"self-improvement" and capitalism

troubled by this New York Times article on Zuckerberg as self-improvement lifestyle guru, in ways i can't quite put into words, but here's my best shot at it:

1. beyond the (obvious) objection that this notion of self-improvement as a project is incredibly classed - the Silicon Valley resident who has the money, leisure, and health to pursue self-improvement as a structured idea is not your average American, i'll put it that way - this article evokes a deeply-rooted insecurity in me about the type of person everybody needs to become in order to survive in a contemporary capitalist economy. there is something very, very intentional about Zuckerberg's planning and execution of his yearly projects, and many of them are things that are easy to capitalize on. wearing a tie on a daily basis (his 2009 project) builds a sense of ease around corporate culture and attire; learning to speak Mandarin (2010), as opposed to any other language, is an in-demand skill.

2. even the goals that seem to be more (for lack of a better word) spontaneous, like learning how to juggle in 20 minutes or meeting a new person every day, might fall under the professionalization of "being an interesting person," therefore being deserving of the attention, respect, or opportunities one has received/is receiving. take this quote:

“I think taking on self-improvement projects outside of work is part of the zeitgeist of Silicon Valley,” said Mr. Biewald, 34. “People expect you to have things that you care about outside of work.”

so now your coworkers get to judge you for what you do outside of work, too? awesome, thanks for letting me know, Mr. Biewald!

3. another bizarre thing about the self-improvement project is how it locates and organizes other people's humanity for the benefit of oneself. take the goal Zuckerberg set for himself in 2013: meeting a new person every day. what does it mean to categorize that as a self-improvement project? where are you finding these people, how are you interacting with them, and where are you locating the value in your interactions? is a person just a sum of the experiences they can conjure in an one-hour coffee chat, or are they something else? where does that leave the person who cleans your bathroom, or pours your coffee for minimum wage? do they get to have interiorities, too, or at least better pay? i mean, i think there is certainly value in expanding your worldview and hearing from those who are silenced, but if your idea of meeting people is sitting down and extracting as many of their values, beliefs, and experience as you can in the space of a day, i'm not sure your and my views of humanity align. (and this is not a criticism specifically of Zuckerberg, but a pattern of interaction i have noticed in a lot of different spaces.)

4. i read the self-improvement ethos as part of a broader movement towards knowledge as an optimizable source of capital, meaning that 1) one can more or less efficiently attain knowledge and that 2) knowledge is part of a larger project of building capital, be it social, economic, or intellectual. the self-improvement ethos is deeply tied to trends like life-hacking, which purports to optimize one's lifestyle (as long as you're white), or the growth of educational apps like Duolingo and online course institutions like CourseRA, which include in their ranks many students who are likely cramming these in on their morning commutes. what all three of those things have in common is that they fall largely under the purview of the already-privileged (while still being demanded of the lower classes), and that they restructure our conceptions of time and self, towards an optimized ideal in which every second and every intention serves the mission statement of one's life.

*on a related note, Alfie Bown had a great essay on capitalism and enjoyment i'm going to link for your benefit here: the idea of unproductivity as the contemporary cardinal sin is certainly connected to the overarching cultural anxiety around optimizing productivity, which is itself a big part of the self-improvement ethos.

5. and i can hear the objection in my head already, that i'm overanalyzing this, that i'm (irony of ironies) wasting my time, why does this even matter? yet the more i think about capitalism and the lives it asks us to live, the more everything makes sense: the sense i'm around people yet not quite connected, the disconnect i see in a generation of overachievers perpetually told they're not achieving enough, the double consciousness of seeing all of the world's problems and not knowing how to untangle a single one. 

but here's the thing: the world keeps asking us to be better people, improved people, and all the while corporations still get to destroy our Earth, millions of people still live in squalor, riots erupt over the immigrants responsible for taking all of your jobs, and the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter still can't take in all of the people who need warm beds. and i encourage people to continue thinking about these problems, these contradictions, these things that trouble them; but i also want people to know that the world has been troubled for a long time, and perhaps we'd be better to redirect all the anxiety, stress, and effort we put into improving ourselves and challenge those most responsible for the complacent destruction of our world instead.

we are good enough. we always have been.