The Glorification of Busy

From Chio on Black Girl Dangerous:

It can be easy to forget that the University still functions as a capitalistic machine, extracting all of our energy to the very last drop until we are dwindled bodies, robotically producing. In this sense, it does well in preparing us for the capitalist job market. I ask that we remind ourselves of this, and question whether we are willfully participating in, and internalizing, the ways capitalism associates our human worth with the amount of production they can extract from us.

I think most people will acknowledge that Capitalism has infiltrated Witchcraft on a superficial level: magic trinkets for sale, Wicca starter kits, dozens of almost-identical 101 guides, bins upon bins of tumbled stones and mass-produced candles. I think one could even argue that Capitalism gave Witchcraft a significant boost. It’s a disturbing relationship: without Capitalism, Witchcraft wouldn’t be so diluted, declawed, compromised, and commercialized…but there’s a significant chance that a lot of very talented Witches might never have been able to access the resources that help them come into their power. I’m not sure I would have ever come across Witchcraft if someone else hadn’t found my calling profitable.

What I’m really interested in is how Capitalism infiltrates Witchcraft on a deeper, more insidious level. What would my Witchcraft look like without myths of scarcity or obsessions with production or the constant specter of competition? What would it look like if I had more energy and free time? What would it look like if I had a different conception of myself, uncoupled on every level from the toxic fetishization of the “career?”

What would it look like if I didn’t live in a devastated, flattened, poisoned environment? If I were able to be outdoors more often? I spend a lot of time moping around my living room because it’s too hot to go outside and even if I toughed it out, the cityscape offers little that’s restorative. Even the streams in the few scattered regional parks have dried up. Everything in Los Angeles wilts, exhausted, before it dries into dust.

I dream of a future in which all beings are allowed to be unapologetically, authentically ourselves.