The Movie "Perfect Days" And The Subconscious Snobbery Of Salon Socialists.

This past weekend I watched the movie "Perfect Days (2023)" with my brother. I thought it was beautiful and inspiring. My brother thought it was boring because he was waiting for a pay-off that didn't come. 

Perfect Days is about a Japanese man called Hirayame who works as a cleaner of public toilets in Tokyo (I think Tokyo). He takes pictures of trees with a film-based camera, he listens to cassette tapes of the oldies, and reads books. He lives alone. He says almost nothing.

I saw in the movie the pleasure of being a nobody, but being a useful person. Of enjoying the present moment, enjoying a  tree or little moments with people, being content with what you have, having no grand ambitions, living a simple routine, having no ego.

My brother has many ambitions. It charms him that none of them are ego-driven like making money. He wants to make art. Video games, and paintings. He often feels bad because he is too busy, too tired, sick,... to work on his projects.

In Buddhism there is a meme: "desire leads to suffering". Being ambitious means for some that they are never satisfied, and never just content with what they have. They can't let go of their failures in the past. They are never happy with the present. Very critical of themselves and others. They put enormous pressure on themselves with future plans. Compare themselves with the highest achieving people in history. But it's okay to just be nobody, clean toilets, and enjoy the occasional tree.

Some salon socialists like Tom Lanoye ( read about how Tom Lanoye made me vote for right-wing Bart DeWever here ) reveal their hidden snobbery against manual labor by framing it as something humiliating. It's a crime that immigrants have to clean houses, deliver packages, build houses,... and apparently we whites don't want to do it. I've experienced this snobbery against working with your hands since I was a kid. Both my teachers and father used to threaten me that I would end up in a trade school, as if it was a Siberian gulag. Even the Marxist party pvda in Flanders seems to imply that manual labor is a tragedy. That you are somehow an oppressed victim.

I didn't have to work for the rest of my life, being on generous disability. But for various reasons, more money, reciprocity, meaning, image, the greater good, honesty,... I went to the government and told them I wanted to work. I'm looking forward to working my menial job. Getting up early and taking the bus. Being tired at night. Being useful.

The most important thing is that the work atmosphere isn't toxic, which is often the case. But I would be proud to clean toilets and just be a good person and live a humble life. Hirayama is a role model to me. Tom Lanoye can suck a lemon.

peace ✌️ 💜