Goes Without Saying - success and capitalism: you had one job
Episode Date: August 17, 2020eat !! the !! rich !!! this week we're discussing why capitalism sucks and how we've all been tricked into pursuing a false idea of success. it turns out that our childhood dreams were never ours, and... karl marx was really onto something. ready to spiral and quit your job? join us (sephy & wing) as we deep dive into capitalism, success, and why humans are addicted to misery. just girly things. speak your mind on our instagram! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Hello! Hi, I'm Priestess.
It is us, it is I, Erin Amirali, and you are?
Persephone Deacon.
Oh, nice to meet you.
It's nice to be here.
And we're about to get into a long old discussion on what it means to be successful.
Why so many of you think that you're not successful.
What success really means.
Why capitalism is fucking us in the butt on the daily.
And why the things that you thought you wanted were never really your own dreams anyway.
Yeah, your childhood self scammed you.
But it's not as scary as it sounds, I promise.
It's all going to be fun and games so stay tuned one of the messages that i love so much i mean they were all
like you were all unanimous this time but i loved this one in particular um and they said i thought
if i was smart i had to do a top quote unquote top job finance consulting but found it's more
important to find what you enjoy doing every day you don't have to prove anything i just liked that because of the last bit mostly you don't have
to prove anything kind of it's a huge performance do you remember we were having a conversation
about um imagined audiences it's something my mama has always my mama i always said my mom
mama mia used to say this just how mama used to make it up my mum used to say who are you performing
to like who's your imagined audience and it's like oh well it's if you break it down like why
are you posting that post to your instagram who are you imagining seeing that it's like oh well
this girl in the year above me once she might see it yeah well you're performing for her also the
little the smallest things like when you're like oh my top looks weird tucked in like that mom like
i'm gonna have to change my whole outfit and she's like who do you think is gonna look at that yeah
it's your imagined audience because you live your life obviously through your own eyes your
egotistical own life thinking that you're the protagonist that everyone else is watching when
really no one gives a fuck about us yeah and you it's really interesting to break it down because
you might think oh yeah it's just like a load of people that I used to know
or a load of people like my friends.
It's just them.
It's like, actually break it down
when you envision yourself,
i.e. walking down the street
or trying out a bit of a risky hairstyle or something.
It's like, who are you actually imagining perceiving you?
Because I'm sure you're performing.
I'm sure.
And you're performing for all the wrong audience
because they're not watching.
You guys said such interesting stuff about capitalism.
I thought it was really interesting. The first two things things that i did i thought they were really interesting so i said do you feel overworked and 80 of people said yes they feel
overworked but then i said do you feel successful and 72 of people say no they do not feel successful
so we're all working too hard but we do not feel successful sounds like a really unfair sounds awful let's get out of here guys sounds like hell i mean we
totally agree totally agree i thought one thing i would have loved to known is if like what
percentage of people think that they are underpaid oh my god yeah what percentage of people think
that they're paid enough like if you think you're paid enough please let us know surely nobody thinks they're paid enough every moment of your
day is spent doing that but then they'll all come to us and be like it's not about money it's about
love and happiness which is true but money is happiness but it's also not like it isn't but you do need it it isn't but by saying money can't buy
you happiness you completely misinterpret that a lot of people's unhappiness stems from money issues
and so they could buy their way into a happier state if not happiness completely because it
would solve their money problems which are the large majority of most people's problems
down here in the proletariat totally there's also a stat which i'm completely don't know the actual
stat but it was something like this i'll say here's the gist of it yeah this is the gist of the um the
stat and it said that there is a significant jump in happiness in this survey somewhere between kind of 15k a year and 35k a
year say and then above 35k onwards up to like a billion pounds there was essentially no jump in
happiness so i think we would be fools to deny that in a capitalist a capitalist society that
we live in this hellhole that there is no jump in happiness of course money allows you to afford luxuries which then lead to happiness you can go on holiday you can
you're not scraping for money but then when you have enough money to be able to go on holiday and
buy like new shoes for your children and things like that then you can't there is no jump in
happiness because you actually don't need the new iphone and the new um sort of gucci outfit i don't
know yeah because you're immune to it i
always used to say um money is only important to you when you have none yeah it's so true like
money only means something when you don't have any of it because then you fucking need it and
then as soon as you've got some it's just like oh yeah this old thing it's i think that can be
applied to everything like kind of even anything that we um the material superficial yeah anything
that's a currency it's kind of um followers only matter when you have none um prettiness only
matters when you have none popularity only matters when you have none being thin only matters when
you are not like all of the stuff that you aspire to be is a fucking con because when you get it i
mean we say this time and time again as soon as you get it yeah every episode this makes an appearance it's true though yeah it's so true it's literally
as soon as you get what you thought you wanted there's a new milestone and that is a capitalist
design for sure definitely well you asked on the poll uh is capitalism fair is that what you said
yeah i said do you think it's a fair system and like everyone said no like you came in in your
hundreds to be like no let me actually get that that's hilarious okay yeah so 98 of people said
no leaving two percent saying yes and i mean there are hundreds and hundreds on the no side and a
very very small few i could do you by name on the yes side.
I think we also had some people DMing saying,
I didn't mean to vote yes on that one as well.
So people like had a slip of the finger.
Oh my God, yeah.
Shall we define capitalism?
Yeah, I think before we go any further.
We have some youths watching.
Yeah, I think before we go any further, let's just make sure we're all on the same page
about what capitalism is.
And I'm also gonna do the communism definition as well so capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's
trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit rather than by the state we
know that's what we exist within even the concept of the state is beyond me but anyway utterly rank
isn't it yeah and then communism which is i mean sold as this terrifying
idea that it never works it will never work is a theory or system of social organization in which
all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their
ability and needs there we go it sounds nice doesn't it you tell me which one on paper sounds
better the community own it or private rich people own it.
Yeah.
I mean, there's problems with everything in life.
I think there's just problems with a human race in general,
but maybe I'm just in a bad mood.
In the sense that I think any society will be doomed,
even though I love the kind of Durkheim idea
that everything will work in harmony.
Everything will be beautiful.
Even the chaos will be harmonious.
But actually, I think no matter what
if you're putting humans together they're scum it just can't work because yeah they're scum because
ultimately even commun how really would that work in this in a broad sense if everyone um
in that very basic definition is to be rewarded for the contributions that they make to the society that
they are a part of life really doesn't work that way why should anyone have to contribute anything
to a society that they never asked to be born as my nan would say well this is what i think the
idea of contribution is a bit um a bit off to me but also it doesn't work communism clearly is um
utopian but also capitalism doesn't work the idea that oh my god
communism doesn't work well look at what does this work who's this working for neither does
capitalism because it needs communism to buy it out kind of every 20 years yeah who is this working
for the the elite i'm sorry i'm not too concerned about a system working for them i think the
biggest problem that we have with capitalism at the moment is we have the kind of ghosts of margaret thatcher of the kind of working class like builders and kind of
like merchants um that think that still very much hold that belief that if they work super hard
they're going to be rewarded for that exactly yeah and fair enough that works for kind of one or two
people it's literally like people never read of mice and man exactly or kind of people who are
still to this day foolish enough to think that in a place like the united kingdom all children are
born with equal opportunities and therefore there is no systemic racism for example when actually
please explain the statistics of why a small black child will be
far more vulnerable and far less opportunities handed to them than that of their white peers.
It's just the facts. No matter what you would like to believe, and like how hardworking you
think you are, and the riches that you think you're deserving of that will come to you one day,
you're probably wrong. You wrong you are wrong capitalism works
in that way that it convinces people it convinces everybody it relies on it relies on convincing
everybody that they are the one that will um climb the ranks of like the class structure and the um
and gain like a load of wealth and be the next billionaire like you can be the one it kind of has this promise that anyone can join the elite and climb the
ranks but actually you won't you won't the stats are not there and we see these sort of figures of
people that have like i mean celebrity is like a huge example but also like people that have just
been able to hoard immense amounts of money but it's kind of um it literally is of mice and men
kind of if we work
hard we'll be able to buy a farm then we'll be able to retire at this age and then that will all
be fine that will all be good we just need to do our grinding now but it's like no the thing is you
won't fucking make it to that age because you'll be ground ground to the bone yeah you you work
your whole life make it to your retirement and then your back gives in your knees break and then
you die have fun and then all that traveling you wanted to oh you can't you can't afford a
passport i find it so funny it's so hilarious when people say yeah literally you can't see
you're looking at the eiffel tower you can't actually see it yeah i find it so funny when
people are like oh yeah i'm gonna go traveling when i retire it's like well you're planning
your big big life when you're 75 it's like no i'm getting ready for my barbecue when i retire it's like well you're planning your big big life when you're 75 it's like no i'm
getting ready for my barbecue when i die i'm getting ready for my dying day as soon as i
hit kind of retirement that's time for me to write about my adventures not have them exactly not have
them it's like god you also think that you're gonna live your whole life being treated like
dirt to not be slightly jaded come kind of 72 yeah you're not gonna not only you've been shown you're
worthless your whole life you think now you're not gonna have internalized that thought yourself
it's so fucking true of course you will i read a poem yesterday i actually had it read to me by
helena bonham carter via youtube i didn't know i don't know her oh my god i was watching a video
and she said this amazing poem i literally won't be able to remember it but the gist of the poem was imagine i recite it word for word the gist of it was when i'm an old woman
i'm gonna wear purple when i'm an old woman i'm gonna wear a purple dress with a red hat i'm not
gonna care when i'm an old woman i'm gonna um push people out of the way in queues and i'm gonna you
know just live for me and be like quite outrageous but it's like actually and and the poem
was saying actually we should be living like that now obviously not pushing people out of the way
in queues but we should be a bit outrageous like we should live a bit we're being fucked
fucking daily by a load of bullshit of course you should just give a bit less of a fuck doesn't
matter if your outfit doesn't match doesn't matter any of that stuff you should just be a bit
outrageous it's also kind of the story that i love that so much but it's also kind of the story of
like you know these things come with age just being comfortable with yourself it comes with
age blah blah blah when you're an old woman you won't give a fuck i've got to wait till i'm 80
exactly and it's like if only we could have a little slice of that now yeah and that really
all you need to do is just be happy with who you are simple literally and it's the thing that old women or old people but especially old
women don't care about what they say because they're no longer sexualized they no longer have
to uphold the standard of perfection and they can just be a bit ridiculous and actually that should
just be the norm why do we have to live in anxiety for 75 years and what on your 76th birthday you wake
up and think oh my god i don't give a fuck this world is shit oh no we should just do that now
we place so much pressure then on reaching those goals that we've realized weren't even ours to
begin with by the time you're kind of 70 80 90 you've aged out of that anyway because the pressure
is off because you think and whether it's a positive or negative experience for you you've come to the conclusion that you aren't
going to necessarily fulfill those dreams anymore whereas in your youth you're still very much
holding yourself to a really absurd standard and like measuring yourself against the most
kind of ridiculous barometer for success that is never was never yours to begin with anyway it was just designed designed for you all of you had the same dreams which was funny when
yeah that i loved that one of the most interesting things i thought i was so excited to hear what
people said with are you in the position that your childhood self would have dreamed that you
would be like have you fulfilled your childhood dreams like what did you think you would be
and where are you now because capitalism kind of tells you that you're gonna be i mean it's
not even it's literally the x factor fucking tells you you're gonna be this like any normal person
can just be this and actually it's like actually the life isn't like that we're all still scraping
scraps and also do you want that no you don't or you do a bit like it would be nice you think you would
i'm sure we all think we would it looks pretty fun at the oscars when you see it but is it actually
you get there and you can't wait to get there and you're stressed same old story it's the same old
thing guys it's so interesting the more that i mean the more that me and you see of that ish world i'm not saying we're at the oscars
but that kind of world the kind of um event driven world the more i see of it the more i realize oh
my god it's a fucking scam see what i did there it's a scam literally but it's it's when it's
exactly the same as when you were for example at school you see the photos of a party that looked really
fun but you were at that party and no one was fucking talking they're all on their phones
they're doing a bit of dancing it was fine but you were texting your mom saying can you pick me up
now it's all a scam and it's the same thing all yeah so true it's also the same thing of oh i'll
get my job at this exact place and then i'll be happy as soon as you get there trust me you're
not you're gonna want a promotion pretty soon and you're gonna be jealous of all of your friends who have a different lifestyle to you
and work in a different place to you and you're still gonna want something else I think the
problem with this episode is that normally what would be kind of a habit for us is to get really
like schooly and to go in on like real heavy theory and kind of bore you about Marxism for
like kind of like what antonio
gramsci said back in kind of years ago but and so we could go in about like and that blah blah blah
what we just described is called false class consciousness and that means that you're just
gonna die miserable but actually i think it's i think it's more useful for people to understand
that their own experience is exactly what everyone else has said
in the polls rather than be really like um i guess rather than go really in depth and like actually
be quite accurate about things and like um educational which i guess we'll touch on like
briefly so so for me i would just rather hear about okay well why did those 70 of people think
that they're not successful yeah I completely
agree I think it's nicer to think about it in a more tangible or more like kind of a you are not
alone way like it literally is crazy how much every single person was saying essentially the
same thing that they thought they would be married with some kids in a house or they'd be well on
their way towards doing that and actually you're living
at home with your parents maybe can we talk about that actually because i think one of the biggest
problems there is that we fucked ourselves when we placed our dreams in the kind of um like we
fucked ourselves when we placed our dreams in the kind of decency of other people,
i.e. you thought you would be married at kind of 25 in a massive house with your dream person, but your dream person doesn't exist because men are trash.
This is the problem.
People putting their dreams.
And also, it's not necessarily your fault that you put your dreams in that
because you were told to.
Absolutely not.
You were told to.
Every single thing that you watched, every single thing that you consumed told you that you were told your purpose was to reproduce yeah and we
learned that from the what is the purpose of life episode many people think it's to breed so i'm not
surprised that if you feel that you're not fulfilling that yeah you're you're you're shook
you're stressed yeah but trust me that's it doesn't matter what you we don't there's no purpose it's
just capitalism has given you a purpose and that's to contribute towards a system that fucks you in the fucking
ass every day but you must contribute you must be pulling your weight and also sort of like you
must be a good member of the team that doesn't give a shit about you like world's worst team
i've ever heard yeah of course you're not on your way to doing any of these things because they're
your childhood dreams the loyalty that we have towards our childhood self and we trust our childhood
self a seven-year-old that they have made the best decisions or they have made the best assessment of
what our life could be oh if i do these if i'm for example i said on the thing about me wanting to be
writing myself a note saying if you're not an actress on doctor who by the time you're nine
give up it's like what i'm gonna trust that little child that weird little child to make a decision well
my best life is gonna be i feel guilty that i'm not on doctor who are you fucking nuts are you
nuts completely because your scope of the universe was kind of school and getting home and watching
doctor who i was gonna it's funny i was gonna say earlier like i can't remember what episode it was
it might be long gone and deleted now haha pilot season gone where i really went off like kind of on how yeah people have such a loyalty
to their childhood selves and you see these depressed people have such a love for like a
nostalgic feeling like they want to kind of listen to hannah montana all day or like watch disney plus
all day and be nostalgic but it's like you're indulging yourself in nostalgia because you can't bear to face who you are today.
You're trying to return to the immaturity of youth.
You're trying to return to the last time you were happy.
Literally the last time you're happy.
It's almost like the world is obviously too much.
Like it's too much responsibility.
It's too much pressure.
It's too much like drive yourself
into just like complete work overload for like very little return very little return so of course
you want to like return to just the immaturity of youth and like the perfection and like blanketed
version of your life which was you as a seven-year-old where you could you had your breakfast
cooked for you then you went to school and you were kind of coddled all day then you'd come back
and you'd stroke your cat and you'd watch Tracy Beaker and your mum would
put your dinner in front of you yeah sounds pretty good but now it's like go on guys you
gotta go to the shops there's no one making decisions and you go from that like real lack
of responsibility to the like insanely glamorized productivity that we have now where yeah it's so
romanticized to be so busy that
you make yourself ill it's a real problem and of course you would want to return to that childhood
yeah can we talk about busyness and productivity and this kind of yeah i would love to talk about
busyness for context if you're listening to this in in futures to come we are we're you know
coronavirus is a thing so we've been through kind of the lockdown and the
quarantine and this bizarre time where people lost their sense of self because they placed their sense
of self in their full-time job that they could no longer attend and now we're kind of coming out of
it and people are like i mean the eagerness to return couldn't be me is baffling to me the
eagerness to get back to your sense of identity
but it's like what do you mean you had nothing in your life your own your one life please please
well also i think we should clarify these aren't people that love their jobs these are people that
like really actually don't like their jobs very much like complain about their jobs all day every
day and yet want to return to them so badly i just want something to do i just want to keep my
mind busy just because they hate themselves read a book yeah what is this obsession with i literally
find this so baffling like i actually don't understand can't relate i actually like can't
even like intellectualize it like i don't get it you just need to fill your time but you need
someone else to tell you what to fill your time with it's like do you not have hobbies do you not have interest do you not maybe think oh not even i
want to have a bath i want to go for a walk i want to have a convo but it's like no no i need to be
i need to have emails in front of me i need to be distracted from my own sense of self because i hate
myself because i got so distracted with capitalism for so long and all of the false and superficial facets of society
that essentially control me that I forgot to learn to like myself so now when I've had to be alone
for three months it's been commiserations because I hate myself and that's no fault of their own.
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but it's just like watch tv it just means that society is functioning exactly how the elite
would want it to because you give the working class the chance to revolt
and they won't because we're all bootlickers but it's so true though it's like we the loyalty that
we have to these billionaires amazing tweet i also put this on high process it was an aoc tweet
that was like um she's just so fucking iconic like you have to so amazing let me read it word
for word because it's i need to get it in the
right order yeah we've done a lot of um i'll give you the gist of it today yeah i'm gonna get this
word for it okay it's very simple she says billion fuck billionaires need the working class the
working class does not need billionaires tell me why the loyalty this is now not the OC, this is me. This is you running riot with her words.
This is my analysis of that.
Tell me why the working class, when we do not need billionaires and the billionaires
need us, there is a power structure at play in reverse if you want.
They are dependent, we are not.
Why are we so loyal to them?
I guess it's because we fucking need to be because we actually need to get our fucking
bills paid.
But it guts me to my core. It's because, fucking need to be because we actually need to get our fucking bills paid but it guts me to my core it's because well it goes back to school it goes back to um
marx saying that and engels saying that people will be so consumed by the structure like the
superstructure of society the capitalist structure that is all you know that you physically cannot
imagine your life without it and so you become so consumed by where
you are in your kind of as as your life as a servant that you actually can't imagine yourself
outside of it as the elite you're just entertained by kind of the smallest taste and the dream of it
and it's and it is the gramsci thing of the only way to get rid of this hegemonic power
is to have a cross-class alliance which
people think doesn't happen but it absolutely does all the time with gentrification because
you give the working class or the proletariat or whoever you give the working class essentially
the chance to overthrow the hegemonic power structure and they won't they assimilate into it
they they'll go off to uni
they'll come back with a kind of medium wage job they'll slip into they'll slip into kind of hackney
and they'll establish an indie coffee shop yeah and so now they'll push out all of the tenants
that have been there for hundreds hundreds of years that are in their minimum wage jobs because
we gentrify things because we can't stop craving to be the elite and there's also the
promise that you will be able to climb you will be the one in a million that climbs the ranks
you're not only you're not stuck within your class everyone else is stuck within their class but not
you it could be you you're the one that gets to be the star be the whatever there's that promise
that is the trick of capitalism that is the one lie it's like oh no but you will be a millionaire you can be that you can benefit from capitalism it's like no if you
benefit from capitalism you are oppressive by you benefiting that means there are people suffering
from it and it's because people put too much faith in their own sense of in their own sense
of perspective so they think because they can um to some degree consciously think about capitalism or intellectualize capitalism they think that they have the autonomy and the freedom
to to step outside of it exploit it themselves exactly but just because you are aware of the
box that confines you doesn't mean that you can break down the walls and smash through the ceiling
because it's impossible to step outside of a system because as much as we can see okay we have alternatives we have socialism we've got communism we've got kind of all of the
different structures that make up our society that we've spoken about in many episodes but when you
actually think about how arbitrary those theories are and those are still based on money and wealth
and kind of transactions and trading and the words and literature of white men hundreds of
years previous or exactly it's yeah it's really arbitrary how the so how our society is formed
like it could even the idea of like the nuclear family a man and a woman have a baby they raise
that as a couple that's actually arbitrary that there is no reason that just because biologically
we reproduce male and female that there couldn't be an entire
community raising children or it would be nothing to do with the mother or the father or anything
like that and there would definitely not be romance this idea this man-made idea of romance
involved or anything like that or dating or monogamy all of that is to be honest made up
it's really arbitrary completely so we can't so there's no way we can
step outside of a really complex system like capitalism which is layered with white supremacy
class fucking patriarchy of course all of them of course we can't step outside when we can't even
see the basic things that we form our life around i.e love relationships family that's essentially
all false yeah completely that and also it's kind
of i could talk about how much i hate capitalism all i want but i still want that luxury of being
able to walk down to a tesco at 10 p.m at night and buy some fucking ice cream some vegan ice
cream all because in so many ways our privilege is massaged by capitalism and obviously that intersects with
different people across the board at all different points but for the large majority of us talking
about this poll saying i'm not successful i'm not this i'm not that it's like we're actually like
it's bizarre to be kind of um the rattiest of the rats, the peasantry, while simultaneously being in so many ways the oppressors.
Yeah, we're both.
It's a really obscure, yeah.
It's so strange.
Just the pressure that comes with capitalism
is part of the trap.
I think that's the thing of like the guilt
that you feel around not being successful,
but then the pride that you feel about being overworked.
Oh yeah, we were going to talk about busyness.
Busyness I think is one of the main lies of capitalism that keeps us all fucking miserable
so busyness say funny little thing busyness yeah oh my god my room's so loud i just took my
headphones out there's fucking all sort of sirens going on yeah there's god knows going on out here
so it's literally like someone is mowing a lawn outside the window don't know what that is and then there's some kind of police
like a car chase going on it's like follow that car busyness busyness busyness it's just one of
the biggest lies i also think it's so funny when people strive to say oh yeah i'm busy that day
i'm busy that day or that we all kind of perpetuate it oh yeah like i've been so swamped it's like that's actually not positive yeah it's awful
it's horrific i think i was busy well i have been busy loads in my life but there was one time where
i was really busy but i was busy doing things that i loved yeah there's a difference isn't there and
there's a massive difference because also because i fucking busy. I was literally busy from like fucking 6am
until like 10pm.
And the last thing I was doing
was running around saying,
I'm so busy, I'm so busy.
Absolutely not.
I just lived the busy life
and was so happy that I didn't have to go around
fucking screeching it from the rooftops.
It's actually a problem.
People work themselves out.
And I also think that's massively gendered
because so much is expected of women.
Kind of girl boss attitude. Yeah yeah or just women for so long have essentially been
the head of the household without the title of being the head of the household in so many ways
take on the emotional labor and become the breadwinner in all of the ways that aren't
glamorized while the man gets to put on his suit and kind of leave and come back to a full
cooked dinner and still then today there's so much expected of women to like be everywhere be everything for everyone
be super accessible be around be reliable be responsible be proactive be everything be so
do all of that and then also be really interesting and beautiful yeah but not too beautiful that
you're intimidating because then a man's not going to want to marry you yeah attainable beautiful maybe pretty not
beautiful just kind of you're just pretty she's very nice she's lovely you know when people
describe oh she's lovely it's like yeah just be just like lovely little girl lovely to me says
no no opinions yeah it's not good is it if you're lovely just be a bit less lovely please
she's lovely but at the
same time they'll say she's lovely then someone else will say there's just something about her
that i don't like just something i can't put my finger on it just something because she's a woman
and you hate women yeah i'll tell you what it is i'll put your finger right on the spot for you
right it's right there where it says woman right there yeah i think busyness is such an interesting
thing of capitalism though because it's like it's margaret thatcher saying that you need four hours sleep yeah we've
glamorized um being worked the bone as it's like oh it's like that grind lifestyle it's like actually
that's not desirable and then but you'll get to retire when you're 74 it's like i don't understand
why people think that's a good thing be a bit less busy and you can go see the fucking eiffel tower tomorrow well the problem is people think that if they're busier they'll get more
money and then they'll have more money to go see the eiffel tower but actually whether you're busy
or not you're probably still not going to have much money anyway like you're not gonna you're
not gonna be fucking jeff bezos are you but i think that people are busy they kind of stay
like people that go to work really early and leave really late but
they don't get paid for those hours they just always arrive at the office really early and
always leave really late it's like you don't get paid for that you get out of bed at what fucking
5am to do that you get home at like 10 what is your motive like i actually don't understand
because you're not getting paid more and for most people it's not because they love what they do it
what they're doing it's not because you're even hoping for a promotion i think people do it out of
i guess that's what you do i guess you have to like you're just expected to like if you leave
on time it's rude it kind of would have impressed their their grandfather and so they they take that
onto their own lives it's like you stayed at the office i was always taught to be a hard worker
yeah exactly from dust from morning till night it's like well what did he get
out of that yeah yeah when my father before me was in the trenches and i was like yeah you think i
want to be in the fucking trenches do you we're fucking trench foot dolce de cora mest i don't
think so your life sounds horrible i think this is but this is one of my big things that i think
at the moment i mean i have many big things that i think at the moment, but this is one of them. That the older generations are so jealous of Gen Z.
Like even millennials are jealous of Gen Z.
And we're kind of in this weird spot in the middle.
Like I don't even know what we are.
We're literally on the cusp of both.
But I have noticed so many of the older people, potentially the boomers in my life, that say things like, oh, your generation just doesn't know what hard work is.
It's like, no, you're fucking gel.
Yeah.
Like, didn't you strive so hard
so that your children could have a better life?
And now that they do,
and they want to do things like,
oh my God, they want to be a fashion designer.
But you're going to go mad
because you want them back in the fucking office.
Well, when I was your age,
well, sorry, when I'm your age,
when I was your age,
i.e. the age I'm at now,
I don't want to do that shit.
I'm not fussed about marriage. I'm not fussed about marriage.
I'm not fussed about money in that way.
I'm not fussed about impressing my imagined audience.
Yeah, completely.
Definitely.
And also in an anthropological sense,
the way that the community is established
for like our generation, whatever it may be,
or at least the younger generations versus,
for example, the boomers,
the stress on the individual is very
different in the same way that still our generation you see people be like just like work hard play
hard like i'm just gonna you know like grind till i die like whatever that's still very much a thing
but with the awareness of so many people around you i.e through social media yes in so many ways
it's so damaging and like the most bizarre concept ever we've
already had our daily meltdown and most bizarre experience exactly yeah we've already been
spiraling all morning don't worry don't ask um it also shows you so much of what your life could be
and so if you can get to a place where you are empowered enough which actually social media
actually helps people to do i've seen it happen yeah we see we saw it
happen for ourselves and we see it happen in our dms all the time like people saying we see it
happen exactly yes i'm seeing it happen in my fucking emails thank you very much let's take
a moment we got emails guys thank you so much for all the emails we're working our way through an
influx of emails yeah we're we're all we're replying to them today we'll go through them all yes well with a fine tooth comb they are so stunning every single one i genuinely each
single one brought tears to my eyes truly i read them like poetry like each line i was honestly
absorbing them the ones with attachments guys let me take a moment for the ones with attachments
i screamed seeing your little faces i screamed honestly i Honestly, I know I'm not saying anything,
but I've just got the biggest smile on my face.
That's why podcasters aren't really my medium.
No, we need to get on video ASAP.
You kind of need to see my tears.
You need to see us.
As I shout at you.
You need to see the shivers down our spine
because we were screaming.
So iconic.
I love seeing your food.
I love seeing your smiles.
I love seeing your eyes.
I like seeing the power in your eyes, guys. It's true your smiles. I love seeing your eyes. I like seeing
the power in your eyes. It's true. Oh, yeah, we're very grateful. Yes. So the internet basically also
keep them coming. Yes, please do. The internet empowers people in a way that I mean, doesn't go
goes without saying boomers never had. And so whilst they had only heard stories of generations
before them that were either kind of servants or in the trenches as we say now we
have like ambition in a completely different way but also this generation places a lot of emphasis
on like um the facade of of you know an instagram versus reality life where so you might appear to
be busy but actually you're having your kind of every day is your dying day like you're kind of
living a disaster you're so depressed you've never looked worse and yet your instagram feed is on point
christine it's such a weird thing to me though that um i don't know it's just it's just a really
weird thing that we've created where it's like if people are working so much they can't even get for
a moment for themselves then they're successful it's like that's not success that's the opposite
just going
back to it marks some alienation yeah you work so hard and yet you can't afford the products that
you are trying to sell it's so fucking true oh my god and then hang on and then you're gonna have
like a fucking three month lockdown and you're gonna be crying your eyes out saying i just want
to get back to work i just need to keep my mind occupied because the facade has been broken and
you've realized that
you haven't built anything that means anything to you and that's not your fault no you were sold a
lie you were sold the lie that if you do these things if you follow these steps then you will
achieve happiness and um affirmation and you'll be very settled and you'll have your wife and
you'll blah blah blah actually no no no it Actually, no, no, no, no.
It was all a lie.
Can't we see from even our grandparents generation that did that, like followed that to a T, like followed that plan.
They're still dying.
Like they're still, we're all going to end up in the same place.
We'll end up in the dirt.
Yeah, like Kim Kardashian and the fucking Jennas all end up in the same place as the
homeless people that we see we all end up in this there is no destination when you die there is not
a ranking of wow kim kardashian flowed these steps and she got to this place and oh but that man
outside um tesco's didn't so he's not going anywhere so no no we all go to the same place
completely you know what i also think there's something to be said about how having an abundance of money must somehow mean um the absence of a
need for compassion i.e the way that we vilify somebody like kylie jenner who she is a billionaire
apparently she's not but the kardashian jenner is the whole clan have a ton of money yes yeah that
is true correct specifically kylie and and
eat the rich specifically kylie however i think i mean largely i think is vilified because she's a
young woman i just think people are so willing to forget that this is a child that was essentially
born with a camera in their face you look around you realize what a camera means you realize what
popularity and fame mean you look around for support and you think fucking hell that's my older sister kim kardashian kind of the world's most
beautiful woman and so already you haven't hit puberty yet and people are already screaming at
you of what you need to look like you literally can't move for judgment like there is so much
pressure like the amount of pressure that just the average human being feels i mean i know
it's a lot and then imagine that i mean there's millions of eyes on you and then your dad is
transitioning and also not only is transitioning but is the butt of a literally worldwide joke
which is fucking every joke ricky gervais's jokes yeah it's so unfair i just think it says a lot
about not only the way that we love to hate women
or love to hate quote-unquote successful women but also the way that we just place so much emphasis
on money that you think money must eradicate all of your problems because when you see somebody
with money you can't bring yourself to feel anything human for them you can't bring yourself
to feel the tiniest bit of compassion the smallest bit of empathy for them because you think that a lot of money must mean that they are void of of humanity
i agree but i also think they're not who i would see as my victim of of capitalism they're a victim
on one end but my pity doesn't go to carly jenner no absolutely not but i think it's a symptom of
absolutely but it's a symptom of the way that we um convince
ourselves that money fixes everything although i do have a lot of sympathy for kylie jenner if i'm
angry at anyone it's not the rich women i'm angry at the rich white men who have hoarded wealth for
generations and generations it's not the rich women that i'm angry at if anyone has to be rich
i want it to be women absolutely yeah i mean the kardashians and jenners have done a lot of i mean they're human beings so they've made a lot of mistakes and a
lot of mistakes that i'm not in a position to forgive them for for example but i just think
it's so fascinating the way that we love it's so much easier to be miserable in your own life but
sit around hating on pretty women rather than doing anything about it and then also it just
says so much of how we just place so much emphasis and
like the measure the barometer of success in terms of how much money you have because you think that
if someone has a lot of money they can never be sad they can never have a human problem of course
they can i'm not saying that god that kylie jenner's in a worse position than like a kind of
refugee i just think we get so lost in our own misery that it just consumes us to be angry at
point point the fingers in every which way direction so i was looking at some of the things that people had
said for the question that i asked that was where did you envision yourself to be at your current
age slash are you dream are you where you dreamed you'd be and i think it's funny because i said in
one of the things that's like did you think that that you used to want to be like married with two kids and now you just want to bake fucking apple pie in the fucking woods?
Yeah.
Because that sounds like a cottagecore fucking dream.
Yeah.
And someone, I love this one because it's like, it was just really short.
We had so many.
Someone said dating Harry Styles, to be honest.
And it's like, yeah, you know what?
Fucking same.
Yeah.
Bit pissed that I'm not, to be honest.
When I was like what eight i thought
i'd be dating fucking dylan sprouse absolutely like where's who yeah absolutely kind of um gareth
gates thought i'd be working in fashion in london but i'm running a business in my hometown love
that i think there definitely was a there's this weird connotation of like moving to the city
and success like moving to the city and success like moving to
the city when you're younger it's like actually just because you're told oh that's what you should
do in your 20s it's like actually that doesn't relate to success it doesn't it's such a strange
goal that's really interesting do you not think there's like this connotation of moving to a city
i don't think i would have felt that because i was in the city so when i was growing when i was a
child no one was saying move to the city i was already in you just assume you're going to be
there yeah i think it's because i'm from a rural area that very much
is from where i'm from um hey if you're listening from the case group um then it's kind of the
people that stay in the town that i live in are very much i mean you wouldn't necessarily view
them as like societally successful under capitalism
but the people that move out are very much doing so well but i actually think it is fucked like
it's such a fucked yeah um thought it's kind of our old poetic friend lana saying you moved to
california but it's just a state of mind turns out everywhere you go you bring yourself that's not a
lie she says it's's true, right?
Can we break that down?
Because that's so stunning.
Yeah, let's get into that.
So there's a Lana Del Rey lyric that says, say it again.
You moved to California, but it's just a state of mind.
Turns out everywhere you go, you take yourself.
That's not a lie.
Isn't that everything?
It's literally like, okay, so I'm going to change my whole life.
I'm going to move to California.
I'm Lana Del Rey.
All my problems will be gone. And then you realise you realize no they followed you because you are the problem yeah you realize that oh god but i'm with me still like i'm still me i'm still like
i've still got all the same shit i had going on when i was in the bum end of nowhere it's the
same thing you're a bikini bottom i think that's so stunning that lyric is to be honest it's good
it's just a state of mind guys
does it excuse all her crimes no but it is good I loved this one as well job wise no but spiritually
I've come so far love that I think that's kind of the sentiment of everyone's like all of your
messages were very much that like you're growing and you're learning to put yourself first that
sort of thing it's wholesome
it's like yes spiritually we've all come so far if you've listened to this podcast i mean
we've had people that have listened to like every app of the podcast and have like you know you've
been doing the work as they say if you've been listening if you've listened to even like five
apps of this like this isn't i mean it is easy listening but like it is funny but it's also
speak for yourself i find it an absolute nightmare to
listen to i laugh my head off i think it's a great laugh but it's also it's like yeah we touch on i
mean today i mean we've literally been discussing marxism like it's tough listening yeah as well
like you've been working i think there's definitely things that it's quite natural for us you and i
sephie to like confront ourselves a lot
we're like trying to be very very self-aware to almost like a debilitating point almost like can
we stop like shall we just like be ignorant and blissful for a moment but i think it helps god
we're just like the saints of the universe really i think it helps a lot of people to actually
confront themselves in a way that they hadn't before and almost like challenge your beliefs like i did a thing on the story this is ages ago
and it's like have you checked in on your values like recently like how those have changed how
those have changed all of these things because i think it's really important to check in on like
what beliefs are forming because they're changing all the time as in you might have a belief at the
moment that or a value that um doesn't fit with the collective
i think is the problem a lot of people face when i was having therapy like quite regularly which
i for fuck's sake i wish i was still like i love it jealous of your past self yeah yeah jealous
of my past self like i love having like regular therapy and my therapist was saying she was like
what are your pillars in your life like
what imagine you were building like what are the pillars that hold up your life is it like family
friends kind of your health spirituality um kind of a hobby um you know all of these things that
work whatever you want to hold up your life and it's like actually what are your pillars
and if you're living like some of your pillars could be crumbling like family could be one of
my main pillars but that's like i haven't been putting any of your pillars could be crumbling, like family could be one of my main pillars.
But that's like I haven't been putting any effort in and it's crumbling down a bit.
And it's actually really important to just check in with like, what are my values?
What are my beliefs?
Like what's important to you?
Am I stable?
Am I putting in the stuff in the right places?
Because I could have been focusing on my fashion loads.
Meanwhile, my friendships are all dying.
No, fashion isn't one of my pillars.
Fuck off.
My Instagram feed is not one of my pillars meanwhile i haven't fucking
text my dad in a week things like that it's like you're not focusing on your pillars here
very true it's genius so check in what are your pillars man i just think it's about putting
putting yourself first when you have to like so many people so many girls are so reluctant to put
themselves first to the point where they can't imagine what
it would be like to give themselves the freedom to like dream of what they would actually want
i think people aren't realistic with themselves and don't allow themselves to actually admit what
they would like from the world and so they never get the chance to even try and fulfill it because
they haven't really admitted that that could be a goal for them because they're still stuck in the
i'll get married and have a big house and some kids and that'll be it which is a
beautiful dream and absolutely if that's your dream that's great and it can still be a part of
your dream whilst also having your apple pie in the woods like you don't have to be a career woman
or a family woman or a wife or this or that you can literally be whatever you want i hope and it
also it doesn't have to be appealing like it doesn't have to be palatable and appealing and aesthetic and likable it can be a really hateable dream yeah like your
dream can make people hate you but that's fine like it you don't have to be like it also doesn't
have to be like branded like it doesn't have to be compatible with the other things that you do
very true doesn't need to be consistent like your dream can be being
kind of an astronaut that fucking also runs a cat shelter very true like it can be so strange it
doesn't have to be appealing or anything it doesn't have to be well i wear my nice little
little suit jackets and i have two children and it's all very lovely yeah it can just be a bit
fucked up like that's fine yeah you're a human being you're a
big mess you've got a phd but you also want to work in a nail salon yeah fuck it do it sounds
like a literal dream absolutely oh i'm obsessed yeah same i'm always obsessed thank you so much
everyone yeah we're getting a bit preachy so that means we're wrapping up when we start telling you
to live your best life that's how you know that we're coming to the end when we start like getting a bit like is this about their lives like this feels a bit on the
nose and then it's um time to go time to go yeah so thank you so much everyone i mean thing is the
whole thing is always about our lives anyway so yeah you guys know so much anyway so thanks guys
keep the emails coming keep the reviews coming that's it before you send an email
leave us a review because that actually helps us we cry over the to-do list we cry over the
fucking emails but the reviews really like seal the deal apple cry over the reviews so that's
kind of where the priority needs to be apparently yeah apple need those yeah we should prioritize
the business over us cry apparently that's what we've been told prioritize capitalism
we capitalized capitalism told us to prioritize the business even us crying. Apparently. That's what we've been told. Prioritise capitalism. We're capitalised.
Capitalism told us to prioritise the business, even though we will cry over an email.
But, you know.
Yeah.
We live in a capitalist world and all that.
So we'll speak to you later.
Thank you guys so much for listening.
As always, hope you're having the best week of your life.
What an amazing, uh, this is a Monday.
This is going out.
And whatever day it may be, hope you have the best day ever.
Yeah.
And I hope you have the best day ever. I'm hope you had the best day i'm just gonna repeat
you
right bye