Shame precedes and causes unemployment rather than resulting from it

Evidence

When I was unemployed, I was convinced that an absolute ontological gulf separated me from work. Work — which, like “being in a relationship” — would automatically confer on me the status of being a Real Person. But the horrific irony was that one couldn’t achieve this status. You couldn’t become a Real Person by getting a job. It was the other way round: only Real People could get work. Being unemployed wasn’t a cause of shame; rather the sense of shame which I carried around as if it was the core of my being was what prevented me getting a job. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2457

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ch33 claim that class inferiority operates as empirically unfalsifiable sense of rulers’ hidden worth, and ch116 claim that class confidence is an injury-trait acquired at birth. — connects to: Unemployment serves as discipline that keeps employed workers docile and grateful — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 282
• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion — shame as cause rather than effect of worklessness — is a genuinely reorienting insight about how class interiority functions.

Broader Connections

• Unemployment serves as discipline that keeps employed workers docile and grateful #complicates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 282