transcript
“Pretty shitty how baseline human activities like singing, dancing, and making art got turned into skills instead of being seen as behaviors, so now it’s like ‘the point of doing them is to get good at them’ and not ‘this is a thing humans do, the way birds sing and bees make hives.’”
I guess I’m not seeing a reduction in the number of people doing these things for themselves: drawing because they like to draw, taking photographs because they like the craft, lifting weights because they want to get stronger, baking sourdough because they want to reconnect with old traditions, foraging mushrooms because they find it interesting. Yes, some of these things happen on social media, which also may influence what hobbies or pastimes or projects people take on, but if that’s what you mean by commodification, then that has been part of the human condition for as long as people have been social and have had free time.
That may be true, I’m really not sure - and idk if it’s really knowable. But it is definitely a motivation that exists. I just think we’d be better off without those motives and only with the good ones you outlined. As long as the profit motive, consumer culture, and media exist, I think we’ll not be free of that sort of thing.
The main thing, I think, is that being conscious of those forces and of the degree to which business and other bourgeois interests shape our behaviors helps us to avoid their influence. I think most folks on Lemmy probably avoid more of that motivation than most.
And, to your point, i think the better, more wholesome motives will always exist - and it’s important we let them thrive and don’t overlook them.