For some reason I was thinking about the parallelism between the “pursuit of happiness” and “property”, and had the rather unoriginal observation that the American conception of happiness is essentially property.
Success is about what you have, and what you willingly forgo because you can afford to. Relationships are status symbols, and the personal growth paradigm of Marriage is a productive one– your partner is treated partly like a business partner. And of course, the idea of women in romantic relationships being treated as a prize to be won; as property; is familiar.
So many young men get into engineering, especially mechanical engineering, because they love cars. It’s understandable; cars are marvels of engineering. But their allure comes from them being the most expensive consumer good most people own. The budding engineer desires to make something of value; because to contribute to something is to possess it on a deeper, truer level.
But women’s lives are less centered around acquiring property; more familiar with the idea of being, if not property, a desirable product. So maybe, sometimes, that engineer’s urge to work on property turns inward, into a desire to work on the self, to increase one’s market value. Or turns to others, to studying the development of other people. (Engineering people is frowned upon unless you make them from scratch; then, it’s practically required. That’s probably the only thing that makes me maybe want a kid.)
It’s not just women, either; in this world of credentials, competitive job markets, and personal brands, most people are familiar with the idea of treating themselves as a product. It doesn’t make it any less dehumanizing.
And maybe that’s part of the reason I resent personal growth: I recognize it as part of a capitalist mindset that doesn’t value humanity, only productivity. And I recognize that the demand for personal value is gendered. Ironic then, that the personal growth I resent is the kind needed to build up an alternative to the capitalist society. Catch-22.
There’s a connection to everything here, because we’re talking about the foundation of the society of the globalized world. But video games are the case I encountered: utterly focused on in-game “productivity”, utterly useless to real-world productivity. Even when we’re unproductive, our fantasies are obsessed with making something. Maybe the “male fantasy” of gaming is actually a capitalist fantasy, with marginally less exploitation by the people making the rules. Video games are games you can win.
And when games let you take moments to just enjoy yourself “unproductively” (can you pet the dog?), and encourage you to form relationships that are not transactional, they can be a force for consciousness-expanding.
Evenings at home in your twenties 