Wow. Freelance work doesn't feel like the word sounds. At least the kind I'm doing. Granted, it is partially my fault for not being more aggressive in the creative industry, but I did try for a bit.
Basically, that whole working your ass off until you "catch a break" thing exists because you have to fight your way to the top through constricted material avenues, avenues that are constricted by virtue of the fact that most resources gravitate towards large power centers that care nothing for intrinsic value.
It's probably better to explain my daily task. My job is basically a manufacturing job. Calling it creative writing and talking about going online and doing research obscures the fact that really what I am doing objectively is scouring the web for pieces of relevant information, information that has already been produced, and copying and compressing it into a compact, SEO friendly unit. These SEO friendly units are then inserted into vast information structures full of links and keyword-dense 300-word articles (I guess the Google spiders like 300-word or more bodies), so that they can reach the top of Google search lists in a vast array of subjects, accumulating the maximum amount of traffic possible. Traffic which should then pass through the many advertisements and sponsored links on the website. Think of places like About.com and EHow.com
So large portions of the web work like this now. All media and information is aggregated in these huge informational structures that are structured precisely to funnel in as much traffic (paying customers) as possible, generally dictated by the logic of Google algorithms and the behavior of social networks. And so behind each of these informational structures is a company (or a conglomerate), and at the top of each of these companies is a CEO that makes a lot of money (or symbolic power). So really, all of this information is simply instrumentalized to accumulate power for someone who is probably a white male. Probably.
I'm manufacturing power. Again, the information doesn't matter. This is apparent in the nature of my directions. Vague outlines are given with vague directions and you can go out and grab any kind of information off of the web you can find, so long as it is coherent and not outrageous. There is a massive veil between the labor and the finished product. I have no idea where it goes, or what any of it means. I just follow directions. Like a factory laborer pressing buttons on a machine.
Much of the Internet works like this now, as well as much of our economy in general. Each large economic entity is a manufacturing apparatus for power. Whatever that can be still produced of value in the real economy is cannibalized and manipulated to accumulate more money for the few men behind these structures. Each of our daily tasks is a micromoment in assembling playing pieces to be used in power games.
Each new structure is essentially a vehicle for increasing efficiency and effectiveness of the accumulation of money. Much of our manufactured goods are less valued as actual objects as worth. Consider a shirt from Target or a toy from Walmart. They're shit. But they still mean something because they're marginally useful. And the fact that they mean what little they do means people still want them. And so they can be effectively used as instruments to further the logic of accumulation. But again, the big players now don't really make anything. They aggregate. They are vessels that have evolved to manufacture power for their controlling masters. The structure of the Internet mirrors the structure of the real economy in this way. The Internet serves as a ballooning network of veins and arteries that continues to facilitate this very task. And all this focus on accumulation when the logic of accumulation is what ails us most. Hah!
This is the nature of alienation. See, we feel really good when someone else appreciates us for our work. We also feel really good when the products of our work give pleasure to others. Even in the office when the boss or a coworker compliments your work, for just a second you feel really good. It only takes a little bit. But most of the day, most of the psychological and physical energies are concentrated on mechanical labor without end, without closure. The end product is enjoyed far away and all of the love and admiration trickles up to the top. This happens in cycles, through our entire history. Marx pointed all this out over a century ago. All that knowledge has been buried since. The individual must strive for power after breaking from the whole until the disintegration is so complete, there is nowhere left to go.
So, we have a very small collection of individuals that have essentially monopolized the power game. The rest get scraps here and there. But those scraps themselves are all that's needed. Soon sympathetic networks will become robust enough to separate from the decaying machine, to live of course. We can give each other all the love and admiration (and hopefully resources for actually physically subsisting) we need. Soon everything must come back together.
Cycles like this repeat themselves in patterns through all life. The archetypal male diverges out, the archetypal female collects back in. We are left with power games to be played with the remains of an old idea, an old way of life, itself born out of the necessity to repudiate the older power games. Why?
.
