are shy people oppressed?

[Andy Roginus]

I dont think this is the right forum for me to post stuff about
socialism
specifically, but will just say that any change must be fought for by
people, by going outside of the boundaries of the system. For example
during the vietnam war, protestors didn't write letters or negotiate
with
politicians, well, some of them did, but what actually made the
difference
is people getting out and fucking up the system by striking and
rallying.
You can't do what you're told if you want to change the world.

Now what I wanted to talk about was alienation and how it relates to
shyness, and general unhappiness, as I have a theory. But I need to
say
first off what I mean by "working class" when I say it. I don't mean
specifically or only blue collar, laborer, or factory workers. The way
a
marxist defines working class is by your relationship to the means of
production. If you own a factory, you're a capitalist (in the
capitalist
or ruling class), and if you work in it, you're a worker (duh).
Similarly
if you own a company, eg. Microsoft, you're a capitalist (ruling
class)
and if you work for it, if you get wages (no matter how high they are)
you are working class. In essence if you earn a living by selling
your
labor, regardless of the type of labor that is, that means
your a worker no matter what your socio-economic status is. Thus,
the vast majority of people are working class. If you dont sell
labor,
you either live off inheritance or play the stock market or own a
company, i suppose.

i think that a lot of alienation comes when a worker does not have
control over what they spend their life doing. That is, returning to
the example of the programmer, he has specifications that the company
tells him, and must write the program according to that specification.
Quite often the specs are full of shite, and the worker knows much
better how the job could be done, but management is notorious for
not listening to the people that actually know what their doing,
whether it is because the company must use particular software because
they have a deal with another company to use that software, or just
because managers are stupid, whatever. Certainly the business
hierarchy is extremely alienating and makes you feel like your input
is
not worth much. My dad works for a telecomunicatinos company
and has lots of good ideas (imo) and knows what hes doing. The
company's methods, hierarchies and bureaucracy are so ingrained
that, although his suggestions would have saved the company
literally hundreds of thousands of dollars, they wont listen to him.
When you go to work for a company, your work belongs to them.
I have to sign over when I go to be a programmer, that all copyrights
go to that company, not to me. If I invent something snazzy whilst
I am on that job, and the snazzy thing is related closely enough to
my job, it is the intellectual property of the company, even though
i thought of it. This snazzy thing might be debatable whether it is
related enough to my job to belong to the company; i.e. If I write a
science fiction story whilst my job is writing software for a
telecomunications company, there is no possible way it could
belong to them. But if I write a pice of software for my personal use
that no one has thougt of then it may be debatable. In this case
whoever has the resources to fight in court with armies of lawyers
wins. Anyway the end result is that your life's work belongs not to
you, but to the
capitalists, and is bought and sold in this way. All the creative
content of your mind belongs to someone else. Hence the term,
wage slavery, which conveys the feeling of selling your labor
to the capitalists, so that part of you belongs to someone else. The
creative input that you do have is restricted anyway, you are
told which language to write your program in, how to write it,
you have to do what your told. This is one way that capitalism
manages to disconnect you from stuff that is important to you,
important in that you spend possibly a third of your waking
hours doing this job, it takes up a significant part of your life,
you might love or hate your job but what control over the
product do you really have. That third of your working life
goes to making someone else rich, whereas you get what is
doled out to you by the capitalist. You work on his terms,
for him and that sucks (imo).

Humans should work
for themselves, there are plenty of jobs and lots of different
people who like to do different things, and you dont necessarily
have to do the same thing all the time, we should get to choose
what we enjoy and do that, control that work, and in excahnge
for this contribution you get the benefits of community and
the contributions that others make, i.e. communism, you should
not have to be a slave to money. Oh and who's going to clean
the toilets? I guess you compensate toilet cleaning by rewarding
people who clean toilets. And you share the distasteful jobs
around so that no one has to clean the toilet all the time.

The corporate system of hierarchies and control led my dad to
be frustrated with his job. I cant generalise from this but it
seems many people dislike their jobs. Whether
it has anything to do with disconnection from the product
I dont know... but if you want to talk about human nature, then
I think its worth mentioning that human beings derive a lot of
satisfaction from the creative process of builiding something
according to their will of how it should be built, instead of
conforming to the "market", and having control over the finished
product.

Another way that capitalism alienates people is by the structures
in place to oppress people more efficiently, that is, to squeeze
the most profit out of the workers. The main structure that does
this is the family. The family unit means that a new batch of workers
are raised up with little or no input from the state. "Family values"
are
something transmitted by the ruling class to the workers in order
to maintain the status quo. Once you realize that family values are
all in the interest of the capitalists, then all the ideas about
homosexual
behavior being bad and extramarital sex being bad and women being
housewives and women not being in control of their reproductive
systems (no abortions) and single women and lesbians not being allowed
access to IVF because the kids wouldn't have a "father figure" *blech*
become obviously stupid. Because to the capitalists, anything that
disrupts the generic idea of the family unit (husband, wife, 2.4 kids,
picket fence optional) threatens the ability of the capitalists to
maintain their
control over workers. A threat to the family unit is a threat to the
production of the next generation of workers. Since children are the
responsibility of the "family unit", labor power is generated at no
cost to the state, by women, who do all this work of raising the kids
for no pay. Women do most of the childrearing and most of it is
unpaid labour. Hence, women are economically oppressed, and this
oppression is fundamental to the stability of capitalism.

Queers are oppressed in this same way - many people, if left to their
own
devices without interference from the state and vile lies about the
morals of family values, would probably turn out to be bisexual. In
fact research suggests that sexuality is a continuum, not just the
three categories gay, straight, bi. Capitalism indoctrinates people
into heterosexuality in order to maintain the status quo. It would
not
be PROFITABLE to eliminate homophobia and sexism!!! This is why
they haven't been eliminated and won't be until people fight the
system
that requires them.

Now to discuss shy oppression and why I believe it is in the interests
of capitalists to oppress shy's, and the interests of capitalists to
encourage extraversion and discourage and marginalize introversion and
shyness.

Now that the "youth market" is so hugely profitable, it is in the
interests of clothing, music, makeup, etc, industries to tap this
market,
and to keep youth in slavery to pop culture. Shy oppression has never
been as bad as it is now and it ties in with the marketing of young
ppl
(especialy young women) and the marketing of sexuality. So
I want to say something about the "frat boy" culture exemplified by
MTV, and why
this culture is so hugely profitable to the corporatinos.

Pop culture
now is based on being young (under 25 I guess) and attractive. This
stereotype is especially enforced on women; I don't know why this is.
Anyway, music, clothing, makeup and shitty magazines make squillions
of dollars out of young women who are paranoid about their appearance
and the need to obtain self worth out of their clothes, body, and
general
"image". Since women are under such pressure to conform to the
stereotype (you know what this stereotype is... sarah michele gellar,
britney spears, xtina aguilera, et. al.) they will watch the movies
with
skinny white chicks like them, buy magazines that tell them how to be
skinny white chicks, wear clothing that the skinny white chicks wear,
diet
until they get an eating disorder, and all that crap. While I used to
harbor
intense (paralysing) resentment of people who do this kind of thing..
the
"cool" people, who wear the right clothes, listen to the right music,
look
the right way, are skinny, know fashion, are extraverts... Now after
I know more, I know it's because they're forced to do so by pop
culture, which profits the focus on our image.

Honestly, clothign, makeup and music companies make simply
absurd profits, and the way they do this is by exploiting youth
culture
by instituting paranoia and peer pressure to buy stuff.

[Andy Roginus]

In a vicious
circle, these companies flood us with advertizing, thus creating
culture
such as the brand concepts of Nike, McDonalds, and more friggin boy
bands than you can poke a stick at, all of which get incorporated into
culture. Simultaneously, this culture is exploited; the seeds are
sewn
by marketing and the creation of culture; (MTV, Nike's invasion and
co-option of college sport,
the exploitation of "feminism" a la Destiny's Child and Charlies'
Angels,
playing on young women's desire for strength and independence and
sexual attractiveness, all these images crafted to tap into our
desires)
and the crop of paranoia is reaped by consumerism.

Along with the
images of youth and attractiveness that get blasted at us constantly,
goes extraversion. There is a deep need to be extraverted, attractive
and sociable in society, and whilst these things are not bad in and of
themselves, their exploitation is bad, and the paranoia that it
entails
is bad for everyone, but especially those who don't fit the mould. In
this
way shy people are marginalized because they are not profitable.
Since
they don't fit into the mass-market mould, they're not useful to the
corporations, who can't persuade them that by buying product A,
going to nightclub B, drinking soft drink x, listening to band blah,
wearing clothing by whichever wanky designer you care to name, they
will fit in, because they've already been proved that they DON"T fit
in, and lots have given up. (Alternatively, they keep trying, and
they
DO buy product A, go to nightclub B, drink softdrink X, etc etc, in
an effort to "keep up". And they might try extra hard, to have all
the
clothes and look right, and provide the profits. But these people are
in a minority.) Im not saying there is a "shy market" that
corporations
directly tap into, but I hope that I have shown that shyness is not
conducive to profits, because generally shy people don't have the
ultra-profitable spending habits of the extraverted, which is largely
tied in to the entertainment industry, people who like
to party and socialize are extremely profitable people since they
spend a lot on entertainment, going out, shopping, clubbing, alcohol,
lots of profits are made by extraverts, and thus, shy
people will be automatically marginalized by capitalism because none
of the marketing (which is synonymous with culture) is aimed at them
(what
would be the point?)
Since pop culture,the greatest marketing lie of all,
is directly moulded and shaped for extraverted, attractive youth,
anyone
who does not fit this is not profitable. It would not be in the
intersests
of the capitalists to eliminate shy oppression (or marginalization, if
you
will) because that would entail being lax on the requirements to fit
in;
if the corps did that, it would slacken the pressure to spend spend
spend,
therefore it wont happen until we fight back, shys and nonshys alike
in
solidarity against the capitalist oppressors. extraverts don't
oppress shy people. Extraverts don't benefit from shy oppression -
corporations do. Extraverts are oppressed too and corporations reap
the profits from all of us.

Anyway the anticapitalist movement is growing with protests in lots
of cities against the capitalist exploiters. 300,000 people marched
in
Genoa against the G8 summit. The ppl are fighting back.

Later dpending on whether anyone reads this long ramble, I would
appreciate if someone willing to please pick holes in it since it is a
theory that I am trying to develop, and would be interested in
feedback, I will post about how in general, being an activist will
help to reduce alienation and free people from at least some mental
oppression, and how my own shyness is fading from becoming
politicized...

[GodHAMMER]

Well, it's my time for a little political discussion.

I'm afraid your arguments are only partially true. With respect to shyness and how it’s related to pop culture, you are basically right. I don’t like pop culture at all, because it’s so superficial, so hedonistic and somehow aggressive (see rap music for example) that the only thing I can do is just ignore it. After all, I‘m not the type that will fit in that model.

But what I may disagree upon is your political argumentation. I am as politically motivated as you are but I don’t take any active roll cause it would be a waste of time. Unlike you, I ‘m very afraid when I hear politicians speaking for us using arguments similar to yours. As far as I know, at least in my country (I’m form Peru), their solutions are always far worse than the disease they intend to cure. Say for example, they use that argument against “capitalists” to increase regulations. Beyond a certain point, it would mean more state-owned companies, increasing bureaucracies, rampant corruption, discretional decisions and the extensive use of political influence to discriminate against those who don’t share the views of incumbent leaders.

On the other hand, it’s not true that people are always exploited by capitalism. Currently, private jobs are often better paid than public jobs and offer a better labor environment (promotions, training, etc). The highest paid workers in the market are working for top private corporations such as Intel or Microsoft, just to name a few. These corporations also invest a lot in the way of research, training all of which increases human productivity and so they improve labor wages, something which the public sector almost never do. And at least in many developing countries, private corporations account for a good share of government revenues.

Obviously, there is a whole point to discuss about people being forced to work in jobs they don’t want, the viability of communism as a political system or the respect for sexual freedoms in autocratic states (e.g. persecution of gays in Cuba). There would be so much to say about this issues that I could create a whole new thread. But I want to stop right now just to sense people’s reactions cause I know this ain’t supposed to be a political forum and many of the guys will want to kick me off for my political opinions (**grins**). Anyway, political discussions are always interesting to me.