Sunday, October 11, 2009

Anxiety Culture: How to Avoid It

Today I discovered Anxiety Culture a Webzine described as a "vast, intoxicating mixture of outsider psychology, satire, anti-work philosophy, anti-establishment rants, graphic propaganda."

This British site has a strong anti-cubicle/wage slave/consumerist vibe (see also CLAWS and the book Doing Nothing by Tom Lutz and of course the film Office Space.). If you're looking for an antidote for status anxiety with a dose of attitude, you may enjoy its advice.

Here are a few previews of some of the facts and features you'll find if you venture over there.

In 2002, the Work Foundation reported that "job satisfaction has plummeted", and that so-called "high performance" management techniques made workers deeply unhappy and failed to raise output.

(From the article Work Hell)

Within the notion of “having to earn a living” is the assumption that you don’t automatically deserve to be alive. For some reason this tends to make people feel somewhat depressed. I have it on the highest authority, however, that the only way to really earn a living, once and for all, is by being born (and I’m talking here about physical birth, not any religious metaphorical mumbo-jumbo). After that you deserve to relax.

(From the article Today's Sermon: The Truth About Earning a Living)
“Supply and demand” is a free-market cliché commonly spouted (but often misunderstood) by corporate leaders. “Demand” is defined in free-market theory as a demand made by a free, rational individual who is acting out of self-interest. But many “demands” – eg the demand for “status symbol” consumer goods – owe more to saturation advertising and social conformity than to rational, individual self-interest.
(From Your Duty to Phone in Sick)

The picture above is from the "sticker" collection on the site.