College grads, it may be time for different approach, not just in getting a job but in life.
If we scrape away the hype and the humbug, this is the corporate economy in a nutshell. Sorry about the bluntness, but alas, there’s no way to sugarcoat calling Ultra-Processed Life what it really is.
We’re all sheep to be sheared, living commodities. As consumers, the goal is to extract as much of our earnings and capital as possible by any means available, and do so as often as possible. As employees, the goal is to extract as much value as possible from our labor.
Yes, we’re each unique. So are sheep. I could tell you about Bootsy the sheep, such a character, for individual sheep are unique, too. But that doesn’t mean they’re not commodities whose value and purpose in life is to be sheared to profit those doing the commodifying. We’re all commodities, just like sheep.
Corporations have vast expertise in the psychological tricks of making it appear that the corporation really, really cares about you: yes, you, the consumer of their products and services (you’re special!) and you, the employee / 1099-contract worker / gig worker–you’re special!
Actually, we’re not special. We’re just commodities being processed to extract as much money / value as possible from each transaction or hour of labor, and an integral component in that extraction process is to mask the heartbreaking truth behind warm and fuzzy stories, signals and images–we really, really care about you, you’re important. Yes, we are important, in the same way sheep are important because they’re the source of profits.
The cold-steel truth is we’re interchangeable. Ideally, we sign up for a high-interest credit card and charge our way into a high balance we can never pay off, but if we pass up that offer or default, we’re replaced by another sheep in line to be sheared.......