I don’t want what this society has to offer.
I don’t want money. I don’t want prestige. I don’t want a fancy car, nice clothes, or a big beautiful house. I don’t want any of it. As far as I’m concerned, the entire system is a scam. We’re put on a treadmill at an early age and trained to produce and consume so that the world’s elite — the ones who own what we produce, and sell us what we consume — can get fat.
What I want is peace. Blessed peace somewhere elsewhere. Somewhere where the noise of cars, people, and industry aren’t heard. Somewhere where the stresses of pleasing your boss or your clients doesn’t exist. Somewhere where you exist for yourself and your loved ones and live by your own means and under your own rules.
I don’t know if such a place exists, but if it does I aim to find it.
I think this issue may be at the root of the epidemic of depression and anxiety in our society. Consciously or not I think most of us want out but how do we do it? In order to achieve escape first we must exploit the system to make the money to purchase our escape!
You are exactly right. Once entombed within the system (of which none of us had any choice), escape is only available to a privileged few — those with the drive or ambition to use the system to their advantage. Ironically, these very same people are unlikely to ever want to escape, since the system handily satisfies their every need. The rest of us remain at the mercy of the machine, endlessly turning the treadmill and casting around for a way to get off.
In “My Ishmael” Daniel Quinn lays out in good detail how the system is made to work and makes the very same assertion as you do — that this is the root cause of the epidemic of depression and anxiety in our society. They key innovation of our society (and the thing that underpins it) was the placing of food under lock and key. Why? So that you would have to work to get it. It seems to be me, therefore, that the way out of this captivity is to have your own means of producing or obtaining food. This was the norm for thousands of years before our civilization came into existence and still persists today in very small pockets around the globe. With no need of food from the machine, you would no longer be dependent upon it. Or, at least, not so hopelessly dependent upon it.
From technology came industrialization. From industrialization came specialization. And from specialization came the loss of knowledge for how to take care of ourselves. Dependence on the system to provide our food ensued, and now we’re trapped. Only in writing this has it dawned on me that this is precisely where my distrust of technology is rooted. Technology has turned us into slaves. Eureka!
Thanks for your feedback. I think I have more to say on this, which will be best handled in a follow-up article. Stay tuned…