Just Some Thoughts

I spent the week ruminating on dehumanizing nature of capitalism. Determining a persons deserving-ness of food, shelter, healthcare, leisure, based on arbitrary valuation of labor, requires that we dont see the inherent values in human beings. The discourse surrounding Fifty Cent, Kanye West, Anna Delvey, TikTok creators, my personal life, pulls back the curtain to the lines drawn around what is human and what is a catalyst for gaining or losing capital. We live in a world of passive consumption, the basic mechanisms of our systems are coveted as complex high thinking college degrees, leaving the general public at the mercy of marketing. This leaves the door open to see a human person as a product and not a human piece of the puzzle. There is a difference between I am exchanging money to get an egg, pr my money gives me dominion over you. All of these things have been explicitly constructed into our capitalist system, and if we dont look at them and admit they are there. We will never be rid of them.

Fifty Cent was rapping hanging upside down at the Super Bowl, and seemingly no one noticed. What did they notice instead? A middle aged man is not as thin as he was 20 years ago. The public expectation that celebrities never change is a result of not being self aware that we are associating human beings with products, Fifty Cent, was a feeling , a sound, clothing, and his body. What you are saying when you talk about how fat he has gotten, is that you saw him as a product. We are explicitly drawn away from . His humanity was off the table and it was a transactional experience. We cannot think beyond the confines of capitalism if we are unwilling to unequivocally recognize the humanity in others.

Some of our dismissals of humanity are more complex, we don’t want to see the cost of our interactions. We want to believe that buying an iPhone isn’t directly harming anyone, despite the evidence it is. This has been a growing feeling I have had regarding Kanye West. A few years ago, when Kanye West was the musical guest on SNL, he seemed unable to stand on his own; he laid down on the stage. Not long after, he started a church; he has been increasingly publically unstable. He was hospitalized for exhaustion. We the public have absorbed every drop of controversey fully aware he seemed unwell. West’s erratic behavior is part of his brand, it’s often argued to be marketing. People will tell me “he’s just making controversy before his album drops.” There is no part of me that believes we can differentiate between his marketing and self harm. Kanye essentially says he is exploiting the system that is exploiting him. In that scenario who wins? We now have someone who has crossed a threshold of acceptable, and the controversies are seen as increasingly unlikable. Where is the apologetic public? Instead of admitting that West was propped up until it wasnt sustainable and we may have some complicity in the clear turmoil he is in now, the public are turning on him as an entire person. Every time we thought this person seems unwell but I am going to validate that because I like it and dont believe I have any consequential power.

Watching the end of Inventing Anna on Netflix last night, it reaffirmed this entire notion for me. Anna Delvey was able to look like the product of wealth, and because of that she almost got millions of dollars. Th final episodes present us with the question of complicity. Was Anna Delvey a criminal or were the people not looking beyond the immediate facade of wealth entering into the situation willingly? Additionally, we are asked to wonder if the use of media and attention was actually harmful. Anna was a person, and she had fully accepted that we are reduced to our bank balance, social connections, clothing, and curated social media.

Personally, I recently lost a friend, and I also worked for this person. So I am in a state of deep sadness and desperation. As I have been doing Doordash in the evenings, I feel a deep and unflinching wound in realizing this is the reality. My car, my time, and my desperation are my commodities. We are bound to a system that doesnt account for slowing down or being too sick, or too sad to get out of bed for a day or a week. Because no one ever says that our system is fully reliant on our continued participation. We are instead taught at our value is based on our contribution to the system. I cant eat or go to the Dr without contributing, when really would DoorDash exist without people willing to do it? No Doordash needs me to exist not the other way around. Homelessness and unemployment prove that, we make it as uncomfortable as possible because otherwise the workers would understand their value.

I am well known for both fecitiously and literally blaming all my problems on captalism. Why cant we have healthcare? Capitalism? Why do I have to get upi before 9 a.m.? Capitalism? Why do they make a sequel and reboot to good things and not the originals that flop? Capitalism. When we watch celebrities devolve, and continue to follow their questionable behavior, we are doing that to them too. When we think its our business if Fifty Cent gained weight, we are treating him as a product, and not a person. The digital world has virtually erased the direct interaction between the money we spend, and the people who perform the tasks building a great divide ensuring we dont ever have to be in contact with their humanity.