inspired by someone saying "i did this but i can't do any more because i'm not a programmer" !attachments/2026-03-06 at 12.46.55@2x.png

predefined categories of capability— 'designer,' 'developer,' 'farmer,' 'wife,' 'friend,' 'man,' 'woman,' 'human'— are incredibly limiting. they create definitions of what someone should do, what they should be capable of doing, and things that they should not do.

where is this from? is it a vestige of an older world where these kind of roles were necessary? luddism i feel was the first sign that this as a status quo was breaking down

these sets of assumptions are what make structural unemployment so scary. when things shift, when the world evolves as it is ought to do, when the definition of roles shift, this default mentality is what is dangerous. the accepting of something as a default.

The Last Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man

this also connects to self-gaze, self-noise, what we see ourselves as and as a result what we think that we will be capable of. what we can do. these definitions place boundaries on ourselves in ways that i think people aren't wholly conscious of.

who benefits from this kind of definition?

is it similar to the caste system? class system?

For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. - marx