on Medium.Lie Flat
QuoteThe dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own. ― Sir Richard Francis Burton
Earlier this month, I had lunch with a friend and former colleague. It has been a while since we've seen one another and caught up, and we reminisced about the "good old days," for some time. Over our Pad Thai, he asked what advice I might have given to a 30-year-old version of myself.
I heard myself say,
"I would've told my younger self to not be such a grinder. I used to think that I was what I did, and my worth was as good as what I made. And that even if I weren't the most talented person, I would outwork your ass to succeed. What a crock. All the worship of work does is make other people successful or make money for someone else."
My friend asked me what I wished I had done instead.
"Take risks. Follow dreams. Err on the side of passion. Life is too short to spend it in service to The Man."
I thought back to this exchange when I read an article about Chinese millennials giving up the rat race to 'Lie Flat.'
Tang Ping, or "Lying flat," is a growing movement in China where young people reject traditional Chinese competitiveness to take a more relaxed, less stressed approach. Instead of striving for ever-higher pay and social status, younger workers simply 'lie down and give the bare minimum.' This flies in the face of traditional Chinese values, which embrace hard work, the purchase of apartments or cars, marriage with children — what Chinese society expects a responsible, functional adult to do. But they all seem to reflect one attitude, defined by an op-ed in the South China Morning Post, that represents "a silent protest to unfairness, often the result of structural and institutional factors that can no longer be altered by personal efforts."
Not surprisingly, the Chinese Communist Party is not amused.
Official media took notice shortly after the concept of lying flat became a hit on China's social media. Guangming Daily, a house organ of the Communist Party's propaganda department, published an article criticizing the lifestyle as an avoidance of stress, saying that it "obviously is not beneficial for economic and social development." Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily, another government mouthpiece, also chastised the attitude as "not only unjustified, but also shameful. Such 'toxic chicken soup' has no value whatsoever."
Predictably the Chinese government has banned "lie down" and "lie flat" as search terms.
Despite criticisms from official media, many Chinese see the trend as a natural reaction to the unrelenting pressure of modern life. And it has caught on in this country as more and more people realize the casino is rigged.
Charles Hugh Smith noted in a recent blog post, Now That the American Dream Is Reserved for the Wealthy, The Smart Crowd Is Opting Out, how a new generation of Americans, recognizing that their American dreams are unattainable, are choosing not to play.
The Smart Crowd is opting out of the conventional workforce's debt-overwork-dead-end-treadmill. What clueless economists, pundits, and politicos don't dare acknowledge is that credentials and hard work are not a ticket to middle-class security; they're a ticket to impossible workloads demanded by global corporations and high-cost lifestyles anchored by student-loan debt, high rents, and out-of-reach real estate.
"Lie-flat" has come here.
People worldwide are spitting out the bit. Restaurant owners post self-pitying signs about "how nobody wants to work anymore" for their $7.25 an hour. Costs rise faster than your income no matter how hard you work, and corporations are ruthlessly extractive despite the bogus PR of "we value our employees," which is so much corporate happy-talk.
As in China, the slaveowners and other arbitrageurs of labor aren't going to take this, uh, lying down, per corporate media mouthpiece Bloomberg:
The labor market is behaving strangely. Quit rates are at their highest level in more than 20 years. Normally that would be welcome news because Americans have been changing jobs less frequently over the years, which was contributing to wage stagnation. Wages often increase when people change jobs. But the high quit rates could signal a less dynamic economy this time. Unemployment is high, and many jobs are unfilled.
There was a time when ambition was admired; now, opting out of a career garners 400,000 likes on Twitter.
Some labor economists speculate that many out-of-work Americans are taking their time to find new, better careers. They've been enabled by high unemployment benefits and stimulus payments that left them flush with savings and nowhere to spend it.
Note to Bloomberg: anyone who thinks that unemployment benefits leave you "flush with savings" should climb down from the penthouse once in a while.
In some ways it's surprising to see Americans rising up against the cult of work... But, unlike Chinese factory workers, people in the developed world have never worked so little. One study estimates that between 1965 and 2003, American men gained an extra six to eight hours of leisure time a week; women gained four to eight. And since 2003, leisure time has increased further.
Fall back in line, you curs...
Unlike the world as seen from the Bloomberg penthouse, and even amidst a degraded and broken educational system, young Americans have the wit to see that the ladders of advancement have been pulled up. That there is simply no point anymore to 60- and 80-hour weeks in pursuit of unattainable goals. And the most personally satisfying move is to opt out.
In his article, CH Smith noted that
Clueless economists are wringing their hands about the labor shortage without looking at the underlying causes, one of which is painfully obvious: the American economy now only works for the top 10%; the American Dream of turning labor into capital is now reserved for the already-wealthy.
My problem is that I remember the society that has been stolen from them. People owned their own homes. They took family vacations every summer. They had a boat or a cottage on a lake. They had great insurance; their kids got new glasses every year. Braces for their teeth. College at a state school was cheap, such that kids could work the summers to pay for it. Even without college, there was good money to be made. Factory jobs with pensions and retirement plans. Show up, punch a clock for 30 years, and you were set.
It's time for us to look more closely at the class divide in our own country, which is actually a matter of state policy set by a property-first legal code and a tax system that transfers wealth from workers into the pockets of the top 10 percent. And a corporate media that inculcates our own hidden beliefs about people thought to be worthless because they earn less, people criminalized by city ordinances for being poor. In America, the only unforgivable crime is to be poor. Or homeless. And if you're born poor, likely you'll stay that way, running the treadmill of "trying to save up a down payment as housing prices accelerate away from the hapless savers."
We are told that our happy future is in an "ownerless society" unburdened by property: note that Uber has no cars, Airbnb has no real estate, Alibaba has no inventory, and Evergrande has no money. And pretty soon neither will you.
And here we are: the country is racist, the economy rigged, the health care system broken, the government captured by corporations and the billionaires who own them, and the corporate media utterly servile. And if you protest the status quo, you are labeled "divisive." Or Facebook puts you in jail for 30 days. Perhaps the most potent weapon of a population held captive is to "lie flat" and fail to cooperate with the profit-generating machine.
Who should be surprised that people are opting out of a loser's choice in a sucker's game? Why play when you can't win? And what will the capitalists do about it?