“I love your content, but I wish it were more accessible!”
Yeah, me too…
I regularly receive messages and comments like the one above through my social media accounts, and I get it. People are trying to be supportive. They feel the messages and information I am sharing are important, and they want to reach more people. So do I.
Yet coming into my messages and making me feel guilty or responsible for the fact that most of us have to (if grudgingly) participate in the capitalist system in order to survive is punching down. Or sideways.
Horizontal accountability, while sometimes necessary, isn’t going to effect systemic change. I wish I could provide my services for free, I wish I didn’t have to put a price tag on my labour, but without some source of income I can’t provide for myself and my family.
Expecting me—and other advocates and marginalized people—to provide free labour because so many of us are stretched financially thin is not the answer. We’re in the same boat as you, just trying to get by using the skills and knowledge that we have.
I wish I weren’t a commodity. I wish I didn’t have to “sell” myself as though I were a product for consumption rather than a human being who really wants to make a difference in the lives of fellow neurodivergent folks.
This isn’t a pity party, either. I mean, you’re all welcome to join me, but I’m not here trying to feel sorry for myself. I encourage you (all of us) to take those feelings of frustration and anger, and direct them where they rightfully belong, rather than at those of us who are standing behind and next to you in this exploitative culture.
I don’t blame you either
For those folks who have made those comments and sent those messages (to myself or others like me), I don’t blame you either. I’ve had the exact same thoughts before I understood the larger systems at work. I would begin reading someone’s work, really enjoying it, and then arrive at that paywall. “Fuck that,” I would say to myself, “they’re just doing this to make money.”
No kidding.
I mean, it’s not only to make money, but… that part is kind of a necessity for living.
For some reason I believed that content creators and writers didn’t have the same rights as anyone else to be paid for their work. I wanted to read their work and learn from them, but felt entitled to do so for free. Even now, I don’t fully understand why. I imagine it has something to do with devaluing of entrepreneurship and of creative labour.
I wouldn’t go into a retail store and roll my eyes at the fact they’re charging money for their products. I might grumble about the price tag, but I wouldn’t expect to walk into a for-profit business and walk out with free stuff.
Capitalism has taught us to expect to be exploited and to accept it. It’s just “the way the world works.” We get jobs, we work our asses off for not enough money while the business owners, government, and others in power rake in significant portions of what we earned on their behalf. We have been trained to believe this is okay, even desirable.
Worse, they pay us just enough to barely make ends meet (and that’s if we’re lucky and have a job that actually pays enough to meet our basic needs), but not enough to progress financially. No, they wouldn’t want us to earn enough to be able to set money aside and save up to invest in our futures, because then we wouldn’t be beholden to them and unable to survive without their “generosity” (exploitation).
The idea is we make a “minimum” or living wage (or not even) so we can pay for rent and food and contribute to the local economy, but no more than that. Not enough to actually climb our way out of the hamster wheel, but just enough to keep us running in place.
What’s the answer, then?
Well if I had an easy solution, I’d probably be a Nobel Prize winner or something.
Many experts much more knowledgeable and experienced than myself have written about the harms of capitalism and have offered viable alternatives. (Check out the references section for recommended reads).
The problem is when the “little guys” try to rise up against an inequitable system, those at the top of this pyramid scheme get upset. They don’t want us threatening their comfortable lifestyles, their positions of power. They want us to keep our heads down and continue “contributing to society” (aka their bank accounts).
According to Pew Research, 51% of the world’s population are considered low income. 17% are middle income, and 10% are considered to be living in poverty. Altogether those income brackets make up 78% of our population. Add in the upper-middle economic bracket and we’re at 93% of the entire world. That’s approximately 7.3 billion out of 7.8 billion people.
We are too busy just trying to survive, we forget how much power we actually hold. We’re numerically in the majority, but many of us feel powerless because such a small percentage of people hold so much of the global wealth. We could organize. Work together. Starting with small groups of people working together, those groups would eventually meet to collaborate.
Uprisings have made a difference in the world. Women’s suffrage, 2+LGBTQ rights (legalizing gay marriage), and important civil rights movements.
The first step towards any kind of meaningful change would be for people to stop pointing their fingers at people standing beside them and look upwards. Zoom out. Look at the larger systemic, institutional, and societal structures working to protect the wealth and power of the very few. Learn about how capitalism relies on inequality for “success” (as defined by those at the top whose interests are being protected).
Educating ourselves is, in itself, a form of resistance. Those who most benefit from capitalism don’t want us to develop a deeper understanding of how this system exploits us for profit. When we learn about and realize how much we’re being manipulated and taken advantage of, we might become angry and start standing up for ourselves.
We might start pushing back, and they don’t want that. I may sound like some hippie from a long-ago era, but maybe they had the right idea. Those who have actually banded together to fight oppression, marginalization, and injustice and put themselves at risk in the name of equality are the ones most likely to have an impact. Change is impossible without dialogue, cooperation, and collaboration. Unity towards a common goal.
Peace, love, and anarchy.
© Jillian Enright, Neurodiversity MB
Related articles
Why You’re Not A Failure, and Other Important Truths
Spoiler Alert: The ‘Real World’ Doesn’t Exist
An Anti-Capitalist Productivity Plan
Ways to support my work
You can leave a "tip" on Ko-Fi at https://Ko-Fi.com/NeurodiversityMB
Become a paid subscriber to my Substack publication
Check out my online store at https://NeurodiversityMB.ca/shop
Read and share my articles from twoemb.medium.com
You can also follow me on facebook, and find all my links on LinkTree
References
Arendt, H. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism. Schocken Books.
Chapman, R. (2023). Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism. Pluto Press.
Davies, J. (2021). Sedated: How modern capitalism created our mental health crisis. Atlantic Books.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Bloomsbury Academic.
Hannan, J. (2023). Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the age of social media. Oxford University Press.
Hooks, Bell. (1994). Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
Illich, Ivan. (1970). Deschooling Society. Marion Boyars Publishing Ltd.
Marx, K. (1971). Economy, class and social revolution (Z. A. Jordan, Ed.; Ser. The making of sociology series). Thomas Nelson and Sons.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1967). Capital : a critique of political economy (Ser. New world paperbacks). International.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1973). On society and social change (N. J. Smelser, Ed.; Ser. The heritage of sociology). University of Chicago Press.
Táíwò, O. O. (2022). Elite Capture : How the powerful took over identity politics (and everything else). Haymarket Books.