytime, i swear.

i can't believe the summer is almost over. i feel like i haven't seen any of it. and, because i feel that way, i put in my two-week notice at books-a-million. after i got sick and debated whether or not i should call in, i weighed how much money i would make in that shift versus how badly i needed the rest -- and i realize that, in one regular shift, i barely walk away with 35 dollars. lame. that is not worth my time. so i told michael (go figure) that he should go ahead and put in my two-week for me...and then i shortened it to a week and a half. i just don't care. and they don't pay me enough to justify it.

just one more week left of my cognitive class. however, most of my grades are already in, and my fate is pretty much sealed. i don't feel like i did very well. sadly. my second class starts in a couple of days, and though i think it will be a lot easier than my last class, i could use the break from school. too bad, so sad.

i scheduled a dentist appointment for thursday. it's time to take these wisdom teeth out, and i'm horribly frightened. horribly.

also, i found out yesterday that i got the job at the montessori school. so, hooray! with my free time from books-a-million, i think i'm going to take a few miniature vacations. i hope to string together a last-minute trip to louisiana to see my cousin at the end of august...and i want to accompany nathan to kansas city when he moves up there. it will be my last opportunity, me thinks, to take advantage of my father's employee benefits at american airlines.

on a side-note, i think i need to get rid of my cat, and i'd rather give him to a home than an animal shelter.

i'm sleepy. and i get my haircut on saturday. finally!

i just subscribed to time, and i have to wonder if the world will end before my subscription is up.