Late Stage Capitalism and Self-Care

Sustainable Minimalists

Bleav + Stephanie Seferian

Kids & Family, Leisure, Parenting, Home & Garden

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2022

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Underneath all of life's burdens, many of us experience the triple losses of time, freedom, and mental space. Self-care is generally touted as burnout's antidote, and advocates argue that regular self-care routines lower stress, anxiety, and frustration while simultaneously improving energy, concentration, and overall life satisfaction. Sounds wonderful, right? But there's a problem with #selfcare culture: In a capitalist society, anything and everything becomes a sellable product or service, self-care included. Indeed, these days the term 'self-care' is often used synonymously with spa days, last-minute getaways, and other actions that require a financial transaction. On today’s show we attempt to answer this very 2022 question: Is self-care a commodity that is best purchased, or is the idea that taking care of ourselves must be outsourced the epitome of late stage capitalism? Here's a preview: [1:15] Differentiating between an expanded view of self-care versus a narrow, contorted one [4:33] Understanding the ways in which capitalism misconstrues our collective notion of self-care [8:15] Defining late stage capitalism (with real life examples!) [12:20] The 4 categories of self-care [18:30] Communal care is self-care: 3 benefits to thinking of others - not the self! - first Resources mentioned: Why the Phrase 'Late Capitalism' Is Suddenly Everywhere (via The Atlantic) We Need To Move On From Self-Care To Something That Cannot Be Captured By Capitalism (via The Guardian) -- Thank you to this week's sponsors! Ettitude: Use code SUSTAINABLE for 20% off bamboo bedding Thrive Market: Head to thrivemarket.com/sustainable for up to $80 in free groceries AprilAire: Check out their air purifying and filtration options at AprilAire.com -- * Join our (free!) community here. * Find your tribe. Sustainable Minimalists are on Facebook, Instagram + Youtube. * Email me and say hello! MamaMinimalistBoston@gmail.com. Our Sponsors:* Thank you to LifeStraw! https://lifestraw.com/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/sustainable-minimalists/exclusive-content

Transcript

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0:00.0	It has been a summer of self-care over here. I'm talking lots of hikes, lots of beach trips with the
0:06.4	sunscreen of course, you name it, I'm fitting it in before Labor Day. Wherever you're off to this summer, know that you're taking your microbiome with you. And seeds
0:17.3	D.S. 1 daily symbiotic benefits your gut, your skin, your heart in just two capsules a day. Now if you've been around here for a while you know that I pay close attention to what I put in my body I do my d darndest, to avoid synthetic ingredients, and that's why I trust seed.
0:37.0	Support your gut this summer with seeds, DS01, daily symbiotic.
0:41.8	Go to seed.com
0:43.0	sustainable and use code 25 sustainable to get 25%
0:48.0	off your first month.
0:49.0	That's 25% off your first month of seeds, DS01, daily symbiotic at seed.com slash sustainable,
0:58.3	code 25 sustainable.
1:03.0	Hello listeners and welcome back.
1:05.0	My name is Stephanie Safarian and you're listening to episode 2. 90 of sustainable
1:10.0	minimalist, a twice-weekly show about intentional and eco-minimalist living.
1:15.7	On today's show, we are exploring the ways in which our capitalist society has narrowed our
1:21.5	definition of what we think of as self-care,
1:25.0	as well as offering what we can do about it.
1:29.0	Self-care is generally seen as the antidote to burnout,
1:34.0	often women's collective burnout.
1:36.4	And that's because self-care reclaims
1:39.0	what women often lose, our time, our finite mental space, our freedom thanks to all the labor associated with
1:47.9	running households and raising families and having careers etc etc. There are crushing emotional mental and physical labor on all of us
1:57.6	and particularly on us ladies. The problem though is that in a capitalist society self-care is naturally going to become a sellable product or a sellable service.
2:09.0	And so on today's show I'm offering up three action steps for us to reclaim our self-care.
	...

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