this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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Degrowth

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Fuck the Cult of Productivity (joanwestenberg.medium.com)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by toaster to c/degrowth
 

Essay by @Daojoan@mastodon.social

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[โ€“] schmorpel 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's like there is this wave of exhaustion sweeping over the planet, sometimes since Covid appeared. It hit me hard in 2020 and kept tumbling me around like a pebble for three strange years. I had to unbelieve everything that had made sense to me before. The productivity and the self-abuse it really is, and where it connects to the abuse of others, of the earth, of everything kind and soft, the 'but it's the best system we have' and the 'but there's nothing a single person can do'. I went back to stare at nothing behind the garden bushes, listened to birds, enjoyed the presence of rocks. I'm not sure that's the direction everyone must take, but a lot of people seem to have had similar experiences, with a lot of re-connection with the non-human.

In slowly emerging from the turmoil I find myself a different person, and a I see how eerily similar things happen to so many other people - the burnout and the return to the small and quiet, and a lot of before's ego and separation just vanishing. It really like some societal change, some change of common mindset, is happening. It is a little like when a child feels a response to a prayer, and a little like growing up.

[โ€“] meyotch 8 points 7 months ago

I feel the wave of exhaustion you are talking about. Everyone is in a different place, but the common experience of 'hold up a minute' during Covid has changed us all, somehow.

It's going to be a long, hot summer here in the Northern hemisphere and everyone is in a 'mood'. I can't say exactly what shenanigans will occur, but I guarantee the Summer of '24 will be one for the history books.