Self-Optimization Is Not About Adapting To Society

Whenever I write about how I improve my productivity, my health, or other areas of my life, the critics come and accuse me of being just a slave to capitalism.

They condemn me as a representative of a faster-higher-wider mentality and compare me to a soulless robot.

Whoever writes six books in a year cannot be an artist. Whoever then also makes money with these books must be a whore of cash.

I am called a willing servant of the meritocracy, who contributes to making the world more and more hectic and competitive.

The loudest shouts are from those to whom I feel I belong - the left-wing liberal representatives of a humane society.

It is precisely these people who accuse me of glorifying the meritocracy. When they then discover that I am an advocate of technical progress, including responsibly applied genetic engineering, they want to lynch me.

In the eyes of the backward-looking parts of the left-wing liberal movement, self-optimization and personality development are among the tools of the capitalists and the conservatives.

Why, they ask, should one be interested in being physically and mentally fit enough to work a whole day without stress and without burning out? Surely only investment bankers benefit from this?

Progress is the opposite of conservative

Oddly enough, turbo-capitalism is mainly advocated by conservatives. At first glance, this seems contradictory, because progress, as capitalism understands it, does not want to preserve the status quo, but to destroy it. At least that is what it seems.

In reality, the conservative capitalists' concept of progress is exhausted in the idea of economic growth. The growth they mean only creates more and more of the same thing.

The conservative capitalist uses modern technology to produce more and more goods at less and less cost. The technological progress that results from this process is only a waste product for them, which in turn can be marketed.

But progress turns against the conservative capitalist because, to market the innovative products of the new age, conservative values must be thrown overboard.

Globalization is commonly seen as the invention of turbo-capitalism. In fact, it would be unthinkable without it. But the instrument is increasingly turning against its creators.

The conservative, nationalist capitalist is suddenly forced to mutate into the most international. In the course of globalization, national states are losing more and more influence and possibilities for shaping the world. Those who want worldwide trade must cultivate global cooperation and act across cultural borders.

The great dangers that have arisen from globalization even reinforce this trend. Climate change and the current pandemic have only been made possible by globalization, but these problems can only be solved through global cooperation.

So the idea of progress has initially been misused by the conservative capitalists for their purposes and then began to turn against them. Conservatives, who, after all, still represented specific values, became pure capitalists without any values.

Nevertheless, they are increasingly forced to behave as if they really represent values such as international understanding, environmental protection, social balance, and sustainability.

The mechanism of progress is forcing conservatives in a direction they never wanted to go. The technology they wanted to take over turns out to be a great equalizer. This development has only just begun, but it is already evident in many places.

Entire industries are being disrupted. I can now publish books and sell them worldwide without having a publisher. I can rent out my apartment and move in with other private people on holiday without needing a tour operator and a hotel.

Education and information are no longer a privilege of the rich because, on the internet, anyone can learn practically anything.

Of course, Amazon, Airbnb, and Google are once again just large companies that obey the laws of capitalism. Still, they are also forced to adapt to world public pressure much more quickly than the traditional companies of the last millennium.

Where Google started with the slogan "Don't Be Evil" and is now struggling to live up to it, Amazon and other big players are now faced with the need to prove that they are not evil.

Progress means change, and companies that advance faster than others are also under higher pressure to change and remain relevant to humanity.

Unlike the business leaders of the old industries, the leaders of the big tech companies are very aware of this.

Self-optimization and personality development as a means to counteract uniformity

The conservative capitalist needs hosts of poorly paid, dependent, and easily replaceable workers.

Platform capitalism, which is represented today by Amazon, for example, is no exception. Anyone who has ever tried to make a living as a Digital Turk knows how much crowd working resembles the exploitative working conditions of the developing industrial revolution in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Self-optimizers are accused of making themselves available for precisely this kind of exploitation and optimizing themselves for it.

The situation is exactly the other way round.

The goal of self-optimization is not to adapt as well as possible to the hamster wheel, but to escape it.

It is about escaping the platforms and establishing your own networks and platforms. It is about becoming independent of the grace of third parties. It is about living your life according to self-chosen rules.

When I ask myself how I can produce more and better content in less time, I do it primarily for myself and not for the platform on which I publish my content.

When I publish books on Amazon, I am not doing it for Amazon.

When I publish articles on Medium, I am not doing it for the sole benefit of Medium.

What I create exists independently of the platforms on which I park my products. If Amazon and Medium collapse at some point, I can take my content and go somewhere else.

Above all, I make sure that in such a case, I can take my readers with me. Email lists, my own Facebook groups, and other channels through which I can communicate directly with my readers are my insurance.

What I produce belongs to me forever.

That's why self-optimization and personal development in no way serve to make oneself more and more useful for capitalism.

Self-optimization and personality development are a way for me to instrumentalize the capitalists in my interest.

Instead of placing himself entirely outside of the system, the self-optimizer uses the possibilities and resources of the system to escape and undermine the very system.

Self-optimizers are not slaves. Self-optimizers are modern guerrillas.