0:03

Fuck work.

0:07

Hey hey, hey, hey,

0:10

good introduction. I'm Robert Evans.

0:12

This is it could happen here. That was Chris Garrison's

0:15

also here, so is Sophie, who

0:17

is changing her name to Sophie. What

0:19

is your new name, Sophie dot Com Arena,

0:22

Sophie dot Com Arena. She's doing this to deal with

0:24

the trauma of the fact that Los Angeles just

0:26

agreed to change the name of the Chase Bank Arena

0:29

to the Crypto dot Com. Oh,

0:32

Staples Center, Sorry, I'm getting my arena's

0:35

named after venal brands mixed

0:37

uff. Speaking

0:42

of the pointlessness of work, there

0:44

are people laboring right now who

0:47

worked at Staples so that Staples would

0:49

have enough money to name a place where people go

0:51

do sports after a place where people get

0:54

fucking pencils um.

0:56

And now Staples has declined

0:59

enough at it's just crypto dot com.

1:01

Fucking Crypto dot com,

1:04

look upon, look upon the

1:06

worst cryptocurrency

1:09

e formerly Mighty Staples in despair,

1:13

fucking the Osmond Dius

1:15

of the office supply world. I don't know whatever

1:18

what are we talking about. We're

1:20

going to no that

1:23

comes in the middle, but right now we're

1:26

gonna go to a place where they banned crypto

1:28

mining for the most part. So and

1:30

that that places China, and

1:32

I wanted to talk about specifically

1:34

a lot of stuf us been going on the Chinese Internet, what's been

1:36

going on in Chinese labor because so

1:40

Garrison Garrison told me we're doing an at work episode

1:42

and I went, oh, yeah, there's a there's you know, there's

1:45

a version of this in China. And then I realized that like

1:48

a almost no one has heard of lying

1:50

flat and be it rules

1:53

and see that nobody really know in the US

1:55

knows what's going on in the Chinese Internet because it's

1:58

effectively siloed. And I mean, you know that there's

2:00

there's there's there's there's lots different ways to stile out. I mean

2:02

there's there's literally the Great Firewall. There's factors and

2:04

different languages, people use different apps, and you know, the Internet

2:06

has become this sort of like you know, it's

2:08

it's it's it's a bunch of bubbles that don't interact with each other.

2:11

Yeah, the wald Garden thing, and it's you know,

2:13

the sort of national level world

2:15

garden stuff is I

2:17

think, in a lot of ways, way more dangerous than

2:20

the stuff you know that, like people complaining about it was

2:22

sucking Audie logical bubble and like that's bad. But the

2:24

fact that we have bubbles

2:27

like this where it's like you know,

2:29

the like with with like actual they

2:31

basically borders but online yeah

2:33

yeah, because they're enforced by governments with force.

2:37

Yeah. Yeah, the place it was always going

2:39

to go. Um, once we decided

2:41

not to be rad with the Internet, which

2:43

everyone collectively decided in

2:46

I'm going to say one thousand four, Yeah,

2:51

do you think do you think? Do do you think? Do

2:53

you think? That was nine eleven fault

2:56

nine eleven played a role. Nine eleven did

2:58

play a role. Um, the dot com

3:00

boom played another role. Um, there

3:02

were there there, There were a number of factors.

3:06

Um, but we can all

3:08

blame it on let's

3:10

blame it on low tax and continue. So

3:12

anti work in China before we

3:14

get into lying flat, which is China's

3:17

version of anti work, isn't the right word because

3:20

this actually started a few months before

3:22

sort of anti work blew up in the US.

3:25

But before we fully get into that. To

3:28

understand what's going on here, we need to talk about something called

3:30

involution. And did

3:32

you say that again? Like evil

3:35

involution

3:36

in involution,

3:39

Yeah, so this this, this is this is originally this

3:41

is a very obscure anthropological term

3:43

developed by my old nemesis, Clifford Geertz,

3:46

who's one of the most famous

3:48

and most important anthropologists in history, who

3:50

also sucks ass and I hate him. I

3:52

thought your nemesis was Noam Chomsky.

3:56

Yes, also, but for different reasons. Should

3:58

I cancel the hit sub

4:01

sub nemesis something I I

4:03

have many I have many nemesses that I

4:05

have been on the side O God

4:07

here Jody Dean episode at some point. Now,

4:12

thank you. I appreciate allies

4:14

in my one person intellectual wars,

4:17

although this does seem to be a pretty boring intellectual

4:19

war, yeah, said

4:22

most of them. Yeah

4:26

yeah, but what what what Gears was describing?

4:28

Basically, so she doesn't feel work in Java? And

4:30

what are you describing? What what involution

4:32

means? It's the system where people keep working harder

4:35

and harder for there's no increase in output, and

4:37

so that there's no there's no rewards for working harder,

4:39

and so you know, in Java you'd have these

4:41

plantations, right, and the plantations would get bigger and bigger

4:43

and bigger and bigger. But because each new

4:46

person was only like harvesting just enough

4:48

to feed themselves, you never actually

4:50

got any productivity increases. And so you

4:53

know, yeah, there's no there's no output increases and

4:56

in not really the case in America in a lot

4:58

of ways. Yeah, and what's

5:01

interesting, Well, okay, So the reason I

5:03

want to talk about this also is because basically

5:05

everyone who's been writing

5:07

about this formation news outlets has missed about

5:10

half of the story of how how this like incredibly

5:12

obscure anthropological term that like I

5:15

don't like again, I was an anthropology major. I don't

5:17

think I ever ran into involution while like while I was studying

5:19

anthropology. Yeah,

5:21

and no one has ever heard of this, Like fucking everyone

5:24

in China has like

5:26

like a treatise they can spout at you about this

5:28

now. Um.

5:31

Yeah, and and you know, I want to talk a bit about how

5:33

to emerge. And part of this is because

5:37

you know, in the last about two years, people

5:39

will be getting increasingly piste off at

5:42

you know, just the sort of incredibly competitive nature

5:44

of Chinese society and particularly work. And

5:46

you know, a lot of this is because everyone's

5:48

working what's what's called which

5:51

is nine am to nine PM six days a week. And

5:53

she actually didn't make this good. When I say everyone, that's

5:56

like an average schedule. The schedules get a lot

5:58

worse than that. But in the nine six is the

6:00

one that sort of gets the attention because

6:02

a lot of people work it, especially the tech industry.

6:04

This is you know, we do, but you know, everyone

6:06

focused on the tech industry, everyone ignores a bunch of

6:08

myrket workers who also do this and worse.

6:11

And you know, there's just a normal societal

6:13

pressure to sort of keep moving and keep competing

6:15

and keep working. And simultaneously, you know,

6:18

people in China today are working like

6:20

basically as hard as anyone's worked

6:23

in China since like people would literally

6:25

collapse and missastion in the fields and the great leap

6:27

forward, Like that's

6:29

lots of people are working this hard. And but

6:33

but instead of you know, getting rewards for this, Chinese

6:35

growth rates have been collapsing for a decade.

6:38

And yeah, this is you know, this is

6:40

this is the thing that you get. In the U s too, was like, well, okay, people

6:42

were like, well, if you work out to get into the middle class,

6:44

but then you know everyone's working nine

6:47

six. No one's getting into the widdle class,

6:49

the like China has incredibly

6:51

low rates of social ability, and

6:55

you know it into this comes involution. But

6:58

the weird part of what's happening year is that

7:00

involution doesn't

7:02

enter the Chinese

7:05

discourse through like people complaining

7:07

about work. It's it's actually a product

7:10

of a bunch of middle class people complaining about

7:12

Chinese industrial policy. And this is the hardest

7:14

story that nobody really talks about, even though I think it's it's

7:16

really interesting because again

7:19

like this, you know, anti anti work in the

7:21

U s RS and the left right involution,

7:24

which is the thing that's going to bring about sort of the Chinese

7:27

version of anti work is the right way is originally

7:29

a right wing discourse, um

7:31

and and and it's interesting, it's it's it's a right wing, very

7:33

nationalist discourse that gets you

7:36

know, the right wing part of it gets essentially expunged

7:38

and it gets pulled left. So originally,

7:41

you know, China is I

7:44

don't have a more elegant way of saying this than

7:47

China's leaders, and more online than ours,

7:49

like significantly more like they Actually that's

7:52

hard, that's hard to bash it.

7:55

It's people

7:57

people like like local government offices

8:00

right have like they have these like

8:02

internal sites that like show them

8:04

what people are posting. And this this goes from

8:06

the from the bottom levels, it goes away to the top. Like people

8:08

actually listen to bloggers, like

8:11

like they're there, you know some of them, some of the people I'm

8:14

about to talk about it are incredibly influential. And there's

8:16

a bunch of arguments in the early two thousands about how China is

8:18

gonna industrialize and these are basically

8:21

online arguments. Um

8:24

and the guys who win that argument, she

8:27

Shanping basically takes their industrial policy

8:29

and implements it, which is you know,

8:31

which is which is scales Like how online these people are that Like,

8:33

yeah, people are taking economic policy from like literally,

8:36

I mean, you know, it's it's not solely up. I don't take acon on policy

8:38

people arguing on the internet. Right this is

8:40

this is an incredibly online society and

8:43

it you know, but the worst part

8:45

is that for a while it works. You

8:47

know that their econart policy basically is they're gonna increases

8:49

size of the Chinese economy by investing in sort of high

8:51

tech industry and moving up the value chain. This is this has

8:53

been very standards or Chinese second on policy for a while.

8:56

Um, the problem is in the last about decade,

8:59

it's it's it's after working. And

9:02

you know the CCPs response was to do more financialization,

9:04

and this piste off the like the the online

9:07

they were called like the Industrial Party. This this this is off

9:09

those guys because you know, the whole thing was don't

9:11

financialize, just keep investing in like building

9:14

airplanes and stuff, and the Chinese economies will

9:16

work itself out. And

9:18

but eventually even they can't keep making

9:21

this argument because you know, I mean like

9:23

like he doesn't tend right, Like the Chinese GDP

9:25

growth rate was ten percent and now

9:27

it's like maybe five and last year, I mean

9:30

last yearwies, so you know it was really

9:32

low. But I mean the Chinese growth rate has

9:34

been imploding. And

9:36

so what you get out of this is is this group of people

9:39

called the Taoists based

9:41

on this guy named cow Okay, So,

9:43

so how's the guy who who who essentially

9:45

introduces the concept of involution

9:48

and he's arguing that this

9:51

is happening. Because I'm gonna quote

9:53

him here, people can't

9:55

get quote a peaceful life, get a

9:57

pretty girl, live in a big house because

10:00

of the US. And so the solution

10:02

to this basically is is to deal with like

10:04

to destroy America as a hedgemon. And then once

10:06

you do that, you know, you can get all

10:09

of these things. And as you can tell, like, you know, okay, peaceful

10:12

life, get a pretty girl, live in a big house. This this is

10:14

like a very conservative framing of this. Yeah,

10:17

yeah, I mean this is this is the Chinese equivalent of two

10:19

point five kids in a a white picket fence. And it has all

10:21

of this sort of associated gender politics and class

10:23

politics to go along with that. And

10:25

you know, and when when Cow and the cows are talking

10:27

about involution, what they're talking about is they

10:30

literally they literally means Chinese technated economy,

10:32

right, so that they're talking about, Okay, that you have more inputs, you have

10:34

labor, technology inputs, but the output for input is

10:36

declining, and the only way to restore economic growth

10:38

the chief prosperity is by solving

10:41

a decline output by defeating the Americans.

10:44

But you know, and and this this is kind

10:46

of a big deal. And for a while, in sort of like twenty

10:49

this this is, this is going places,

10:52

but very quickly people are like, my

10:54

life fucking sucks, Like I don't

10:56

care about this econ ship or this like grand

10:59

national struggle against the world hedgemon, Like

11:01

I care about the fact that, like my life is

11:03

this incredibly pointless, ever escalating rat

11:05

race with like literally no rewards. Yeah,

11:08

that would that would concern me too, if

11:10

that were a thing that we were capable of feeling

11:12

in our country. Yeah, it's why

11:15

there's there's been some really funny stuff with involution where

11:17

like you read accounts of it and

11:20

you'll get like anthropologists going like,

11:22

oh, yeah, this is this is the thing that this is the thing that's

11:24

unique to China, and it's like have have

11:26

you worked a job in

11:28

in the US? Like but

11:32

you know involution,

11:34

you know what happens to it over over the course

11:36

of sort of it goes from being

11:38

the general you know, it goes it goes

11:40

from being this thing that's about like very

11:42

specific like technical industrial arguments

11:44

about industrial policy too. Is

11:47

when one anthropologists put it, quote

11:49

the experience of being locked in competition

11:51

that one ultimately knows as meaningless. And

11:55

so people, yeah, we

11:57

could we couldn't imagine that this is yeah,

12:01

and it's you know, and people people start talking

12:03

about finding individual solutions to

12:05

this, and so you know, then this is things like

12:07

working last moving to lower tier city, is getting

12:10

less protgious jobs. Um.

12:13

But you know, and I want to think about this again because

12:15

this this is a really interesting thing

12:18

where you have a

12:20

very incredibly right wing, nationalistic

12:23

and sort of like like middle class

12:25

like nostalgia kind of like you

12:28

know, like Milt

12:31

aggressive foreign policy thing and

12:33

then it just flips and

12:36

and part of how it flips, and this is a part

12:38

of the story that is almost

12:41

completely ignored, but I think it's really important.

12:43

Did you guys know about this? The YouTuber named leads

12:46

It. She she's the biggest Chinese

12:48

YouTuber. She has sixteen million followers, and

12:50

most of her followers are not on YouTube

12:52

because you know, YouTube like blocked by the firewall. But

12:55

she has she has fifty five million

12:58

followers on the the

13:00

sort of Chinese version of TikTok, and

13:02

yeah, she has across the world. She has a hundred

13:04

million followers, right like she she's she's one of

13:06

the biggest media stars in the world. And her

13:09

origins are kind of unclear. The like official

13:11

biography basically says that like when

13:13

she was twelve, instead of going to high school. She's being a waitress,

13:16

and then she had to like you know, but she she she'd gone

13:18

to the city, and then she had to return to Realville to take care

13:20

of her grandma. And she makes these videos

13:22

that are these like very soft

13:25

and calming videos or like calming music

13:27

of her going into the woods and like harvesting

13:29

materials and making fires out of logs

13:31

and like cooking things. Okay,

13:34

and it's it's it's just like it's you know, it's it's very much

13:36

this this really utopianism. There's there's basically

13:39

no industrial technology like

13:41

Cottage corp returned to nature.

13:44

Yeah. Yeah, I know a lot of people who watched

13:46

it like that just to like soothe them after a day

13:48

of work. Like see somebody like dig

13:51

a cave and turn it into like a bath or

13:53

something using just hand tools or whatever.

13:55

Yeah, And there's it's interesting this kind of it's almost like

13:57

turned into a sub genre. But she's

14:00

by far the biggest

14:03

like version of this. And

14:05

you know, so she she gets picked up by a media company

14:07

and from goes viral,

14:10

and you know, its interesting

14:12

because so she's doing this because so

14:14

she she has to go back to take care of her grandma,

14:17

and so she like opens a store and

14:19

she's trying to support herself but in like her grandma by

14:21

opening a store. And so the videos were like a way to promote

14:23

the store. And then you know, now

14:25

she has a hundred million followers and she she gets a

14:27

doctored as this kind of like like national

14:30

culture ambassador, I guess by the state.

14:33

Sure, And and it's just you know, so there's nothing

14:35

overtally political about these videos at all, right,

14:37

which is especially offering and like trying to sell

14:39

is this you know, this like fantasy of retreat from

14:41

industrial majority into world life. And I

14:44

think it's really easy to look at that esthetic and go like this

14:46

is basically fascist, Like this is rejecting majority embraced

14:49

here issues. Some people online when they

14:51

see that immediately sees off. I was like, oh

14:53

no, it's eco fascism, yes that

14:57

yeah, And I think, you know, and I think like

14:59

that interpretation think is actually a lot

15:01

of y I got picked up by the Chinese, by Chinese media

15:03

companies and then like sort of by the Chinese state because

15:06

you know, like having an actual positive

15:08

utopian image of rural life is politically easeul

15:10

with them, and something that's like not hasn't been true

15:13

since like we've

15:15

had this for a long time. Yeah,

15:17

well no, and I think I would say this this. I think this is the

15:20

thing that's different in China is that there hasn't been like

15:22

a positive conception of rural life really

15:24

since I guess

15:27

the Great Leap Forwards and then are like there

15:29

there were some people in the Cultural Revolution, but then they actually went there

15:31

and we're like, oh god, this sucks, and

15:33

so you know, so they didn't need a new one. They come up with

15:35

this. But you know, the

15:38

thing that's different about China than

15:40

the US is that China's

15:42

market worker population like is

15:44

almost the entire size of the population of the US.

15:47

I mean it's it's like two seventy million people, right,

15:49

I mean it's it's enormous and and a huge number of these

15:51

people. You know, I'm some of these people are going from

15:53

like city to city. You're like town of town, but a lot of these

15:55

people are coming from from rural villages into

15:57

cities. And you know, I mean these

15:59

are this this is the background of the Chinese workforce. And like these

16:01

people like they see their family once a year

16:04

because you know, like they can't

16:06

afford to go home. So they go home once a year for

16:09

New Year's because they get some time. Often they come back and and

16:11

this is where you

16:13

know, like these videos are obvious

16:15

fantasy, but you know, they suggest

16:17

an alternative to work in the capitalist city that's sort

16:19

of plausible, you know, especially if you come from rural village.

16:22

And this is where this whole thing completely

16:25

backfires on the Chinese ruling class.

16:28

And you know, because this this this this

16:30

cowisted involution discourse is about diffuse

16:33

with this style of rural rural

16:35

utopianism into a movement that is going to shake the

16:37

foundation of work itself. But first,

16:40

but first, ads again

16:42

also not connecting to anything we're talking

16:45

Connectionever, why Garrison don't

16:47

even bring that up. There's no needs, there's

16:49

no reason for people to think about about

16:52

the fact that about that. Don't think anyway,

16:54

here's about ads.

16:57

Yeah, think about the Washington State

16:59

Highway, but role primary sponsors.

17:01

If it could happen here, if it happens

17:03

to you, you'll want the

17:06

Washington State Highway,

17:08

patrol the border.

17:11

It's so funny. Anyway, We're

17:13

trying, but I think it's we're

17:16

working on it. People. I think it's hilarious.

17:19

Yeah, please don't, please

17:21

don't join the Washington State Highway Patrol.

17:34

Ah, we're back. And I don't

17:36

know about y'all, but I thought I

17:38

knew what I was talking about, and I after

17:40

those ads, I am fully Washington State

17:42

Highway Patrol build. I'm on board.

17:45

Let's do it. Yeah. In April,

17:48

a guy in Chinese social media makes a post and I'm

17:50

just gonnae

17:55

So, yeah, I'm just gonna read this post because it's kind of short

17:57

and it rules. I haven't been working

17:59

for two years. I have just been hanging around,

18:01

and I don't see anything wrong with This pressure

18:04

mainly comes from the generation with your peers and

18:06

the values of the older generation. These

18:08

pressures keep popping up, but we

18:10

don't have to abide by these norms. I can live

18:12

like Diogenes and sleep in a wooden bucket.

18:16

I can live like Heracleitus in a cave thinking

18:18

about logos. Since this land has never

18:20

had a school thought that upholds human subjectivity,

18:22

I can develop one of my own. Lying

18:24

down is my philosophical movements. Only through

18:27

lying flat can humans become the measure of all

18:29

things based. Oh my

18:31

god, that's the best. I

18:33

love that. Can I talk about Diogenes

18:36

now, My

18:39

my man Diogenes is he's

18:41

from this trennd in Greek philosophical

18:44

thought during kind of the high period of Greek

18:46

civilization where a

18:49

bunch of things come out of it. You kind of get anarchism,

18:51

Western anarchism out of it, You kind

18:53

of get you get elements of

18:56

like Puritan culture from it, because there

18:58

are a lot of them are very much anti like the

19:00

the pleasures of sex and like anything pleasing,

19:02

and like you don't you don't do anything that feels

19:04

good because then you become dependent on it. Like there's a whole bunch

19:06

of ship going on um. And Diogenes

19:09

was like one of the one of the first motherfucker's

19:11

who were kind of playing around in this in

19:13

this philosophical space. And

19:16

when he gets into so his early

19:18

life is his dad is uh

19:22

kind of a grifter. It sounds like we

19:24

know that he got in trouble. He and

19:26

his dad got exiled for debasing

19:28

currency, which could be as

19:30

simple as they were watering down

19:33

for lack of a better term, like the gold or silver

19:35

and currency with less precious metals and hiding

19:37

it in order to make a profit. Right, and

19:39

like keep the extra gold. That could be what

19:41

they were doing. It also could have been like it

19:44

could have been political, because some people who were

19:46

doing this in Sinope, I think is

19:48

the city which is now in Turkey. We're doing

19:50

it for political reasons. We don't really know why.

19:52

But there's actual documented archaeological evidence

19:55

of this, including right around the time he would have been a child,

19:57

we found from that period a cash

20:00

of debased gold and silver

20:02

coins that had been destroyed, so someone had like

20:04

realized they've been debased and destroyed

20:06

them so they couldn't be used. So there's evidence. Anyway,

20:08

he and his dad get exiled, which means from an early

20:11

stage he goes from being someone of means,

20:13

if your dad's making the currency, you're

20:15

not probably not like a poor family

20:18

um. And then they get

20:20

kicked out of their city state and they're like kind of stateless.

20:23

And so Diogenes evolves

20:26

over time and like gets into philosophy. He

20:28

tries to there's this I always forget the name of the

20:30

guy that he he loved it first, but there's this

20:32

philosopher who's like, you know this cynical

20:35

like that's the school of thought he comes from he's like a

20:37

cynic um that Diogenes really wants

20:39

to study from, and the guy like assaults him as

20:42

as Diogenes is like, hey, man, I want to learn from

20:44

you. Like he like hits him or something. This

20:46

keeps happening, and eventually he's like this

20:49

guy is like why do you keep doing this? And Diogenes

20:51

is like, you have something I can learn

20:54

from, uh, And so I don't really care what you do to

20:56

me. I'm gonna I'm gonna keep persisting. And so he becomes

20:58

this guy's student, YadA YadA. And the guy

21:00

who he becomes the student of is like kind

21:02

of a poser because he's talking about, like we

21:04

need to give up you know, these kind of like pleasures

21:06

of of like civilized life and and

21:09

return to a more simple time and like

21:11

not enjoy all of these, you know, the benefits

21:13

of wealth. But he like he's also a rich guy and

21:15

he doesn't give up his money, and Diogenes

21:17

is like poor as hell um and stays

21:20

that way um. And so he becomes

21:22

famous for he goes to Athens and he becomes famous

21:24

for a bunch of like troll ship we don't

21:26

actually have. He wrote like ten books we

21:28

don't have any of them, so we don't actually

21:30

like know what he actually wrote in

21:33

his philosophy. We just have stories

21:35

from other philosophers and it's all Diogenes

21:37

being a fucking troll. So like um

21:40

on one occasion, he

21:42

one of his big things was he believed that people

21:45

that if if something was an acceptable

21:47

behavior, it was an acceptable behavior everywhere,

21:50

right, And so the start of this was in

21:52

in Athens, you were supposed to go buy your food

21:54

in the market, but you weren't supposed to eat it

21:56

there. That was like considered rude, like

21:58

like like like kind of seen almost,

22:01

and Diogenes would like get food and then

22:03

usually by begging, because he was that was the way he got

22:05

everything. He had no money. He would like get food

22:07

and he would eat it right in the middle of the market, and everybody

22:10

was like, that's disgusting, and Diogenes would be like,

22:12

well, if it's okay for me to eat, it must be

22:14

okay for me to eat here. That's great.

22:16

Diogenes took it a little bit further than that, because

22:19

yeah, yeah, I can see a few ways you can

22:21

take this. He extended that too, if

22:23

it's fine for me to urinator ship. It's fine

22:25

for me to do it anywhere. He

22:29

defended himself masturbating it. You

22:31

can get people in public as if

22:33

this is okay for me to do in my bedroom,

22:36

why can't I do this here? Right? Um,

22:39

it's very like he's he's he's a troll

22:41

um Diogenes, and he's also like

22:44

again, the stories we have him is he is

22:46

like uber an aesthetic, so

22:48

like at one point, for a long time, the only

22:50

thing he owns is a wooden bowl

22:53

that's his cup and and for his food. And

22:55

then, according to you know

22:57

legend, he sees this poor peasant child

23:00

drinking from like cupped hands and he throws away

23:02

his bowl and he's really angry and he's like, god,

23:04

damn it, I spent all this effort carrying around something

23:06

useless, like I could put ship in my

23:08

hands. He's

23:11

he's a very entertaining character and

23:13

a very like yeah,

23:16

yeah, he's absolutely an eugle um

23:19

and he's yeah, he's just kind of like an

23:21

endearing piece of shit, is like his the

23:25

idea you get, but also like smarter

23:27

than I mean, because because fundamentally

23:30

what Diagenes is doing is he's he's

23:32

saying like, hey, all this stuff that we think is important

23:34

and good about our culture and and like valuable.

23:38

What if it wasn't, what if none of it matters. He's

23:40

like he's provoking the thick and he's

23:42

he's big into like one of his his Like

23:44

the things he comes back to a lot is that like, dogs

23:47

are clearly happier than us and like better

23:49

creatures than us, so we should just seek to be like

23:51

dogs. Um. And one

23:54

of the ways he might have died is getting bitten by

23:56

a dog and his bike getting infective. We don't really

23:58

know how he died. Um. Everything about

24:00

Theogenes, this guy fucking hates

24:03

rich people. Oh he's

24:06

he's and he's very funny

24:09

about it. So Alexander the Great apocryphal

24:11

Lee Maybe this probably never happened, but the story

24:13

is that Alexander the Great comes to Athens,

24:16

you know, while he's on his his blitz

24:19

through conquering the known world, and

24:21

finds Diogenes. And Alexander the Great was like raised

24:23

by Aristotle, right, so he knows his philosophy.

24:26

Guys like he's he's he's

24:28

seeking Diogenes out because he's a fan

24:30

of this dude. Probably through stories that

24:32

were told to him in the same way that like I'm

24:34

telling them to you now. So he comes up to

24:36

Diogenes and he's like, oh my god, I'm Alexander

24:39

the Great. I'm a big fan. If I couldn't

24:41

be Alexander the Great, I would want to be Diogenes

24:44

um. And Diogenes response, well, if I couldn't

24:46

be Diogenes, I would just want to be

24:48

Diogenes, which is a fucking

24:50

flex Again, probably never happened,

24:53

but like, I want to, I want

24:55

to read this meme that Garrison

24:57

sent me because it it

25:00

happens. It's absolutely a perfect riptan to what

25:02

what this whole thing is sort of about. So

25:04

okay, this is me. The philosopher Diogenes

25:07

was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was

25:09

seen by the philosopher and not a process gust name

25:11

Aristippus, who lives matter

25:14

some dead ass Greek guy

25:16

who's about to get absolutely destroyed. He's

25:18

living comfortably like flattering

25:20

the king. Aristipis says,

25:23

if you would learn to be subservient to the king, you would

25:25

not have to live on lentils. Diogenes should

25:27

flied, learn to live on lentils,

25:30

and you will not have to be subservient to the king.

25:32

Oh, all

25:35

sorts of based ship like that my favorite.

25:37

But know so our guy Plato

25:40

is like, is like trying to determine, trying

25:43

to define like a human in the simplest way

25:45

possible. Yes, yeah, like the Platonic

25:47

idea. And he was, so he comes to the inclusion that like,

25:50

well, it's a it's a it's a it's an

25:52

unwinged biped um, and Diogenes

25:54

supposedly goes grabs a plucked chicken

25:57

and says, behold a man, Like

26:00

I found it, dude, rules

26:03

um. He would he would famously

26:06

walk around town in broad daylight with like

26:08

a what do you call it, like a lantern,

26:11

like looking around and people like, what are you looking for? It's

26:13

like I'm looking for a man. He would like, look at a dude,

26:15

and you're like, I'm looking for a man. And as

26:18

it is to say, like, none of your motherfucker's are people

26:20

like you all think that you're human beings, but you're really

26:22

just pieces of ship. It's just an

26:24

amazing asshole. Sorry that that we

26:26

should move back to anti work, but that's

26:31

yeah, yeah, but and this is this is the funny that both

26:33

both both American and Chinese like anti

26:35

work people both fucking love Diogenes.

26:40

Yeah, you know, very popular on our

26:42

slash anti work. Yeah, and

26:45

you know, and the thing I was reading about

26:47

the like, you know, learn to live on lentils and you'll never

26:50

like after such a game by King that

26:52

that's a lot of what lying

26:54

down becomes. So very rapidly, this

26:57

whole thing spreads into

27:00

you this like

27:02

really it's a sort of astounding,

27:05

you know, it starts out of the meme and it spreads incredibly

27:07

quickly, and the CCP

27:09

gets like really really mad

27:11

about this. Um so, so

27:14

it's like so this this starts in April, right, and

27:16

in May there's they have this like enormous

27:18

media blitz where like

27:20

like the party is like outlet

27:22

basically, and Guandong publishes like a four

27:25

page long attack on the concept of lying

27:27

down, Like the cc They the newspapers

27:29

everywhere published this stuff. Like the CCP like bands

27:31

the term flat wheat yet Yeah,

27:34

and it's funny because it's like if they do this, but it's too late,

27:36

like it's yeah,

27:39

and you know, so so

27:42

part part of a lying down is is about, you know, you have

27:44

this incredibly fast paced intense work culture. You

27:46

have involution, you're working more and more and you're getting

27:49

nothing out of it. Lying flat is just going

27:51

no, like you just lie down, you refuse

27:53

to work. But it's it's it's

27:55

also it's more than that. And I think this is this goes back to the

27:57

sort of broader conception of anti work. So on

27:59

one of the slogans of this

28:01

movement is don't bribe property,

28:04

don't buy a car, don't get married, don't

28:06

have children, and don't consume. And

28:09

you know, the last part of this is implied is don't work.

28:12

And you know, there's a lot sort of going

28:14

on here. I mean, you have you know, it's

28:17

not just sort of a critique of like we

28:19

work too hard. It's about you know, it's about

28:21

the sort of fall system. It's about the sort of patriarchy

28:23

involved in this. It's about this sort of like force capitalist

28:25

consumption. And it's about like, you

28:28

know, the fact that like literally

28:31

a quarter of Chinese of China's economy

28:33

or Chinese GDP is like all

28:35

this real estate bullshit that everyone

28:37

knows is going to collapse and even when it gets

28:39

built, like sucks. Thank god, we don't

28:41

have anything like that here. Yeah, I know, it's great.

28:43

It's one of one of the fun things about learding histories.

28:46

You get to just watch every country do exactly

28:48

the same thing with their housing market, like Japan

28:50

do it. It's like, it's great, It's just like

28:53

you also you think this will work. What

28:55

what what extra fun thing is you get to watch

28:57

every country do the same thing with farms and

29:00

it always ended the same anyway.

29:05

Yeah, So there's there's a lot of you know, in

29:09

order to sort of like facilitate this, you know, you get

29:11

back to the Diogenes, So a lot of it what's happening

29:14

is people sharing tips about how to

29:16

make the cheapest food you can possibly survive

29:19

on so you don't have to work, and

29:21

so, you know, and people the

29:24

guy who wrote the Diogenes post like

29:26

he spends thirty dollars a month and

29:28

he does this by only eating dried ramen and

29:30

eggs and like rice.

29:34

Yeah, yeah, it's the way to do it.

29:39

This is like the most extreme example. I actually,

29:41

I don't even think it's the most atreme example. A lot of people. One

29:46

of the things that happens a lot is munch of people just like have left

29:48

their jobs to become monks. This this

29:50

is like a whole thing Buddhist,

29:53

like honestly, like

29:56

absolutely, like and I

29:59

used to live in a place in the middle

30:01

of fucking nowhere, one of the most like

30:03

isolated places I've ever lived

30:05

that like had power um

30:08

and one of the people who was like by neighbor,

30:10

they were within several miles of us, was

30:12

a monastery. This is in the United States,

30:15

and like I went there once too because I heard

30:17

they made good wine to try and get some of their wine, and

30:19

like none of them would answer the door. I could see them

30:21

inside all staring at me. They

30:24

didn't do ship and my my overwhelming

30:26

thought was like, yeah, that seems like a pretty good

30:28

way to do it. Yeah, yeah,

30:31

I see why you guys have picked

30:33

this life. It was also during the election

30:36

back from the r n C and the d

30:38

n C and was like, yeah, that seems smarter

30:41

than what I'm doing. Yeah.

30:44

So there's a lot of you know, yeah, that'd mean

30:46

the stream example, like if people going to become monks. But like

30:48

one of the things that's happening a lot is again

30:50

you know, China hasn't known it mactworker population

30:53

and people are just like fuck

30:55

this, I'm going back to my village and

30:58

so and you know, and this is you know, this this, this is where

31:00

they really screwed up with the YouTube stuff because you

31:03

know, people were people, you know, they

31:05

were gambling that that you know, you could

31:07

just sell this as an aesthetic and you know, you can sell

31:09

it as an aesthetic like Chinese

31:11

TikTok has this integrated thing in it where like

31:14

if you if you if you plug like something

31:16

to buy it, like

31:18

you can like click it and it'll just it'll

31:20

take you like to a link like to to

31:22

to to the thing it's selling, you

31:25

know. And so yeah, they're making a no amount of money on this, but

31:27

you know, the the the other side of that sword

31:29

is a bunch of people were like, I don't have

31:31

to work this Like I don't

31:34

have to work in a city. I

31:36

can just go home. Yeah,

31:39

and you know, and you know, and you know, so you know, as

31:41

you're talking about the antiwork stuff, it's not actually

31:43

possible for a lot of people

31:46

to leave their jobs. So the

31:49

solution to this was there

31:51

there's a culture that developed called petting

31:53

fish, which and

31:55

but but before you talking about petting fish, you

31:57

said something about, uh, plug

32:00

things on TikTok and you know who you know, you

32:02

know like plugging like advertisements, and

32:04

you know who also plugs plugs

32:06

advertisements. Chris, Oh no, is it us

32:10

Joe Rogan. But our new sponsor

32:12

is the Joe Rogan Experience, brought

32:15

to you by Honda. Honda Drive

32:18

a Car, Do Fascism?

32:21

Honda? Really yeah, Honda

32:24

Garrison. Look, we don't We're not nearly a big enough

32:26

podcast to get fucking to

32:28

get a Toyota ad Are you crazy?

32:31

Yeah, that's what we can dream big.

32:33

Yeah, I mean that is the dream to sell

32:35

Toyota's. I

32:38

mean we could become used car salesman

32:40

in the valley. All right,

32:42

here's that ah

32:58

right back, cut the heat and fish handle

33:01

it to

33:04

keep it all in baby. Yeah.

33:07

So there's there's all this thing called the petting fish,

33:09

which is like Chinese slack off culture, and you know a

33:11

lot of people sharing tips abo how to slack off at work, and

33:13

it's it's kind of the equivalent like

33:16

I love that it's called petting fish. And then

33:18

also like yeah, it's it's kind

33:20

of the Chinese equivalent of like boss makes a dollar, I

33:22

make a dime. That's why shoot on company time. So

33:25

people do just a lot of like they have a lot of like

33:27

genuinely fun things they do. Like people people started

33:30

putting like fake beatings on their

33:32

calendars and people wouldn't bother them. They

33:34

like they just like like, that's that is

33:36

also that's that's that's also what I do. Yeah,

33:39

yeah, I mean the if you want to make I

33:41

love the term petting fish as well, but if you want

33:43

to like make it sound cool. They're waging

33:46

an insurgency from within capitalism

33:48

by by by trying to take

33:51

resources away from their employers,

33:53

um without being spotted. Yeah,

33:55

there's a there's a thing in volume one of Capital about

33:58

this that I was like, I

34:00

could pull this up, and then I was like, that is too much

34:02

work. I'm not going to do it. So I don't have the thing in volume

34:04

one where talks about struggling between

34:06

about labor time. But instead you get a bunch

34:08

of people like the Smike, smuggling whiskey into work,

34:11

taking through our lunch breaks. My favorite one,

34:13

absolutely favorite drink at

34:15

work, especially if your

34:18

nurse, Oh

34:20

boy, you've probably killed about fifty

34:23

people crossed

34:25

fingers crossed, so you

34:27

know how like companies all have these like these

34:30

really annoying like mindfulness fitness things.

34:33

So one of these people started doing was okay, so you

34:35

know the thing like you have to drink eight hour, eight times

34:37

a day. So they would set these alarms

34:40

that's like, oh, I have to go drink my water. And so like every

34:42

like every like fifty minutes or something, they

34:44

just go up and like spend twenty minutes getting water

34:47

and they sit back down, and it's like you've

34:49

just eviscerated and enormous part of your work day.

34:52

And and the product of this, you know, this CP is

34:54

really piste off about this, and you know, you get these giant

34:57

billboards to say no lying flat, no

34:59

petting fish on him or something. It would

35:01

have been literally incomprehensible like a year

35:03

ago. It's

35:06

amazing. And you

35:08

know, and I think this is something you know in

35:10

the U. S anti work, like the actual political

35:13

class kind of has been ignoring in I mean,

35:15

you see a couple of f acial antists in China,

35:17

che Ching Ping like made a speech.

35:20

It was like, you know, he have a private speech to a bunch

35:22

of how people in the party, and so

35:24

a part of it a printed like a

35:26

month ago or something I've I've lost track

35:28

of all time. But like like like specifically

35:31

in this speech that Ches and Ping is making that is

35:33

published in the official like theoretical

35:35

journal, he's like explicitly

35:37

saying like don't lie flat and saying quote

35:40

happy life is earned through heart, hard

35:42

work. And yeah, and

35:44

he's also has this, he has his ranch. But like denouncing

35:46

welfare ism, which is great

35:49

the the communist vanguard there.

35:51

Yeah, yeah, preaching the immortal science.

35:54

Yeah, socialism

35:57

with Chinese characteristics. Motherfucker's don't

35:59

be a welfare queen. Fo. It's

36:02

great, you know, but it's interesting people.

36:05

This is the one people are really freaked out about. Like I

36:07

saw I saw like an American writer about this,

36:09

who you know, They wrote like an article about this whole

36:11

thing, and then they were like this is gonna

36:14

this is gonna cause inflation. It's

36:17

like, this is gonna be the driver of like

36:19

what people just use the word

36:21

inflation to mean whatever scary thing

36:23

they want. Yeah, well they're they're like, oh, this will this

36:25

will increase wages and that will lead to inflation and we'll

36:28

get the seventies again. And I'm like, god,

36:32

maybe, but a tallow disco again, did you

36:34

ever think of that guy that

36:36

we that were are reserves of a tallow

36:39

disco are critically low? Do

36:42

you wonder what a tallow disco is? No idea,

36:45

that's a shame. All right, let's continue what

36:47

what what type of like is there is there like any like

36:49

you said this kind of stuff started to like move

36:51

left words. Is there any like actual like leftist organizing

36:53

in these types of places? So so this

36:55

is the thing I was getting to, which is that, like, you know, people

36:58

are starting to do reading groups. But the problem, the problem

37:00

with leftist organizing in China is that, you

37:02

know, so state policy in the past three years has

37:05

been like if you poke your head above ground, you

37:07

get arrested. So you know, I mean, for

37:10

example, there was there was a strike at Jasick

37:12

and you know a bunch of student groups who've been

37:15

organizing for a long time like tried to do all

37:17

dreaty with it, and they all got arrested. The people

37:19

who are stri people who let the strike got arrested. All that. The

37:21

students who are doing so ald already got arrested. People

37:23

like people got arrested for like

37:25

like dancing with like University students

37:27

got arrested for like dancing with the people who

37:29

were like cleaning the floors. Yeah.

37:34

Yeah,

37:36

yeah, like the emotional impression,

37:39

yeah, like it's it's incredible and like,

37:41

you know, and the other thing that you can

37:43

see about this was so so For example, there was there

37:45

was a guy doing like delivery driver

37:48

organizing. It was kind of weird. He was like kind of an entrepreneur

37:50

kind of doing livery driver organizing.

37:53

Like he got arrested, and then you

37:55

know, like a couple of weeks later, this is people like, oh, we're gonna

37:57

like do things to improve the conditions of

38:00

of delivery drivers, and you know, who

38:02

knows if that's going to happen. But like, you know, basically

38:05

like any anyone out for

38:07

some reason that the people in the tech sector have

38:09

been able to get away with more for

38:13

reasons that are probably class based, and

38:15

I think this doesn't take them seriously in the way they

38:17

do with students factory workers.

38:19

But you know, and actually I mean the fact that

38:21

the tech workers like kind of recently like that

38:24

there's a tech worker thing calling for like like democratic

38:26

control of production, which is wild. But

38:29

other than those guys like you can't you

38:31

know, you can't stick your head up, you get flattened.

38:34

So this has sort of been the result

38:36

of this, which is this like you know,

38:38

the sort of the like lying flat

38:40

is this. You know, it's this mass decentralized movement

38:43

that you know, there's there's no one to hit with a hammer,

38:46

and you know, and and I think, like,

38:48

okay, so one of one of the other quotes that's that's been going

38:50

around about lying flat is it's it's a poem.

38:53

It doesn't poem as well in English,

38:55

but this,

38:57

this is the best you've got. Lying flat

39:00

is to not bow down. Lying flat is

39:02

to not kneel. Lying flat is to stand

39:04

up horizontally. Lying flat

39:06

is a straight spine. And so you

39:08

know what was basically happening here is

39:10

is it's a combination of the tendencies

39:13

you see in the US, where you know, a

39:15

bunch of people terrible jobs, realizing

39:17

that everything is pointless. And then also this

39:20

is a way you can, like

39:22

this is the way you can like fight your boss without

39:25

like the police showing up. And

39:28

so there's there's some interesting like

39:31

political stuff. So there, there's there, there's there's

39:33

there's if if you look at that, there there's a bunch of memes

39:35

here because they're great. So there's

39:37

there's been a thing with these people talking about how

39:39

people are leaks, which are like their leaks, they're

39:41

harvested over and over again and

39:43

they're being exploited and like the plants,

39:46

Yeah, plants like leaks like yeah, you

39:48

eat. And so they have this thing that's leaks

39:50

that life flat cannot be so easily harvested.

39:52

It's just like a knife go like try like a

39:54

machete, like trying to swing out a bunch of leaks,

39:56

but the leaks are flat, so they can't hit them.

39:59

And I see what, you know, I like,

40:01

I like all of this. Yeah, yeah, it's

40:03

it's it's it's you know, and

40:05

so and so what the product of

40:07

this is that yeah, like this this, this, this has this stuff

40:09

has actually been effective enough that the

40:11

CCP, like you know, I mean, the

40:14

CCP is is taking it seriously, but you

40:16

know, there's not much they can do about it. Because like

40:19

if someone's just like, oh, I'm

40:21

going to go from a job that's

40:23

really high stressed to one that's less high stress,

40:25

like what are you're gonna are you just gonna arrest them? Like

40:27

what what are you gonna do and

40:29

so this, yeah, this, this has

40:31

been building for a while

40:33

now, and I don't know

40:35

who who knows exactly like

40:38

where it's going to go, but

40:40

it's it's it's already you

40:42

know. It's something that people can do

40:44

as an individual in a place where

40:47

organized political action is impossible in

40:49

a way such that you know that their individual

40:51

actions have a collective effect, but

40:53

one that can't be just you know, pounded

40:56

down. Yeah, I mean, it

40:58

is certainly interesting to see two completely

41:01

separate, like anti work style movements

41:03

around basically around the same same exact

41:05

time, with the same exact points, if

41:07

you're totally different languages. If you're

41:09

someone who's interested in massive global

41:12

revolutionary change, this should

41:14

probably be a thing that you are looking

41:16

at and studying and thinking a lot about,

41:19

because perhaps while we're

41:21

arguing about ship that people started talking

41:23

about in the eighteen seventies, this

41:26

this might be a better thing to

41:28

do than than that, because

41:30

because it's it seems like there's some

41:32

potential here. Yeah, and I think, yeah,

41:35

I mean, you know, if if if you if you know any

41:37

any any any actual revolutionary project

41:39

that makes the world better is going to have to be international

41:42

and that's been you know that that

41:44

that that that's been the bane of all revolutionary

41:46

movements forever. But

41:49

you know, okay, so we have you know that we we

41:52

have something to Chinese the American working class

41:54

agrees on, which is Diogenes

41:56

is based in work sucks. Yeah,

41:59

So as you go forward

42:01

into your life this week, um,

42:04

take a page from Diogenes as his

42:06

book and the

42:08

people ship on the

42:11

floor of a free people or

42:13

yeah, free people are an h and M. Go walk

42:16

into one and just just

42:18

just go absolutely ruin

42:21

that tile. I mean, fuck

42:23

it. This is why my my

42:26

my biggest political advice to friends

42:28

who has always been learned to run fast,

42:31

because if you learn to run fast, you

42:33

can do so many more fun things

42:36

in a store and then run fast that it's

42:38

done right. The problem is that a lot of

42:40

people like who who want to do this can't

42:43

run fast enough. So learn to run

42:45

fast to do this. There. It's like Moose

42:47

said, all political power comes

42:49

from being able to ship really fast and from

42:52

the doors of a free people. Just get

42:54

that hell out of there. The immortal

42:56

silence. Look, I think I

42:59

think I think we should eve with with the real

43:02

immortal science, the the immortal words

43:05

of a skeleton from

43:08

the share Zone. Just walk out. You

43:10

can leave work, social

43:12

things, movie, home, class,

43:15

dentist, close shops

43:17

to fancy weed store cops, if you're

43:19

quick, friendships, if it sucks,

43:22

hit the bricks yeah

43:24

yeah. As as some comedian

43:26

who I can't remember now said, always

43:29

have an exit plan like that.

43:31

That that should be your thought for everything everything

43:34

in the world. Bricks. Hit the fucking

43:36

bricks, Get out anyway,

43:39

Get out of this podcast episode now. It

43:45

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43:47

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