Means Well

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I know this person means well, but so often people just miss the meta of what is occurring.

This is exactly what I mean about how it’s just becoming verboten to meet anyone in anywhere except Tinder and other similar online meat markets. And since when is liking someone or complimenting them treating them like a sex object? That’s a new one. But let’s talk about what’s really happening here. Abby, as most people have, has fully imbibed the neoliberal “wisdom” that one should be a worker bot all of the time, with no possibility of, well, anything at all outside of that. This is social control, and exercised very intelligently. In addition, it’s the very best sort of propaganda and ideology because others promote it — and like the ideology of Big Brother in 1984, they actually end up not only promulgating it but believing it completely.

With most social movements and beliefs, I am not interested in what people claim to actually believe and why, because most of it has had no more thought behind it than what sort of granola bar they’d like in the morning. I know it annoys people and they hate it, but I prefer to examine how societal trends and much larger forces shape what they think are their freely-chosen certitudes and predilections. Otherwise, if you do not do this, you will never understand much at all about why anything is happening. I’d prefer knowledge and understanding over being liked.

As with men, there is a great deal of hypocrisy about what women say they want vs. what they actually want, but the societal trend (at least among white collar liberals) is to allow greater hypocrisy on the woman side now than the man side. This is probably overall a good thing as it reverses other longstanding trends that were far more harmful.

Now, though, I am digressing. My main point is that neoliberalism wishes us all to be sexless, friendless workbots, with no other interests, and to meet others only through approved, easily-monitored channels. This sort of behavior and thoughtless thoughtfulness by Abby and others plays right into this trend.

Unfortunately, meaning well is not enough. You actually have to be improving the world. This does not.