Stronger Than You

The contemporary corporate culture around mental health awareness/support is so fucking agonising. It's like this play-acting of social responsibility by forcing people to sit through empty platitudes and useless advice written by and for bougie fucks whose greatest mental health issue is feeling a little stressed before their monthly performance review. To add injury to insult, many of the institutions pushing this stuff the hardest are the ones most responsible for the material conditions that actually cause or exacerbate so many mental health problems. Like having decent working conditions or reliable access to housing is gonna improve mental health a lot more than breathing exercises and mindfulness.

I love how "you get what you pay for" goes right out the window when it comes to purchasing labor.

Meanwhile in France:

GOD I wish the minimum wage was a living wage.

I'm not flipping burgers, I'm cleaning litterboxes and doing basic vet care like checking weights, administering medicine, bathing, using IVs, keeping records, making lists, doing photography, and way way more. But the point is even if I was just cleaning litterboxes... I love the work. I wish I could pay rent. Shouldn't I be able to clean litterboxes and feed cats who were rescued from the streets and do that fulfilling wonderful work without wondering where I'm going to live?

Shouldn't someone be able to flip burgers, make art, clean up trash, care for the oceans, teach your children, or rescue animals without being forced to choose between their job and their bills?

What if I don't WANT to climb the ladder and use my degree and search for high stress high pay jobs in order to live? What if I want the high stress job of seeing a kitten crashing below survivable temperature and bringing them back from the brink of death, knowing that I'm the only thing standing between this homeless, unwanted kitten and an early grave?

Shouldn't that be enough? Shouldn't I be able to afford food and rent by doing that?

I don't want to work at a vet office that can give me steady pay increases. I want to work here, with cats who have no owners, nursing them back to health and helping pick their forever home. I want the infrastructure to support me in doing that. I want the laws to say I can and have programs in place to make it so my shelter CAN support me. I want rent to reflect wages. I want wages to reflect rent.

I want to help the world and be able to survive doing it. I want to thrive doing it. I want that for everyone.

More than that; we should have a universal basic income so that people can do what they love without worrying over whether it will let them afford food and rent at all. Shouldn’t people be able to be artists, to be writers, to be stay-at-home single parents who put all their energy into raising awesome kids? Shouldn’t the ability to live a happy life be guaranteed completely independent of what work you’re doing or how much measurable profit you’re producing by the metrics of capitalism?

anybody else ever think about how fucked up the phrase “earn a living” is? like that’s how we talk about working. we have to “earn a living” doing something. our life has to be earned through the sale of our time and energy. our existence (and only that! nothing more!) has to be earned by offering it up as a commodity. capitalism fuckin blows dude