Re:Picking berries is my meditation
by unimplmntd_trap on Thursday August 13, 2026 @07:39AM
(#49284506)
It’s amazing what 5 minutes spent picking weeds out of my garden does for my mental health.
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You know what, that’s pretty depressing.
Re:Picking berries is my meditation
by contagiousflow on Thursday August 13, 2026 @11:34AM
(#49287575)
Why?
Weeding is the act of removing unwanted plants, known as weeds, from a garden or other area where they are not desired. Capitalism "weeds" out the people that are marked for inefficiency.
I see this mimicking of capitalism as a depressing attempt to be in control. A re-expression of the power dynamic.
This is just my opinion.
Re:Picking berries is my meditation
by embedding-shape on Thursday August 13, 2026 @12:57PM
(#49288788)
"Tending", which is the act of removing undesirable parts of whatever, isn't a parallel to how capitalism favors a winner-takes-it-all scenarios, if that's what you're alluding to.
If you're growing edible stuff, you need to remove the weed in many parts of the world otherwise you won't have any vegetables eventually as the weeds will overgrow everything else. You also don't want something you cannot eat to take nutrients and sun from what you can eat.
You also don't want [someone who] cannot [work fast enough] to take [efficiency] from [the assembly line].
Re:Picking berries is my meditation
by embedding-shape on Thursday August 13, 2026 @02:31PM
(#49290094)
Not every company works like that. But every gardener removes weeds from their edible stuff.
You also cull weak animals for the good of the flock/herd, to avoid dysgenic traits from them being passed down. You also clean your house. You also peel and trim a potato before cooking it.
Gardening and horticulture are ancient human activities that are incredibly old, the act of tending to and cultivating one's garden is a really delightful way to center the mind and get into a place where one is more grounded, connected to nature, and about as disconnected from capitalist interests a thing as you'll find. It's humanizing.
Just because the suits took a metaphor from gardening doesn't mean you have to think like the suits, maybe you want to liberate yourself from the kind of dehumanizing thinking where capitalism rather than nature is the central frame of reference.