Alienation - Tumblr Posts

Alienation used to diagnose the condition of a population becoming foreign to itself, offering a prognosis that still promised recovery. All that is over. We are all foreigners now, no longer alienated but alien, merely duped into crumbling allegiance with entropic traditions

Plant and Land, “Cyberpositive” (via breadow)

The line goes quiet.

You pull the phone away from your head to make sure it didn’t disconnect, which causes you to miss the first part of the Oriole’s response.

“-want me to do with this information. It doesn’t really change anything, does it?”

“I mean, not really,” you hesitate, “I just... I think maybe I was hoping you would have an opinion on it, that you would tell me you suspected or it surprised you or something. Does that make sense?” The note of pleading in your voice betrays how uncertain you are about the entire situation.

“I guess...” the voice on the other end responds, painfully unconvinced. “But you have to remember I never got to meet Jules, so I have no idea how you two got along. And you’ve posted what, half a dozen times on facebook since I left for school? Maybe if you were less of a shut-in recluse I might have been able to offer something worthy of consideration, here.”

You say nothing, the age-old accusation from your closest friend made all the more pointed in the years since they accepted a full-ride scholarship from out-of-state and left, immediately after going to ████████ without you. A fear grips your heart, that you are ossifying into a relic of the past, remembered fondly but not often thought of. This feeling is only strengthened as the Oriole continues:

“Look, I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you were looking for but I gotta go, I’ve got stuff that needs checking on at the lab. Talk later!” she promises, but you know both that she will forget and you won’t work up the courage to call again.

“Goodbye.” you respond.

You hang up.

"Once commodity production becomes the universal economic mode, all of man’s activities come to center around it.

Its main feature—the paramount role of exchange value—reaches beyond the merely economic realm and penetrates the whole of human existence. What this does to the relationship between human beings was strikingly brought home to me by a statement I read in a daily paper some time ago:

Joseph Brayshaw, former president of the British National Council of Family Relations, commented on a recent visit to the United States. He said the “fantastic material prosperity” of the United States has fostered the assumption that things are expendable “and I had the uneasy feeling that something of this attitude of mind might have tinged the American outlook on personal relations. If they go wrong, you can always find a more up-to-date model in a new wife or husband. I wondered whether, all unconsciously, people as well as things were coming to be regarded as expendable.”

The comparison of husbands and wives with old and new models, while shocking, is not the only reason why Mr. Brayshaw’s statement is significant. Opponents of socialism often claim that in a socialist society—for reasons within its very structure—the human being will not be recognized as an end in himself but will be used as a tool, and thus will become expendable. While I cannot go into this argument here, I will say that the statement seems to be hypocritical, because—if Mr. Brayshaw is right—we are already, under capitalism, living in a society that has produced human relations which make man an object, and thus expendable.

Exchange value enters not only the relationship between man and man, destroying the possibility for genuine friendship and fellowship. I believe that exchange value, which has long ceased to be merely an economic category, invades almost all realms of our lives: our art and education, our community living, our political struggles."

~ An excerpt from Alienation in American Society by Fritz Pappenheim

For a very long time I suffered from an extremely deep unhappiness about The Way Things Are.

When I learned about capitalism (and everything that goes along with it), I understood that I was pretty damn justified in feeling the way that I felt. What’s more is that it helped me realize that many of the ways in which I felt personally insignificant or flawed, were actually just side-effects of participating in a society like this.

This isn’t to say I don’t (still) struggle with mental health issues. But learning about all of these things alleviated a huge burden on my mental health that I don’t think would have been possible with traditional therapeutic coping methods. 

I’m not depressed, I’m just allergic to capitalism

That's one of the most relatable things I've ever read.

i think one of the reasons punk means so much to me is that under the spikes and studs and safety pins is the same kid who sobbed violently every time he got in an argument, a kid who cared so much about the people around him that he kept asking questions. kept trying to make sense of things, even when it started to alienate him, because it wasn’t a simple disagreement to him, it was his whole life. something was fundamentally wrong with his brain that made him incapable of understanding the world the way the people around him did, so he was seen as selfish when all he ever wanted was to make everyone happy. and maybe when that kid grew up, he still had questions, and he never stopped trying to understand the world a little better. but he was also going to realize that he was never broken; he was hurt by a system that was. but he wouldn’t stop fighting for change, to make it a hell of a lot better for the other misfits and outcasts who felt like there wasn’t a place for them. he was going to stop caring so much how he was perceived for expressing himself and he was never going to let anyone make him feel like he didn’t belong. ever.

hey everyone 👋 take my uquiz i finished and then forgot about for months. it's 28 questions with 15 results and there's no lyrics or pop culture references so it should be friendly to non-americans and people like me who are just out of touch

SC # 41:

Honestly, what can I say about this piece? It speaks for itself. Look at the loneliness in that bald man's eyes. He is just waiting for the right moment to speak, so maybe he can make a new friend. But it's not going to work. He's just making it worse.

Look, my advice to this guy, just go, get your hamburger, and don't come back. Don't speak, just go back to your car and eat the hamburger. Then go to sleep. Maybe when you wake up you'll have meaning in life, but for now, talking to that purple guy isn't going to help.

.

(from 'a wilderness')

in the middle of the world's darkest and most solitary wilderness,

I am just standing still alone.

I cannot sink down.

I have to keep looking

for the light, which is invisible.

as the frigid wind blows,

I tore all the clothes

I was wearing to shreds.

I couldn't get over it without shivering

and feeling the cold more

and more severely.

🤩😍😍