When people experience a loss, they have several ways of dealing with it that are available to them. One is depression. People who choose that response are mostly the ones who feel guilty for the loss, so they punish themselves with pain and also use pain to maim themselves. Because if they don’t act, they can’t make another mistake that leads to loss. Obviously, loss is not the only thing that provokes depression. It’s just one of them.

Another response to loss is denying the loss or its significance. It’s not nearly as maladaptive as depression.

Yet another one is substitution of the object that was lost with a new object. By object I obviously mean whatever the ego attached to. When that object disappears (and it can be a person, a job, a feeling, etc), the ego is wounded. And depression, denial of significance and substitution are the available strategies to respond to this pain.

Of course, there’s always medication but I’m not talking about people who go for that method.

What these articles about the neoliberal economy forget to mention is that it’s exhilarating. This is why I appreciate the scholarship by Jim McGuigan who doesn’t forget about this important aspect.

I walked 5 miles to work on my first day, in formal attire and through a heat wave. And didn’t break a sweat or dishevel my hair, and I’ll never cease to be proud of myself for it.

The planners, the overscheduling, the “it’s only 11 pm, so I can still do a bunch of work” mentality, it’s fun. People wouldn’t do it if it weren’t. Mary from the linked article is super proud of herself. And who’s to say she isn’t entitled to decide what to be proud of.

What I like about my current union is that nobody conducts any ideology checks. Nobody talks about ideology at all. We only discuss the practical union stuff. This is where this union differs enormously from my previous one. I had to leave that one because the groupthink was robotic and scary. But that was a union for rich people, hence the difference. I didn’t know it then but ideological purity of the SJW variety is a barrier for entrance into the rich classes.