Antiwork Part 2: Lying Flat and Petting Fish

my arena's named after venal brands mixed uff. Speaking of the pointlessness of work, there are people laboring right now who worked at Staples so that Staples would have enough money to name a place where people go do sports after a place where people get fucking pencils um. And now Staples has declined enough at it's just crypto dot com. Fucking Crypto dot com, look upon, look upon the worst cryptocurrency e formerly Mighty Staples in despair, fucking the Osmond

Dius of the office supply world. I don't know whatever what are we talking about. We're going to no that comes in the middle, but right now we're gonna go to a place where they banned crypto mining for the

most part. So and that that places China, and I wanted to talk about specifically a lot of stuf us been going on the Chinese Internet, what's been going on in Chinese labor because so Garrison Garrison told me we're doing an at work episode and I went, oh, yeah, there's a there's you know, there's a version of this

in China. And then I realized that like a almost no one has heard of lying flat and be it rules and see that nobody really know in the US knows what's going on in the Chinese Internet because it's effectively siloed. And I mean, you know that there's there's there's there's there's lots different ways to stile out. I

mean there's there's literally the Great Firewall. There's factors and different languages, people use different apps, and you know, the Internet has become this sort of like you know, it's it's it's it's a bunch of bubbles that don't interact

with each other. Yeah, the wald Garden thing, and it's you know, the sort of national level world garden stuff is I think, in a lot of ways, way more dangerous than the stuff you know that, like people complaining about it was sucking Audie logical bubble and like that's bad. But the fact that we have bubbles like this where it's like you know, the like with with like actual they basically borders but online yeah yeah, because they're enforced

by governments with force. Yeah. Yeah, the place it was always going to go. Um, once we decided not to be rad with the Internet, which everyone collectively decided in I'm going to say one thousand four, Yeah, do you think do you think? Do do you think? Do you think? That was nine eleven fault nine eleven played a role. Nine eleven did play a role. Um, the dot com boom played another role. Um, there were there there, There

were a number of factors. Um, but we can all blame it on let's blame it on low tax and continue. So anti work in China before we get into lying flat, which is China's version of anti work, isn't the right word because this actually started a few months before sort of anti work blew up in the US. But before we fully get into that. To understand what's going on here, we need to talk about something called involution. And did

you say that again? Like evil involution in involution, Yeah, so this this, this is this is originally this is a very obscure anthropological term developed by my old nemesis, Clifford Geertz, who's one of the most famous and most important anthropologists in history, who also sucks ass and I hate him. I thought your nemesis was Noam Chomsky. Yes, also,

but for different reasons. Should I cancel the hit sub sub nemesis something I I have many I have many nemesses that I have been on the side O God here Jody Dean episode at some point. Now, thank you. I appreciate allies in my one person intellectual wars, although this does seem to be a pretty boring intellectual war, yeah, said most of them. Yeah yeah, but what what what Gears was describing? Basically, so she doesn't feel work in Java?

And what are you describing? What what involution means? It's the system where people keep working harder and harder for there's no increase in output, and so that there's no there's no rewards for working harder, and so you know, in Java you'd have these plantations, right, and the plantations would get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. But because each new person was only like harvesting just enough to feed themselves, you never actually got any productivity increases.

And so you know, yeah, there's no there's no output increases and in not really the case in America in a lot of ways. Yeah, and what's interesting, Well, okay, So the reason I want to talk about this also is because basically everyone who's been writing about this formation news outlets has missed about half of the story of how how this like incredibly obscure anthropological term that like I don't like again, I was an anthropology major. I don't think I ever ran into involution while like while

I was studying anthropology. Yeah, and no one has ever heard of this, Like fucking everyone in China has like like a treatise they can spout at you about this now. Um. Yeah, and and you know, I want to talk a bit about how to emerge. And part of this is because you know, in the last about two years, people will be getting increasingly piste off at you know, just the sort of incredibly competitive nature of Chinese society and particularly work.

And you know, a lot of this is because everyone's working what's what's called which is nine am to nine PM six days a week. And she actually didn't make this good. When I say everyone, that's like an average schedule. The schedules get a lot worse than that. But in the nine six is the one that sort of gets the attention because a lot of people work it, especially

the tech industry. This is you know, we do, but you know, everyone focused on the tech industry, everyone ignores a bunch of myrket workers who also do this and worse. And you know, there's just a normal societal pressure to sort of keep moving and keep competing and keep working.

And simultaneously, you know, people in China today are working like basically as hard as anyone's worked in China since like people would literally collapse and missastion in the fields and the great leap forward, Like that's lots of people are working this hard. And but but instead of you know, getting rewards for this, Chinese growth rates have been collapsing for a decade. And yeah, this is you know, this

is this is the thing that you get. In the U s too, was like, well, okay, people were like, well, if you work out to get into the middle class, but then you know everyone's working nine six. No one's getting into the widdle class, the like China has incredibly low rates of social ability, and you know it into this comes involution. But the weird part of what's happening year is that involution doesn't enter the Chinese discourse through

like people complaining about work. It's it's actually a product of a bunch of middle class people complaining about Chinese

industrial policy. And this is the hardest story that nobody really talks about, even though I think it's it's really interesting because again like this, you know, anti anti work in the U s RS and the left right involution, which is the thing that's going to bring about sort of the Chinese version of anti work is the right way is originally a right wing discourse, um and and and it's interesting, it's it's it's a right wing, very nationalist discourse that gets you know, the right wing part

of it gets essentially expunged and it gets pulled left. So originally, you know, China is I don't have a more elegant way of saying this than China's leaders, and more online than ours, like significantly more like they Actually that's hard, that's hard to bash it. It's people people like like local government offices right have like they have these like internal sites that like show them what people are posting. And this this goes from the from the

bottom levels, it goes away to the top. Like people actually listen to bloggers, like like they're there, you know some of them, some of the people I'm about to talk about it are incredibly influential. And there's a bunch of arguments in the early two thousands about how China

is gonna industrialize and these are basically online arguments. Um and the guys who win that argument, she Shanping basically takes their industrial policy and implements it, which is you know, which is which is scales Like how online these people are that Like, yeah, people are taking economic policy from like literally, I mean, you know, it's it's not solely up. I don't take acon on policy people arguing on the internet.

Right this is this is an incredibly online society and it you know, but the worst part is that for a while it works. You know that their econart policy basically is they're gonna increases size of the Chinese economy by investing in sort of high tech industry and moving up the value chain. This is this has been very standards or Chinese second on policy for a while. Um, the problem is in the last about decade, it's it's

it's after working. And you know the CCPs response was to do more financialization, and this piste off the like the the online they were called like the Industrial Party. This this this is off those guys because you know, the whole thing was don't financialize, just keep investing in like building airplanes and stuff, and the Chinese economies will work

itself out. And but eventually even they can't keep making this argument because you know, I mean like like he doesn't tend right, Like the Chinese GDP growth rate was ten percent and now it's like maybe five and last year, I mean last yearwies, so you know it was really low. But I mean the Chinese growth rate has been imploding.

And so what you get out of this is is this group of people called the Taoists based on this guy named cow Okay, So, so how's the guy who who who essentially introduces the concept of involution and he's arguing that this is happening. Because I'm gonna quote him here, people can't get quote a peaceful life, get a pretty girl, live in a big house because of the US. And so the solution to this basically is is to deal

with like to destroy America as a hedgemon. And then once you do that, you know, you can get all of these things. And as you can tell, like, you know, okay, peaceful life, get a pretty girl, live in a big house. This this is like a very conservative framing of this. Yeah, yeah, I mean this is this is the Chinese equivalent of two point five kids in a a white picket fence. And it has all of this sort of associated gender politics

and class politics to go along with that. And you know, and when when Cow and the cows are talking about involution, what they're talking about is they literally they literally means Chinese technated economy, right, so that they're talking about, Okay, that you have more inputs, you have labor, technology inputs, but the output for input is declining, and the only way to restore economic growth the chief prosperity is by

solving a decline output by defeating the Americans. But you know, and and this this is kind of a big deal. And for a while, in sort of like twenty this this is, this is going places, but very quickly people are like, my life fucking sucks, Like I don't care about this econ ship or this like grand national struggle against the world hedgemon, Like I care about the fact that, like my life is this incredibly pointless, ever escalating rat

race with like literally no rewards. Yeah, that would that would concern me too, if that were a thing that we were capable of feeling in our country. Yeah, it's why there's there's been some really funny stuff with involution where like you read accounts of it and you'll get like anthropologists going like, oh, yeah, this is this is the thing that this is the thing that's unique to China, and it's like have have you worked a job in

in the US? Like but you know involution, you know what happens to it over over the course of sort of it goes from being the general you know, it goes it goes from being this thing that's about like very specific like technical industrial arguments about industrial policy too. Is when one anthropologists put it, quote the experience of being locked in competition that one ultimately knows as meaningless.

And so people, yeah, we could we couldn't imagine that this is yeah, and it's you know, and people people start talking about finding individual solutions to this, and so you know, then this is things like working last moving

to lower tier city, is getting less protgious jobs. Um. But you know, and I want to think about this again because this this is a really interesting thing where you have a very incredibly right wing, nationalistic and sort of like like middle class like nostalgia kind of like you know, like Milt aggressive foreign policy thing and then it just flips and and part of how it flips, and this is a part of the story that is almost completely ignored, but I think it's really important. Did

you guys know about this? The YouTuber named leads It. She she's the biggest Chinese YouTuber. She has sixteen million followers, and most of her followers are not on YouTube because you know, YouTube like blocked by the firewall. But she has she has fifty five million followers on the the sort of Chinese version of TikTok, and yeah, she has across the world. She has a hundred million followers, right like she she's she's one of the biggest media stars

in the world. And her origins are kind of unclear. The like official biography basically says that like when she was twelve, instead of going to high school. She's being a waitress, and then she had to like you know, but she she she'd gone to the city, and then she had to return to Realville to take care of her grandma. And she makes these videos that are these like very soft and calming videos or like calming music of her going into the woods and like harvesting materials

and making fires out of logs and like cooking things. Okay, and it's it's it's just like it's you know, it's it's very much this this really utopianism. There's there's basically no industrial technology like Cottage corp returned to nature. Yeah. Yeah, I know a lot of people who watched it like that just to like soothe them after a day of work. Like see somebody like dig a cave and turn it into like a bath or something using just hand tools

or whatever. Yeah, And there's it's interesting this kind of it's almost like turned into a sub genre. But she's by far the biggest like version of this. And you know, so she she gets picked up by a media company and from goes viral, and you know, its interesting because so she's doing this because so she she has to go back to take care of her grandma, and so she like opens a store and she's trying to support herself but in like her grandma by opening a store.

And so the videos were like a way to promote the store. And then you know, now she has a hundred million followers and she she gets a doctored as this kind of like like national culture ambassador, I guess by the state. Sure, And and it's just you know, so there's nothing overtally political about these videos at all, right, which is especially offering and like trying to sell is this you know, this like fantasy of retreat from industrial

majority into world life. And I think it's really easy to look at that esthetic and go like this is basically fascist, Like this is rejecting majority embraced here issues. Some people online when they see that immediately sees off.

I was like, oh no, it's eco fascism, yes that yeah, And I think, you know, and I think like that interpretation think is actually a lot of y I got picked up by the Chinese, by Chinese media companies and then like sort of by the Chinese state because you know, like having an actual positive utopian image of rural life is politically easeul with them, and something that's like not hasn't been true since like we've had this for a long time. Yeah, well no, and I think I would

say this this. I think this is the thing that's different in China is that there hasn't been like a positive conception of rural life really since I guess the Great Leap Forwards and then are like there there were some people in the Cultural Revolution, but then they actually went there and we're like, oh god, this sucks, and so you know, so they didn't need a new one.

They come up with this. But you know, the thing that's different about China than the US is that China's market worker population like is almost the entire size of the population of the US. I mean it's it's like two seventy million people, right, I mean it's it's enormous and and a huge number of these people. You know, I'm some of these people are going from like city to city. You're like town of town, but a lot of these people are coming from from rural villages into cities.

And you know, I mean these are this this is the background of the Chinese workforce. And like these people like they see their family once a year because you know, like they can't afford to go home. So they go home once a year for New Year's because they get some time. Often they come back and and this is where you know, like these videos are obvious fantasy, but you know, they suggest an alternative to work in the capitalist city that's sort of plausible, you know, especially if

you come from rural village. And this is where this whole thing completely backfires on the Chinese ruling class. And you know, because this this this this cowisted involution discourse is about diffuse with this style of rural rural utopianism into a movement that is going to shake the foundation of work itself. But first, but first, ads again also not connecting to anything we're talking Connectionever, why Garrison don't

even bring that up. There's no needs, there's no reason for people to think about about the fact that about that. Don't think anyway, here's about ads. Yeah, think about the Washington State Highway, but role primary sponsors. If it could happen here, if it happens to you, you'll want the Washington State Highway, patrol the border. It's so funny. Anyway, We're trying, but I think it's we're working on it. People. I think it's hilarious. Yeah, please don't, please don't join

the Washington State Highway Patrol. Ah, we're back. And I don't know about y'all, but I thought I knew what I was talking about, and I after those ads, I am fully Washington State Highway Patrol build. I'm on board. Let's do it. Yeah. In April, a guy in Chinese social media makes a post and I'm just gonnae So, yeah, I'm just gonna read this post because it's kind of short and it rules. I haven't been working for two years.

I have just been hanging around, and I don't see anything wrong with This pressure mainly comes from the generation with your peers and the values of the older generation. These pressures keep popping up, but we don't have to abide by these norms. I can live like Diogenes and sleep in a wooden bucket. I can live like Heracleitus in a cave thinking about logos. Since this land has never had a school thought that upholds human subjectivity, I can develop one of my own. Lying down is my

philosophical movements. Only through lying flat can humans become the measure of all things based. Oh my god, that's the best. I love that. Can I talk about Diogenes now, My my man Diogenes is he's from this trennd in Greek philosophical thought during kind of the high period of Greek civilization where a bunch of things come out of it.

You kind of get anarchism, Western anarchism out of it, You kind of get you get elements of like Puritan culture from it, because there are a lot of them are very much anti like the the pleasures of sex and like anything pleasing, and like you don't you don't do anything that feels good because then you become dependent on it. Like there's a whole bunch of ship going on um. And Diogenes was like one of the one of the first motherfucker's who were kind of playing around

in this in this philosophical space. And when he gets into so his early life is his dad is uh kind of a grifter. It sounds like we know that he got in trouble. He and his dad got exiled for debasing currency, which could be as simple as they were watering down for lack of a better term, like the gold or silver and currency with less precious metals and hiding it in order to make a profit. Right, and like keep the extra gold. That could be what

they were doing. It also could have been like it could have been political, because some people who were doing this in Sinope, I think is the city which is now in Turkey. We're doing it for political reasons. We

don't really know why. But there's actual documented archaeological evidence of this, including right around the time he would have been a child, we found from that period a cash of debased gold and silver coins that had been destroyed, so someone had like realized they've been debased and destroyed

them so they couldn't be used. So there's evidence. Anyway, he and his dad get exiled, which means from an early stage he goes from being someone of means, if your dad's making the currency, you're not probably not like a poor family um. And then they get kicked out of their city state and they're like kind of stateless. And so Diogenes evolves over time and like gets into philosophy.

He tries to there's this I always forget the name of the guy that he he loved it first, but there's this philosopher who's like, you know this cynical like that's the school of thought he comes from he's like a cynic um that Diogenes really wants to study from, and the guy like assaults him as as Diogenes is like, hey, man, I want to learn from you. Like he like hits him or something. This keeps happening, and eventually he's like this guy is like why do you keep doing this?

And Diogenes is like, you have something I can learn from, uh, And so I don't really care what you do to me. I'm gonna I'm gonna keep persisting. And so he becomes this guy's student, YadA YadA. And the guy who he becomes the student of is like kind of a poser because he's talking about, like we need to give up you know, these kind of like pleasures of of like civilized life and and return to a more simple time and like not enjoy all of these, you know, the

benefits of wealth. But he like he's also a rich guy and he doesn't give up his money, and Diogenes is like poor as hell um and stays that way um. And so he becomes famous for he goes to Athens and he becomes famous for a bunch of like troll ship we don't actually have. He wrote like ten books we don't have any of them, so we don't actually like know what he actually wrote in his philosophy. We just have stories from other philosophers and it's all Diogenes

being a fucking troll. So like um on one occasion, he one of his big things was he believed that people that if if something was an acceptable behavior, it was an acceptable behavior everywhere, right, And so the start of this was in in Athens, you were supposed to go buy your food in the market, but you weren't supposed to eat it there. That was like considered rude, like like like like kind of seen almost, and Diogenes would like get food and then usually by begging, because

he was that was the way he got everything. He had no money. He would like get food and he would eat it right in the middle of the market, and everybody was like, that's disgusting, and Diogenes would be like, well, if it's okay for me to eat, it must be okay for me to eat here. That's great. Diogenes took it a little bit further than that, because yeah, yeah, I can see a few ways you can take this. He extended that too, if it's fine for me to urinator ship. It's fine for me to do it anywhere.

He defended himself masturbating it. You can get people in public as if this is okay for me to do in my bedroom, why can't I do this here? Right? Um, it's very like he's he's he's a troll um Diogenes, and he's also like again, the stories we have him is he is like uber an aesthetic, so like at one point, for a long time, the only thing he owns is a wooden bowl that's his cup and and

for his food. And then, according to you know legend, he sees this poor peasant child drinking from like cupped hands and he throws away his bowl and he's really angry and he's like, god, damn it, I spent all this effort carrying around something useless, like I could put

ship in my hands. He's he's a very entertaining character and a very like yeah, yeah, he's absolutely an eugle um and he's yeah, he's just kind of like an endearing piece of shit, is like his the idea you get, but also like smarter than I mean, because because fundamentally what Diagenes is doing is he's he's saying like, hey, all this stuff that we think is important and good about our culture and and like valuable. What if it wasn't,

what if none of it matters. He's like he's provoking the thick and he's he's big into like one of his his Like the things he comes back to a lot is that like, dogs are clearly happier than us and like better creatures than us, so we should just seek to be like dogs. Um. And one of the ways he might have died is getting bitten by a dog and his bike getting infective. We don't really know how he died. Um. Everything about Theogenes, this guy fucking

hates rich people. Oh he's he's and he's very funny about it. So Alexander the Great apocryphal Lee Maybe this probably never happened, but the story is that Alexander the Great comes to Athens, you know, while he's on his his blitz through conquering the known world, and finds Diogenes. And Alexander the Great was like raised by Aristotle, right, so he knows his philosophy. Guys like he's he's he's seeking Diogenes out because he's a fan of this dude.

Probably through stories that were told to him in the same way that like I'm telling them to you now. So he comes up to Diogenes and he's like, oh my god, I'm Alexander the Great. I'm a big fan. If I couldn't be Alexander the Great, I would want to be Diogenes um. And Diogenes response, well, if I couldn't be Diogenes, I would just want to be Diogenes, which is a fucking flex Again, probably never happened, but like, I want to, I want to read this meme that

Garrison sent me because it it happens. It's absolutely a perfect riptan to what what this whole thing is sort of about. So okay, this is me. The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher and not a process gust name Aristippus, who lives matter some dead ass Greek guy who's about to get absolutely destroyed. He's living comfortably like flattering the king.

Aristipis says, if you would learn to be subservient to the king, you would not have to live on lentils. Diogenes should flied, learn to live on lentils, and you will not have to be subservient to the king. Oh, all sorts of based ship like that my favorite. But know so our guy Plato is like, is like trying to determine, trying to define like a human in the

simplest way possible. Yes, yeah, like the Platonic idea. And he was, so he comes to the inclusion that like, well, it's a it's a it's a it's an unwinged biped um, and Diogenes supposedly goes grabs a plucked chicken and says, behold a man, Like I found it, dude, rules um. He would he would famously walk around town in broad daylight with like a what do you call it, like a lantern, like looking around and people like, what are you looking for? It's like I'm looking for a man.

He would like, look at a dude, and you're like, I'm looking for a man. And as it is to say, like, none of your motherfucker's are people like you all think that you're human beings, but you're really just pieces of ship. It's just an amazing asshole. Sorry that that we should move back to anti work, but that's yeah, yeah, but and this is this is the funny that both both both American and Chinese like anti work people both fucking love Diogenes. Yeah, you know, very popular on our slash

anti work. Yeah, and you know, and the thing I was reading about the like, you know, learn to live on lentils and you'll never like after such a game by King that that's a lot of what lying down becomes. So very rapidly, this whole thing spreads into you this like really it's a sort of astounding, you know, it starts out of the meme and it spreads incredibly quickly, and the CCP gets like really really mad about this.

Um so, so it's like so this this starts in April, right, and in May there's they have this like enormous media blitz where like like the party is like outlet basically, and Guandong publishes like a four page long attack on the concept of lying down, Like the cc They the

newspapers everywhere published this stuff. Like the CCP like bands the term flat wheat yet Yeah, and it's funny because it's like if they do this, but it's too late, like it's yeah, and you know, so so part part of a lying down is is about, you know, you have this incredibly fast paced intense work culture. You have involution, you're working more and more and you're getting nothing out of it. Lying flat is just going no, like you just lie down, you refuse to work. But it's it's

it's also it's more than that. And I think this is this goes back to the sort of broader conception of anti work. So on one of the slogans of this movement is don't bribe property, don't buy a car, don't get married, don't have children, and don't consume. And you know, the last part of this is implied is don't work. And you know, there's a lot sort of going on here. I mean, you have you know, it's not just sort of a critique of like we work too hard. It's about you know, it's about the sort

of fall system. It's about the sort of patriarchy involved in this. It's about this sort of like force capitalist consumption. And it's about like, you know, the fact that like literally a quarter of Chinese of China's economy or Chinese GDP is like all this real estate bullshit that everyone knows is going to collapse and even when it gets built, like sucks. Thank god, we don't have anything like that here. Yeah, I know, it's great. It's one of one of the

fun things about learding histories. You get to just watch every country do exactly the same thing with their housing market, like Japan do it. It's like, it's great, It's just like you also you think this will work. What what what extra fun thing is you get to watch every country do the same thing with farms and it always

ended the same anyway. Yeah, So there's there's a lot of you know, in order to sort of like facilitate this, you know, you get back to the Diogenes, So a lot of it what's happening is people sharing tips about how to make the cheapest food you can possibly survive on so you don't have to work, and so, you know, and people the guy who wrote the Diogenes post like he spends thirty dollars a month and he does this by only eating dried ramen and eggs and like rice. Yeah, yeah,

it's the way to do it. This is like the most extreme example. I actually, I don't even think it's the most atreme example. A lot of people. One of the things that happens a lot is munch of people

just like have left their jobs to become monks. This this is like a whole thing Buddhist, like honestly, like absolutely, like and I used to live in a place in the middle of fucking nowhere, one of the most like isolated places I've ever lived that like had power um and one of the people who was like by neighbor, they were within several miles of us, was a monastery.

This is in the United States, and like I went there once too because I heard they made good wine to try and get some of their wine, and like none of them would answer the door. I could see them inside all staring at me. They didn't do ship and my my overwhelming thought was like, yeah, that seems like a pretty good way to do it. Yeah, yeah, I see why you guys have picked this life. It was also during the election back from the r n C and the d n C and was like, yeah,

that seems smarter than what I'm doing. Yeah. So there's a lot of you know, yeah, that'd mean the stream example,

like if people going to become monks. But like one of the things that's happening a lot is again you know, China hasn't known it mactworker population and people are just like fuck this, I'm going back to my village and so and you know, and this is you know, this this, this is where they really screwed up with the YouTube stuff because you know, people were people, you know, they were gambling that that you know, you could just sell this as an aesthetic and you know, you can sell

it as an aesthetic like Chinese TikTok has this integrated thing in it where like if you if you if you plug like something to buy it, like you can like click it and it'll just it'll take you like to a link like to to to to the thing it's selling, you know. And so yeah, they're making a no amount of money on this, but you know, the the the other side of that sword is a bunch of people were like, I don't have to work this Like I don't have to work in a city. I

can just go home. Yeah, and you know, and you know, and you know, so you know, as you're talking about the antiwork stuff, it's not actually possible for a lot of people to leave their jobs. So the solution to this was there there's a culture that developed called petting fish, which and but but before you talking about petting fish, you said something about, uh, plug things on TikTok and you know who you know, you know like plugging like advertisements,

and you know who also plugs plugs advertisements. Chris, Oh no, is it us Joe Rogan. But our new sponsor is the Joe Rogan Experience, brought to you by Honda. Honda Drive a Car, Do Fascism? Honda? Really yeah, Honda Garrison. Look, we don't We're not nearly a big enough podcast to get fucking to get a Toyota ad Are you crazy? Yeah, that's what we can dream big. Yeah, I mean that is the dream to sell Toyota's. I mean we could

become used car salesman in the valley. All right, here's that ah right back, cut the heat and fish handle it to keep it all in baby. Yeah. So there's there's all this thing called the petting fish, which is like Chinese slack off culture, and you know a lot of people sharing tips abo how to slack off at work, and it's it's kind of the equivalent like I love that it's called petting fish. And then also like yeah, it's it's kind of the Chinese equivalent of like boss

makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why shoot on company time. So people do just a lot of like they have a lot of like genuinely fun things they do. Like people people started putting like fake beatings on their calendars and people wouldn't bother them. They like they just like like, that's that is also that's that's that's also what I do. Yeah, yeah, I mean the if you want to make I love the term petting fish as well, but if you want to like make

it sound cool. They're waging an insurgency from within capitalism by by by trying to take resources away from their employers, um without being spotted. Yeah, there's a there's a thing in volume one of Capital about this that I was like, I could pull this up, and then I was like, that is too much work. I'm not going to do it. So I don't have the thing in volume one where talks about struggling between about labor time. But instead you get a bunch of people like the Smike, smuggling whiskey

into work, taking through our lunch breaks. My favorite one, absolutely favorite drink at work, especially if your nurse, Oh boy, you've probably killed about fifty people crossed fingers crossed, so you know how like companies all have these like these really annoying like mindfulness fitness things. So one of these people started doing was okay, so you know the thing like you have to drink eight hour, eight times a day. So they would set these alarms that's like, oh, I

have to go drink my water. And so like every like every like fifty minutes or something, they just go up and like spend twenty minutes getting water and they sit back down, and it's like you've just eviscerated and enormous part of your work day. And and the product of this, you know, this CP is really piste off about this, and you know, you get these giant billboards to say no lying flat, no petting fish on him or something. It would have been literally incomprehensible like a

year ago. It's amazing. And you know, and I think this is something you know in the U. S anti work, like the actual political class kind of has been ignoring in I mean, you see a couple of f acial antists in China, che Ching Ping like made a speech. It was like, you know, he have a private speech to a bunch of how people in the party, and so a part of it a printed like a month ago or something I've I've lost track of all time.

But like like like specifically in this speech that Ches and Ping is making that is published in the official like theoretical journal, he's like explicitly saying like don't lie flat and saying quote happy life is earned through heart, hard work. And yeah, and he's also has this, he has his ranch. But like denouncing welfare ism, which is great the the communist vanguard there. Yeah, yeah, preaching the immortal science. Yeah, socialism with Chinese characteristics. Motherfucker's don't be

a welfare queen. Fo. It's great, you know, but it's interesting people. This is the one people are really freaked out about. Like I saw I saw like an American writer about this, who you know, They wrote like an article about this whole thing, and then they were like this is gonna this is gonna cause inflation. It's like, this is gonna be the driver of like what people just use the word inflation to mean whatever scary thing

they want. Yeah, well they're they're like, oh, this will this will increase wages and that will lead to inflation and we'll get the seventies again. And I'm like, god, maybe, but a tallow disco again, did you ever think of that guy that we that were are reserves of a tallow disco are critically low? Do you wonder what a tallow disco is? No idea, that's a shame. All right, let's continue what what what type of like is there is there like any like you said this kind of

stuff started to like move left words. Is there any like actual like leftist organizing in these types of places? So so this is the thing I was getting to, which is that, like, you know, people are starting to do reading groups. But the problem, the problem with leftist organizing in China is that, you know, so state policy in the past three years has been like if you

poke your head above ground, you get arrested. So you know, I mean, for example, there was there was a strike at Jasick and you know a bunch of student groups who've been organizing for a long time like tried to do all dreaty with it, and they all got arrested. The people who are stri people who let the strike got arrested. All that. The students who are doing so ald already got arrested. People like people got arrested for like like dancing with like University students got arrested for

like dancing with the people who were like cleaning the floors. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, like the emotional impression, yeah, like it's it's incredible and like, you know, and the other thing that you can see about this was so so For example, there was there was a guy doing like delivery driver organizing. It was kind of weird. He was like kind of an entrepreneur

kind of doing livery driver organizing. Like he got arrested, and then you know, like a couple of weeks later, this is people like, oh, we're gonna like do things to improve the conditions of of delivery drivers, and you know, who knows if that's going to happen. But like, you know, basically like any anyone out for some reason that the people in the tech sector have been able to get away with more for reasons that are probably class based, and I think this doesn't take them seriously in the

way they do with students factory workers. But you know, and actually I mean the fact that the tech workers like kind of recently like that there's a tech worker thing calling for like like democratic control of production, which is wild. But other than those guys like you can't you know, you can't stick your head up, you get flattened. So this has sort of been the result of this, which is this like you know, the sort of the

like lying flat is this. You know, it's this mass decentralized movement that you know, there's there's no one to hit with a hammer, and you know, and and I think, like, okay, so one of one of the other quotes that's that's been going around about lying flat is it's it's a poem. It doesn't poem as well in English, but this, this is the best you've got. Lying flat is to not bow down. Lying flat is to not kneel. Lying flat is to stand up horizontally. Lying flat is a straight spine.

And so you know what was basically happening here is is it's a combination of the tendencies you see in the US, where you know, a bunch of people terrible jobs, realizing that everything is pointless. And then also this is a way you can, like this is the way you can like fight your boss without like the police showing up.

And so there's there's some interesting like political stuff. So there, there's there, there's there's there's if if you look at that, there there's a bunch of memes here because they're great. So there's there's been a thing with these people talking about how people are leaks, which are like their leaks, they're harvested over and over again and they're being exploited and like the plants, Yeah, plants like leaks like yeah, you eat. And so they have this thing that's leaks

that life flat cannot be so easily harvested. It's just like a knife go like try like a machete, like trying to swing out a bunch of leaks, but the leaks are flat, so they can't hit them. And I

see what, you know, I like, I like all of this. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's you know, and so and so what the product of this is that yeah, like this this, this, this has this stuff has actually been effective enough that the CCP, like you know, I mean, the CCP is is taking it seriously, but you know, there's not much they can do about it. Because like if someone's just like, oh, I'm going to go from a job that's really high stressed to one that's less high stress, like what are

you're gonna are you just gonna arrest them? Like what what are you gonna do and so this, yeah, this, this has been building for a while now, and I don't know who who knows exactly like where it's going to go, but it's it's it's already you know. It's something that people can do as an individual in a place where organized political action is impossible in a way such that you know that their individual actions have a collective effect, but one that can't be just you know,

pounded down. Yeah, I mean, it is certainly interesting to see two completely separate, like anti work style movements around basically around the same same exact time, with the same

exact points, if you're totally different languages. If you're someone who's interested in massive global revolutionary change, this should probably be a thing that you are looking at and studying and thinking a lot about, because perhaps while we're arguing about ship that people started talking about in the eighteen seventies, this this might be a better thing to do than than that, because because it's it seems like there's some

potential here. Yeah, and I think, yeah, I mean, you know, if if if you if you know any any any any actual revolutionary project that makes the world better is going to have to be international and that's been you know that that that that that's been the bane of all revolutionary movements forever. But you know, okay, so we have you know that we we have something to Chinese the American working class agrees on, which is Diogenes is

based in work sucks. Yeah, So as you go forward into your life this week, um, take a page from Diogenes as his book and the people ship on the floor of a free people or yeah, free people are an h and M. Go walk into one and just just just go absolutely ruin that tile. I mean, fuck it. This is why my my my biggest political advice to friends who has always been learned to run fast, because if you learn to run fast, you can do so many more fun things in a store and then run

fast that it's done right. The problem is that a lot of people like who who want to do this can't run fast enough. So learn to run fast to do this. There. It's like Moose said, all political power comes from being able to ship really fast and from the doors of a free people. Just get that hell out of there. The immortal silence. Look, I think I think I think we should eve with with the real immortal science, the the immortal words of a skeleton from

the share Zone. Just walk out. You can leave work, social things, movie, home, class, dentist, close shops to fancy weed store cops, if you're quick, friendships, if it sucks, hit the bricks yeah yeah. As as some comedian who I can't remember now said, always have an exit plan like that. That that should be your thought for everything everything in the world. Bricks. Hit the fucking bricks, Get

out anyway, Get out of this podcast episode now. It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.