“The payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.”
― Albert Einstein
During my childhood, I was asked this question a number of times: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. When we were younger, we had dreams and were taught that we had a bright future ahead of us. However, how many of us actually achieved success in the career fields we imagined as a teen? And how many of us found happiness in our lives?
When it comes to my personal experience, I struggled to find what I want to do with my life. I spent most of my career in technology, because of the social demand for computer technologies. To answer their demand, I kept taking tech certification exams to get a better position and salary. Now that I became a web developer and found myself still struggling to keep up with my work. Not only do I struggle with the complexity of the tech, but also my relationship with my supervisor and colleagues. And I believe I’m not the only one who is struggling to maintain his patience with his work.
Does capitalism make us happy?
So, here comes the first question: Does capitalism make us happy? When I ask this question to myself, I can’t answer ‘Yes’ straight away. When I look back on my 20s, during which I was forced to adopt myself to toxic working environments, I mentally found it difficult to get out of bed in the mornings. It’s not because I was not a morning person, but it was basically because of the severe power harassment I experienced while working at my workplace.
They always kept yelling at me with strong words that deny my dignity, violating basic human rights. For my failures, I blamed myself. But when I look back on those experiences, now I know that they only wanted someone to blame for, someone they can take advantage of to vent their daily stresses. Since I took longer to get my job done than others because of my lack of experience, my unproductivity gave them a perfect reason to torture me mentally. But don’t you think this is an essence of capitalism? It values productivity, and a certain number of people are excluded from society on the grounds of their lack of required skills and employability.
Are those who are not productive worthless?
Having mentioned my previous experiences at my work, here comes the second question: Are those who are not productive worthless? At least in Japan, we grew up with competitions as a major factor in our careers, obtaining the full benefits of capitalized globalization. In such a world of manufactured perfection that we are being deluded to believe that one is superior to the other and one is inferior to the other, we tend to think that those who are not productive or employable are somewhat worthless.
“I envision a world where a person with multiple disabilities can be euthanized, with an agreement from the guardians, when it is difficult for the person to carry out household and social activities.” wrote in a letter by Satoshi Uematsu, the murder of nineteen disabled people in the Sagamihara stabbings. The Sagamihara stabbings were committed in Tsukui Lily Garden on 26 July 2016. The facility housed 149 residents between the ages of 19 and 75, all of whom had an intellectual disability but many with various physical disabilities as well. Some are capable of engaging in physical activities outdoors, while others are bedridden.
Uematsu was a former employee of the facility and somewhat grew hatred towards the disabled. But what triggered him to commit the mass murder remains unknown since he’s been sentenced to death. In the letter, he also wrote that the killings of the disabled would be “for the sake of Japan and world peace” as well as to benefit the global economy and prevent World War III.
Does capitalism exclude those who are uneducated or disabled from the benefits of society?
Come to think of what he has done and what deluded him to believe that the disabled are worthless, I came to this last question: Are those who are not productive or employable not even allowed to exist in this capitalized world? Needless to answer, yes they are of course allowed to exist and deserve a happy and healthy life in as normal a manner as possible. Because they have to overcome more challenges than the average person, they have to work a lot harder to achieve a “normal” life, and I think that as a society we must respect that.
Ideally, we must respect diversity in lifestyle. Even those who are uneducated or disabled must have a right to pursue their happiness. But in the reality, those who lack the skills required by the twenty-first-century standard are excluded from the benefits of capitalism unless their household is rich.
Conclusion
Capitalism is too big to beat. It’s too powerful that it destroyed the Soviet Union and transformed China into state-run capitalism. It has been with us for many centuries and is the dominant economic system throughout today’s world. Much of the history of the past 500 years is concerned with the development of capitalism in its various forms. The system is not something I can beat, obviously. Also, those who rule the world made us significantly difficult to live without the system.
Still, we have a choice. If you want to access every benefit of capitalism, you have to become the slave of the system. But if you believe the idea that you can define what is your own happiness in your own way regardless of the social standard, you may be able to find happiness in your own standard. That’s what we call, lifestyle diversity, I believe.
So, how do you think about it? Also, since I love technology, I’ll keep studying programming and tech in general. That’s how I find happiness.
Via: Wikipedia