>>10
If by rotting you imagine an ascetic life then I would agree that goes against bataille, but that's not the only kind of rotting. As >>11 said there's also an active character to rotting, an active squandering or sacrifice.

That being said don't read me as valorizing NEETs, I'm absolutely not ascribing anything "radical" to this notion, it's not a dialectical opposition. Sure there is this aspect of sovereignty (consumption without production), but NEETs (including myself) are always falling back into the logic of accumulation. Accumulating technology, bishoujo figures, accumulating a "shows completed" number on MAL which cannot be given away, etc. There's an element of sovereignty, but it's not fully realized. "Symbolic exchange is no longer the organising principle of modern society", there's nothing you, as an individual, can do about this, the logic of accumulation will always rear it's head.

>>9

just asking you to consider rotting as active strategy rather than passive submission

You're right to point out that NEETs aren't passive and there's a range of stances people take in relation to power, resistance takes the cake but we forget about refusal, feigning compliance and slacking off. I would only say two things. Firstly, should we really see rotting as a good strategy? Second, submission is hardly passive. When you submit to an authority, you carry out behaviors to demonstrate compliance, so that's not passivity.

I hardly think that Marx hates labor

What I was trying to get at is that Marx seems to hate the environment. I think he's ambivalent and contradictory. On the one hand, he valorizes labor because labor will free us from the terrible constraints the environment imposes on humans. We can evolve from primitive tribes to a world of free individuals through labor. On the one hand, he hates capitalism for its cruelty, on the other hand Marx the theorist looks at capitalism with the eyes of a Darwinist, its a dying system that's preventing us from evolving further and there's no reason to feel morally incensed by it. Marx is a contradictory person but the consequence of his thought is a hatred of the non-human environment, or at least that's a potential in his work anyway. Also, I'm not a Marxist and don't care about dialectics.

you are still thinking in a dialectical Marxist framework where "consumerist values" must be directly opposed by their dialectical opposite and then subsumed

Well we agree here. I don't think you can push back against power like this without entrenching it. The world is too contaminated.

read some bataille

I haven't gotten around to it yet. I don't really like what I've seen from Bataille and his followers but I can't really judge without reading him.

>>11
Why should I look at class like a Marxist? Bourdieu is useful because he helps explore the cultural side of class, something Marxists are notoriously incompetent at. I don't like the Marxist definition because "mode of production" is a foolish idea.

>>13
I thought n0 is a zionist atheist?

>>11 >>12
My post was very unclear and I still remain ignorant of politics. What I meant was that I see this active sacrifice of consumption-without-production falling perfectly within the confines of someone acting in accord with the system only with the difference that the premise that leads to the conclusion has been omitted. Capitalism is the perpetual negation of the human spirit and by affirming negativity Bataille’s sovereign is affirming the unliving, inhumane, spirit of the capitalist system and announcing his own death. It’s precisely nothing more than playing the part of the impotent consumer: luxury enervates.

As I understood it the point of consuming this accursed share is cultural enrichment. That is not born from consumption but leisure, free time without production OR consumption. Did the Greek tragedians spend all their time in consuming? I doubt it. Shakespeare only had a handful of books in his library. Tarkovsky talks about the importance of just taking time to be with yourself, etc. Why is most anime shit nowadays? Because the people who produce it and consume it do nothing but consume anime (a point I think Digi has made at greater length somewhere [the auteurs of the past would draw influence from outside the sphere of anime and I’d argue it takes leisure to synthesize those influences and add your own creativity to it, endless repetition of the same we get now all across culture is not enrichment]).

Despite it reflecting unfavourably on my own life I’m inclined to agree with the other anon about social-psychological dysfunction and NEETdom; it may be interesting to consider this consumer-who-doesn’t-produce as a thought experiment but practically it is null. What are the things NEETs lack? Power and resources political, social and often also personal. I misread you, and think that is quite easy to do so, as valorizing rotting because this political angle is unusual and I’d wager most view it intuitively from a moral (in a wide sense) perspective. The majority of people who advocate rotting on NEET-spaces are not taking an active stance against the system but simply giving in to their own baseness, and it is against the dearth of an opposing view that I feel the need to voice my opinion because I think it is harmful; I’ve had to terminate relations in the past over disagreeing on this issue as it was impeding my own well-being and there’s only so much you can do to try to encourage, educate or help someone who is not receptive (you can lead a horse to water... [and manchildren are not children, it is not my responsibility to take a paternal role; I am all for the liberty of each adult individual and the main issue seems to be in agreeing where liberty lies]). At the end of the day I’m just hoping to reach one kindred soul as an outsider.

Who’s making you buy figurines and keep an anime list? This is why askesis is needed so that we can habituate ourselves to not falling back into the logic of accumulation as frequently and fervently. When I hear rotting I imagine the opposite of an ascetic life. My point was that instead of rotting NEETs would benefit from living more ascetically. Taking care of themselves; acquiring a skill or some other capital but refusing to realize it productively in economic terms or doing so in suboptimal ways; being a Diogenes who’s rolling his empty wine tub back and forth to imitate everyone else running around in a panic; sacrificing your spirit in unproductive labor on your own terms but being renewed and given it back since it remains untainted by the economy. The fruit of that economy is rotten apples.

Laziness is the greatest virtue but some labor will inevitable, even if you lie on the floor your respiratory system and heart will keep on working. Everything in this life begins and ends with the body. The more you rot the more you have to labor in rotting. Think Epicurean hedonism v. Gross hedonism. The gross hedonist will wear himself down in constant cycles of excess and purging and recovery, whereas for the Epicurean the greatest pleasure in life is the absence of pain (the root of which is desire). The older and more rotted the gross hedonist gets the greater his pain, his travail--his labor. The Epicurean has to work hard to learn how to want less, but the less he wants the less he has to work in the future to get what he wants. His pleasure is constant in simply subsisting and his subsistence will be achieved by minimal labor possible and that minimal amount of work will feel even smaller because he has trained to do it. Non-action does not mean no action. It is effortless. Rotting takes great effort (constantly yearning for more to consume, worrying about losing your precious media collection, etc.)

I feel like maybe I’m arguing a different issue and starting to derail this thread about class with this apolitical individualist perspective. All I can say is that I don’t control the means of production to the radio waves I keep receiving. There is no escape.