The art of doing nothing for things that do nothing for you

[circuitbored]

There is a special power in doing nothing as a protest when you experience injustice.

Not complaining, not watching, not buying things, not worrying... Just protesting by just doing nothing.

But important to note, the effect is often only felt properly when it is done en-masse, although individually it greatly relieves stress.

This video explains the timeless concept of disconnecting yourself from toxicity (in a comical way mind you):

This is where we are in history, a point where many politicians, employers, and individuals ask us to lift them, but constantly end up not delivering, and even worse yet damaging our lives, taking our hard earned money, threatening our safety, destroying opportunity, and wasting our time.

Sure there are a fair amount of people are finding opportunity, even in the worst of times, but they are a drop of water in an ocean of people that need to survive. If you can understand empathy, you also understand the struggle of others who have less than you, that have skills and talents that regularly get devastated by things that cause others only minor inconveniences.

As people realize they're not truly succeeding organically in creating a lucrative future for themselves after months and years of work for "gig" based platforms, and on social media, and on numerous other crowd sourcing platforms, they also growing weary of hearing all of the success and cheat stories concerning these platforms in the news... It almost seems as if the news reports themselves are ads for these companies.

I did not grow up in a rich household. Instead of going out to expensive restaurants which we couldn't afford, my enterprising father caught onto the culture of bringing us to catered events for timeshare opportunities (Which we never bought into of course). We had many of these outings, and had many free meals this way. We had to dress the part, so each of us had outfits that helped us to blend in, but to not be too conspicuous. It was not breaking the law, these companies advertised that no commitment was required, and presented their events as a great opportunity to invest, which ultimately almost everyone except my father saw as a lot more value than free meals.

Time shares are now often referred to as schemes, and so many people were locked into the practice in financially binding contracts they could not escape for years. I learned early on that overly-complex presentations and contractual agreements with companies that overpromise were things to avoid. As a family I also began to realize the pattern of our family going to other events, Tupperware parties, Multi-Level-Marketing events, and even Mary Kay events, all had great catering to hook people into living the dream; our family really only going for the buffet, and it was hilarious once I developed the knack for not buying any of it from anyone, no matter how great their sales presentation was or how successful thy appeared to be, because I learned just a suit got us into the free buffet, while in reality we were far from being rich. We observed many of the false marketing promises of those companies over the years, and watched our friends who unfortunately invested into those promises lose a lot. Some of those friends even committed suicide after the devastating experiences.

Now in current times, and after a lengthy career working in both Federal and private IT settings, I've realized the culture of several prominent companies and individuals are exactly the same, over-marketing yet regularly under-delivering...

Good does not always triumph in this world. Sometimes suffering is exactly what life is, and it's terribly unfortunate when those who cause suffering triumph... I think it's a very important time for us all to realize that when we feel powerless, there is great strength in not complying with and enriching companies that impose suffering upon all of us. Many of the editorials posted here on CIRCUITBORED.COM are about this concept.

Understand that your success in life as an individual is hinged on opportunity. When any company or platform promises you opportunity, evaluate whether it is actually fruitful quickly, and if it is not stop doing work there. I highly recommend creating your own independent workspaces, other than social media, where your content and message is clearly owned and managed by you, this way you don't pigeon-hole yourself into dependence on a platform that doesn't work for you nor deliver on it's promises. I also recommend that we all stop praising negative behavior, psychologically manipulative marketing, and narcissism to gain a societal foothold any more as methods and/or symbols of success in politics and business... Those social and character flaws have serious consequences in the real world, and there's a real reason why monopolies, dictatorships, dynasties, and monarchies were countered by laws many times throughout history.

Now... Back to doing nothing... In a world where you feel powerless to create change - Where marketing has trumped value delivery, where psychological manipulation is a normal practice, where privacy is regularly compromised, and where individual opportunity and success are greatly limited... You still have great power in doing nothing. By organizing locally to help each other without supporting harmful and toxic large corporations, a great message can be delivered. People survived and thrived for centuries before the Internet existed, before television, before cell phones, and even before government... While I'm by no means talking about reverting to the dark ages, there are many great discussions to be had about how well we can live more simply by not supporting monopolistic and insatiably manipulative companies and individuals.

If social media does not help you, and you find you're working on it for free, stop using it. Do nothing on it.

If a rideshare service does not offer a reasonable service nor pay employees well. Stop supporting it.

If fuel prices rise unjustifiably. Stop buying it.

If rent and housing keep increasing in cost over time, Stop fueling the frenzy.

If a politician or a group of them are constantly not positively effective, representative of everyone, and cognizant of morality... Stop electing them.

Obviously I'm not taking about doing nothing forever, that would be ridiculous and the world will collapse. Even 2 months of conscientious objection of this kind sends a clear message to the economic opportunism that we're all suffering from. I think that from this ideal, meaningful discussions can be made about reigning in many of the societal problems we face now, because we haven't really delved deep into how we're funding our own increasing unhappiness.

Doing nothing means taking back control of the work you do, and only supporting things that deliver tangible value... Doing nothing is a resistance to providing free labor or purchasing items and services without proper reciprocation of value... For example, I have recently incorporated the practice of "doing nothing" on my social media accounts, as I have found them to be predominantly fruitless. Instead of listening to their regularly promoted "platform success tutorials", I only post EXACTLY what I want to, regardless of the statistics that result. I make sure for each post that I am having fun in creating them, or that I am learning something new, or that I am promoting my personal web sites and/or work. I now refuse to follow most social media platform success scripts, because I've found that although it may create great statistics in views and likes, and helps the platform to have great uniform content for free, that free labor and content conformity rarely helps me to succeed in my own aspect and identity, and that's exactly why I "do nothing" for them beyond posting exactly what I see fit. If I get shadowbanned or blocked in the process of posting what I want to, I simply stop posting anything at all... If it wasn't really working for the reasons I needed it, I really didn't need it in truth.

I highly recommend do nothing for things that do nothing for you.

NOTE: This also isn't meant to stir rebellion nor chaos, it advocates peaceful protest and positive change in a world dominated by the over-assertion of popularity, class, and wealth. This also ties into a prior post I made titled "Preparing for the Giant Unplug" SOURCE: http://circuitbored.com/communicate/vie ... unplug#p23