I heard an interesting thought in class today from one of my peers: disability is (partly) defined by one’s economic usefulness. If you cannot use your body to produce an economic output, then you are considered “disabled”.
This very reasonable sounding peer brought up the example of “gifted” programs in American public schools. These programs championed the success of neurodivergent students, but only with the goal of making them employable.
In a different situation, these students may have been labelled as “special needs”, those who wouldn’t go on to make a boss very happy one day.
Not only was this an acute observation of the economic motives of the public school system as they relate to disability, but it also made me think about economic exploitation of the body in general.
ENTER MEAT GRINDER ANALOGY…
Our bodies are (very slowly) being thrown into and churned within a metaphorical meat grinder. We are being pushed through a pipeline that will use our bodies for product and leave us a spaghetti-fied mess on the other side. Once this “spaghetti-fication” process is complete, we’ve served our purpose and if we’ve found a way to do it ourselves, might be able to spend the rest of our lives with access to necessities (retirement).
Whether it’s the cartilage in your knees wearing out over time or the plaques accumulating in your brain, when you can no longer make money for someone else, you stop receiving the things to take care of your basic needs. Not only will you be discarded by the economic meat grinder, but for many fields of work, the degeneration of your body will be accelerated: sitting for tens of hours wears on the spine, squatting down to pick things up is hard on the joints in general, standing all day stops your body from evenly distributing loads.
There is a direct interaction between the modern industry and the body, one of exploitation. In the book “Not Just the Reflexive Reflex”, authors Mary Kosut and Lisa Jean Moore state:
“the body is our first introduction to the performance of the self and identity-our expression of agency, while at the same time its
structural location in stratified worlds that limit that very agency.”
Yes, there are certain unavoidable experiences as a human with a body: the body will wear no matter what (to a certain extent). Yet it’s important to highlight, I’m referring to a specific relationship to the deterioration of the body, one that didn’t exist before inception of social hierarchy. Residual body deterioration and active exploitation of the body accelerating degeneration are two separate things.
So not only are we caged in these bodies like Kosut and Moore describe, but these flesh cages are being hung on meat hooks and sent through the meat grinder, our meat cages are launched into processes we may not want because of societal (in this case, economic) constructs.
This exploitation is of course, not ideal to the human experience. It’s meant to benefit a select few whilst the rest survive through occasional regulation from the state (things like minimum wage, which slow us from devolving into what would essentially be modern slavery under the worst conditions). It is also deeply engrained into our modern society, this prevalence of economic hyper-individualism which entrusts the wellbeing of all people to the whims of detached individuals; a complete lack of communication. It is seemingly insurmountable in scale, and yes, our bodies will pay the price.
Firstly, I loved this title and it’s the reason I clicked on the post. Your analogy reminded me of Little Nightmares, in a way. The idea of human (children’s) bodies literally being turned into meat to feed the residents of a dystopian, industrial ship. Despite that being an extreme, fictional (ish) example, our bodies are used in America’s capitalist system in a similar way. Instead of being eaten, we’re used to our absolute limits to support massive corporations that have little to no care for the individual. And everything’s too expensive, so we have to work, unless we want to be homeless, starve, or be arrested and forced into slavery. Truly thought provoking example is all I can say.
You’re right, we *have* to work. It taps into the idea of “positive” and “negative” freedom, where we have a choice of where and how we want to be exploited, but we are still being exploited. We have choice between bad options, it is not any real kind of mobility.
Thank you also for putting “Little Nightmares” on my radar.
This title is awesome, just wanted to come down here and say that. It truly is terrifying the extent at which this “meat grinder” has embedded itself in our collective consciousness, whether that be with or without our knowledge. I see it the most in things like the arts, which are by definition supposed to be an emotional expression of the self. Something that is supposed to be an outlet turns into yet another stressful experience about not being good enough to make money off of, or measure up to everyone else and have it be worth it. So many times I’ve heard conversations that disparage and doubt people that are trying to survive in the arts, simply because it isn’t looked at as economically necessary.
It’s harder to exploit an artist for profit, it of course still happens, but a line of factory workers is a lot more intuitive to exploit for economic gain than an abstract intellectual property. It speaks to a hyper-prioritization of the economical in ignorance of the sociological. The lack of awareness frustrates me and our current institutions could be doing much more to make people more aware of social power structures. Thanks for the comment 🙂
Fuck ass human meat grinder? Hell yeah. Sometimes I think about aging and get so anxious. The thought of my body betraying me because I have not treated it well enough. The thought of my body giving out on me. All because I am forced to work like a dog to survive. I have defined who I am based on my work. Does my body like that? Like the fact that I work constantly? Like the fact that I come home every day ready to fall into bed and start all over in the morning? Only time will tell how the meat grinder will do me.
Our abilities are sort of sacrificed into that economic engine, the “meat grinder”. Ideally this sacrifice could at least return some sort of guarantee of wellbeing. Our bodies are deprioritized in favor of productivity .I’m 20 and I already have disc degeneration with chronic pain, the body falls apart for everyone at some point, I wish people had more freedom and that society invested more in helping people live with these changes and accommodate them.