In Yaan Boutang's article "What is Cognitive Capitalism?" he discusses the concept of mental labour or cognitive labour. This means the labour people do mentally when performing tasks and work. I found this interesting because as students, we are forced to do cognitive labour almost every day. The school system survives off of cognitive labour. By this I mean that when doing an assignment or listening to a lecture our minds are always working. In school our minds are performing labour by thinking, absorbing, analyzing, and producing.
As I do this assignment, my mind is performing what Boutang describes as cognitive labour. I am using my mind to think about the content I have read, analyze it, and produce my own content regarding the reading. This blog post itself is a product of mental labour. The school system recognizes mental labour and gives specific breaks to recuperate our minds. Most of the time we do not think about all the mental labour that we put into our days. On days where I am doing a lot of work or assignments, I find myself saying "I need a break, I can't think anymore." This is due to the affect that mental labour has on us.
However, I find that physical labour often discredits mental labour. This is because people place a higher emphasis on physical labour due to the fact that people are using their physical strength. Physical labour is depicted to seem more tiring than mental labour.
Do you guys believe that mental labour is equivalent to physical labour? Or do you think that one form of labour is more important than the other?
I think that mental labour can be more exhausting than physical labour. This could be because, as Boutang states in his article, there is not always a clear measure of success or end product of mental labour. When creating a physical product through physical labour, we know we have completed the task and accomplished something once the product is made. Mental labour can be more tiring because it is more internal. I personally have felt like I was being unproductive when I take too long writing an assignment, or doing research, but I was still performing mental labour. Boutang also notes that excessive mental labour can lead to feelings of anxiety, and I think that this is indicative of the toll it takes on our minds despite being invisible to other people.
ReplyDeleteOverall, this was an interesting post, had my mind doing some cognitive labour because of its thought-provoking nature.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question of "do you believe that mental labour is equivalent to physical labour? ". My simple answer is yes, both forms of labour take a tole on you as an individual. Although they both have their respected differences, I believe that there most defiantly is correlation in the abstract in both these forms of labour, which does in some regard account for their equivalency. To answer you second question, I do believe they are both important, and both contribute to the world of capitalism in similar as well as in respective ways.
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Very well said, mental labour exherts the body to the limits that we permit it to. This relates back to how Sharma discussed the technologies that are being produced that allow us to continue working even when we may not feel like it. In addition, these technologies allow us to recover quickly so we can maximize our time efficiently. Essentially, I find that physical labor can also be like mental labor because it physically exhausts the body because the body cannot handle the amount of stress the user puts upon itself.
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