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The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

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Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#31

Post by ckuehl »

omgmaouz wrote: post #29

As much as I feel for this poor guy I can't help but feel that this article is glamorising suicide. Suicide is a selfish (IMO cowardly) act and I'm sure his family will suffer for the rest of their lives because of it.

While I understand the point that you're trying to make, I think that characterizing suicide this way is unhelpful. It ignores the fact that most of the people who end up committing suicide are deeply sick, and does nothing but make these ill people feel further disconnected from society.

Suicide and depression are incredibly complex issues, and these kind of oversimplifications don't help anyone.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#32

Post by mb_72 »

omgmaouz wrote: post #29

As much as I feel for this poor guy I can't help but feel that this article is glamorising suicide. Suicide is a selfish (IMO cowardly) act and I'm sure his family will suffer for the rest of their lives because of it.

Making such generalisations is dangerous; for example, suicide when one is terminally ill and in terrible pain could be seen by many as the sensible thing to do.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#33

Post by wyager »

sroerick wrote: post #30
CognitiveLens wrote: post #14

Suicide is a tragedy and people should always do what they can to prevent it. However, it is also something that will always occur in some portion of the population, typically as the result of depression. We should not ignore the fact that the suicide rate in, for example, the United States is an order of magnitude higher than it is at Foxconn. Foxconn employs over 1.2 million people, so the number of suicides will a…

The suicide rate in federal prisons is lower than that of the general population as well. Does that mean that the quality of life is higher in federal prisons? Or is it simply that Foxconn employees feel so trapped by their conditions they are deprived of even the ability to take their own life? Perhaps with enough rhetorical gymnastics we can disassociate Xu Lizhi's experience from the electronics in our pockets and…

>Foxconn employees feel so trapped by their conditions they are deprived of even the ability to take their own life

Wait, so now the issue isn't "Foxconn employees kill themselves too much", it's "Foxconn employees don't kill themselves enough"?

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#34

Post by api »

Capitalism indeed seems to consign the masses to work that is drudgery and is intellectually beneath them, but so does socialism.

Every socialist experiment I'm familiar with has almost instantly devolved into a form of a capitalism based on social pull with the bureaucracy rather than financial leverage. The final endpoint of this trajectory seems to be the mafia state -- pure social pull capitalism within criminal-state complex hierarchies.

If there's a solution here, it may not lie within politics as we ordinarily think about it.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#35

Post by sroerick »

omgmaouz wrote: post #29

As much as I feel for this poor guy I can't help but feel that this article is glamorising suicide. Suicide is a selfish (IMO cowardly) act and I'm sure his family will suffer for the rest of their lives because of it.

Was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi a selfish and cowardly act?

Is it cowardly and selfish to continue using these products? Do you have any kind of exit strategy or utopian vision where everyone, even Foxconn workers can afford a fashionable new iPhone?

In 100 years, we've gone from using slaves for labor to using machines built by wage slaves for labor, mostly because using slaves for labor makes us feel too guilty. Many would call that selfish and cowardly.

I don't endorse suicide, but I don't think it helps anyone to reduce a complex and heartbreaking situation like this into a simple othering.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#36

Post by sroerick »

wyager wrote: post #33
sroerick wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The suicide rate in federal prisons is lower than that of the general population as well. Does that mean that the quality of life is higher in federal prisons? Or is it simply that Foxconn employees feel so trapped by their conditions they are deprived of even the ability to take their own life? Perhaps with enough rhetorical gymnastics we can disassociate Xu Lizhi's experience from the electronics in our pockets and…

>Foxconn employees feel so trapped by their conditions they are deprived of even the ability to take their own life Wait, so now the issue isn't "Foxconn employees kill themselves too much", it's "Foxconn employees don't kill themselves enough"?

No, the issue is exploitation.

It seems a little to easy to reduce the situation to a "Once Foxconn employees stop killing themselves at X rate we can consume Apple products guilt free." type of equation, doesn't it?

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#37

Post by omgmaouz »

mb_72 wrote: post #32
omgmaouz wrote: post #29

As much as I feel for this poor guy I can't help but feel that this article is glamorising suicide. Suicide is a selfish (IMO cowardly) act and I'm sure his family will suffer for the rest of their lives because of it.

Making such generalisations is dangerous; for example, suicide when one is terminally ill and in terrible pain could be seen by many as the sensible thing to do.

Yes I agree there may be times where suicide seems preferable to life in the cases you mentioned.

My issue is with this article As far as I can tell this man wasn't definitely depressed. It seems he was just unhappy with his situation and chose to take the easy way out.

There are others who have committed suicide at that factory but of course they aren't poets...

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#38

Post by e40 »

brd wrote: post #24
e40 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those moments where I'm utterly distressed by the lack of a solution to curb all the frivolous consumerism of the world. I don't think frivolous consumerism is the cause, it's what humans will do to others to get ahead. In other words, greed. The people that run the factories don't view the people as human, otherwise they wouldn't be able to treat them like machines.

I'm inclined to believe that Foxconn and its ilk exist because there is an insatiable need for the latest and greatest gadgets. I absolutely agree that greed will always be a major factor in the equation but I can't help but think that our rabid consumerism is the culprit providing the opportunity for the greedy to reign.

Let's turn this around. Let's look at coal miners and the problems they've gone through. I don't think the consumers of coal would be considered frivolous or the cause of the bad conditions of the miners. It's the companies that want to squeeze out that last drop of profit at the expense of their workers. That's the problem.

Humans can abuse other humans for any reason, and greed is the cause.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#39

Post by omgmaouz »

sroerick wrote: post #35
omgmaouz wrote: post #29

As much as I feel for this poor guy I can't help but feel that this article is glamorising suicide. Suicide is a selfish (IMO cowardly) act and I'm sure his family will suffer for the rest of their lives because of it.

Was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi a selfish and cowardly act? Is it cowardly and selfish to continue using these products? Do you have any kind of exit strategy or utopian vision where everyone, even Foxconn workers can afford a fashionable new iPhone? In 100 years, we've gone from using slaves for labor to using machines built by wage slaves for labor, mostly because using slaves for labor makes us feel to…

I think his parents/siblings would have wished he had never committed suicide.

Although it seems there is no end of politicians willing to ride on his act and use it as a source of legitimacy.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#40

Post by psygnisfive »

api wrote: post #34

Capitalism indeed seems to consign the masses to work that is drudgery and is intellectually beneath them, but so does socialism. Every socialist experiment I'm familiar with has almost instantly devolved into a form of a capitalism based on social pull with the bureaucracy rather than financial leverage. The final endpoint of this trajectory seems to be the mafia state -- pure social pull capitalism within criminal-…

Check out the anarchist socialist experiments like Catalonia during the Spanish civil war. They tended to collapse because of inability to fight external forces, not because of bureaucratic bloat, etc.
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