11.04.2013

Retro Again

Little thought:

In the postindustrial economy, college plays the same role as the factory or the corporation did in the industrial economy in the sense that it disciplines behavior across time. But whereas the disciplines of the previous era was based on the future, i.e. work this hard, produce this much, and you will get a raise, the discipline of the school, or rather, the debt incurred by education, is one based on the past - possible futures are conditioned and or eliminated instead of created. Working to pay as opposed to get paid, undoing instead of building.

4 comments:

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

yeah - is debt slavery the INTENTION of the current higher education racket, or merely the consequence of it? i wonder about that sometimes - chris hedges has written about it, i think -

coincidentally, one of my captcha codes is Edcates - the only thing missing is "u" - heh heh

:-p said...

Nice.

I couldn't claim any knowledge on intention.

I think what's interesting to me is the new experience of time mentioned and then also that, if a house, car and a degree are the "tools" of middle-class/white-collar labor, one now merely rents all of them. There's something I can't quite put my finger on conceptually… something broader than the individual's debt slavery. It seems to relate to the societal impossibility of imagining or creating a future...

:-p said...

… because the autonomy promised is illusory, doesn't exist, is never attained.

A life is a ghost one spends one's lifetime trying to bring to corporeality.

Montag said...

Interesting.
I get the impression that we are using the paradigm of the industrial economy and applying it - with the required changes in detail - to the period of the postindustrial economy, but what is actually the case is that things are winding down and coming apart.

In other words, the new paradigm is an illusion of Order we are using to disguise Chaos, or the "undoing".

The wolf is hidden in the sheep's clothing of paradigm, logic, and reason.

Frightening a bit, but I'm sure we are getting used to it by now.