my advice for your twenties: resist or you will be turned into a piece of material

the obliteration of 22 year olds serves a function for the men who control international capital

Sep 24, 2024

“For several years now, since I started my university journey, I’ve been trying to change this part of myself, a part I’ve never truly felt was mine. A mask I sewed onto myself to be invisible, away from others' judgment.
I spent a lot of time turning over my thoughts due to my lack of courage to challenge myself to change the things that made me unhappy.
But now, I’m facing my 20s with a different perspective. There are times when being myself and exposing more of who I am makes me feel different, more authentic. It’s a feeling I’m not at all familiar with, but deep down, it helps me see the world from a different angle.
It’s important to challenge ourselves and understand who we are in doing so. On several occasions, I find myself not overthinking the countless consequences that might arise, simply throwing myself into the authenticity of who I am and who I want to be.
Our twenties are also for this: to turn the page from the person we were and to embrace and accept our new selves, to discover who we are and who we want to become.”
michela
, am i being too hard on myself?

a memory from 2023

T is an artist but she is doing her art less and less.

T says she hates 22 year olds and i think about how much art she made when she was 22. she says it is difficult to make friends because so many people she meets are 22 year olds. we both have been working in education for years — in New York charter schools that drive teachers out of teaching by 30 — and she bemoans the fact that there are so many 22 year olds at work.

it feels like just yesterday to me that she was a 22 year old and i was a 32 year old and we were drunk and high as shit together.

sometimes when i hang out with T: i still think she is 22!

the strange thing as T rants to me about 22 year olds is that i find it hard to believe she herself is not a 22 year old even though i know she is 25.

and maybe this is the identity from which she is running. maybe she knows that when i look at her, i still see a 22 year old, and this is not something she can tolerate.

what i can see T doing is constructing herself into something that is not a 22 year old. she is clear about this constructing activity: she is not a 22 year old, and she will not associate with 22 year olds either, because as she emphasizes to me again when i say that she seems like a 22 year old to me: she is not a 22 year old, absolutely not, and i smile as i think to myself, “well.” she wants to make friends; i say, “maybe you should hang out with the 22 year olds;” a shiver. she seems disturbed when i shrug and say i’d be happy to go out and have a drink with a 22 year old any time. and it’s as if: i have just told her i’d be happy to spend time with a right-wing paramilitary group.

i want to tell T:

there is not really any such thing as a 22 year old.

to me this is the obvious thing neither of us will say.

there is this 22 year old girl who exists in T’s mind and she hates this person.

i want to to tell her that this person does not exist, never did exist, and in fact: this person could be disintegrated into power as easily as the most pristine automobile could be crushed up into parts and melted back into the earth, which is something you could never do to an actual being.

but i know that no matter what i say, she is going to go on believing in 22 year olds, and she is going to continue trying to construct herself into something that is not a 22 year old, at least for now. i still have hope that one day she will be a 22 year old again.

“just last year when i was backpacking in Italy and i was 34,” i tell her, “i had drinks every night with 22 year olds.”

i want to encourage her: i want her to understand that 22 year olds can be fun people.

but she looks at me like i told her i was in a porno.

a portrait of a theoretical and made up young professional

people tell you that your twenties are an opportunity for freedom, autonomy, growth.

this is true, but what people do not tell you is that in your twenties you are under siege.

22 is the age at which a new constructing activity begins: the beings around you, at least those who are divorced from reality by several layers of abstract conceptual webs, will now attempt to construct you into an “adult.”

their own behavior is governed not by themselves. their behavior toward you is governed by the conceptual webs into which they are unknowingly entangled and which they take to be the fabric of reality itself: among these webs are several webs unto themselves dealing with what it means to be a “proper adult.”

take N, a professional woman who is gradually being entangled into artificially fabricated conceptual webs which were designed to dominate her and convince her that the suppression of her own authenticity is an economic & social imperative. N begins to feel that she should distance herself from 22 year old women because they are “immature.” N begins to lose her connection to little things that used to bring her joy. and over time, N comes to understand: my self-obliteration is a good thing; i am an adult and i am a professional and i am a respected member of my community.

N feels that she must construct herself into a respectable professional and she feels that she must win the approval of her supposed economic, cultural, and technical superiors. if she wins the approval of these people, she will accumulate more material and as she gazes upon her resume and as she gazes upon the materials stacked up around her: she will have a sense that there is meaning in her life. she is traveling further and further away from herself, taking on the roles the corporate world has created for her, and the more money these companies give her, or the more artificial affirmation she receives while sitting in her office writing e-mails, the more she sinks down into the unreality and incomplete satisfaction of constantly decaying material: the further she falls from the 22 year olds, which is to say the further she falls from herself.

but what do we mean when we say that the 22 year old woman is “immature”?

what we mean is that the 22 year old woman has not yet been entangled into the artificial reality of the late capitalist workplace. She does not yet understand how she is supposed to behave according to capitalistic standards of efficiency, production, and professionalism. She is an embarrassment to be around. Her mere presence in the workplace is a disturbance and there are whisperings that in time she will grow up and learn how to behave. Everyone who judges her believes that these rules of behavior are essential to the fundamental fabric of society: they sincerely believe that the 22 year old who refuses to conform to these norms is simply not ready for “reality.”

as a result of this and other factors, our twenties can be unsatisfying:

we think our twenties are an opportunity for freedom, and they are. we go into our twenties so excited for possibility. but your twenties are a time when you are also targeted by forces hoping to construct you into a machine that has been calibrated according to capitalistic demands of efficiency and capitalististic concepts about success.

in her late twenties N begins to sense what is in fact true, at least in terms of the artificial reality created by the men who control the capital which pays out her salary:

if she ever wants to be taken seriously, if she ever wants to be successful, if she ever wants to get to the top, she must obliterate the 22 year old within.

the obliteration of 22 year olds serves a function for the men who control international capital:

the obliteration of 22 year olds turns the being into a worker who will produce more material, and the accumulation & manipulation of material — as efficiently & as quickly as possible — is the ultimate goal of the capitalist.

for the patriarch who controls capital, the being herself is a piece of material to be used for producing more material. if the being believes that her own desires and her own creative drive matter more than the production of material on behalf of the corporation, then the capitalist and his agents will be sure to correct her.

she herself becomes material: to be accumulated, to be manipulated.