The Hidden Poison of Capitalist Life : How Individualism Is Killing Us
“We’re all we’ve got”
Did someone ever say to you, “We’re all we’ve got”?
The truth is nobody wants to stay only by themselves, live only by themselves, and sleep only by themselves. We all think we do, and God almighty knows we all need it every now and then, but we don’t need it like we need oxygen, not even in the slightest of ways.
You’ve heard it all before in every newspaper your mother reads: loneliness kills. It kills even more than cigarettes; can you believe that? Well, if you ever worked a shift in a psychotherapy ward, you certainly wouldn’t be. It’s more than apparent that the world stops for no one, and sometimes, some of us end up all by ourselves, some by choice and some by force.
So it pays to really understand what we’re saying to young people, everywhere around the world, when we poison their minds and souls with the seeds of individualism and exaggerated self-importance.
We are a social species. It could and should be argued that the only real reasons (beyond circumstance and chance) that we are the dominant species on this planet is because we are a social species who developed language and opposing thumbs. Don’t be fooled by the language and the thumbs; the social part may be the whole reason we developed language to begin with. As for the thumbs, one could argue we developed them to grab things to show them to each other.
You think I’m kidding, but when’s the last time you found something awe-striking and mesmerizing and thought to yourself, “God, I hope no one ever sees this”? Said no one, ever.
The whole reason you’re reading this on whatever platform you’re on is because we clearly are a kind that likes sharing things with each other. It must be said that a lot of the things humans do on a daily basis is either providing services for other humans or inventing things to make life easier for other humans.
The pessimists in the room will remind me that the majority of the labor performed on earth is either inadequately paid for or unjustly unpaid. Not only that, but that we also dabble in a lot of destroying our only viable home on a daily basis for, as far as I’m being told, something called “Shareholders”?
I’m a woman, so naturally, I don’t know what a shareholder is, but I assume you can eat it. You should be able to, or at least, breathe it.
If we’re burning all the eatable things and all the breathable places on Earth for shareholders, they should be able to replace them. Otherwise, funnily enough, it cannot make sense.
I hope your head isn’t swaying from all the bell-ringing, but it’s important for me to say it every day, that our species does not make sense, in the fucking slightest.
Truth be told, these issues are not that separate or distinct. The rise of this maladaptive individualism that permeates the West has really taken root unto our new global consciousness. Selling the idea that hustling your way to the top is the only way to show that a human being has value, especially to a man, is such a dumb recipe for disaster.
When we speak about loneliness, let it be known that there truly is a male loneliness epidemic. Let it also be known that no one deserves to be lonely.
Humans are made to belong. It is a necessary experience for every human being. There is no amount of knowledge or artificial substitute or drug or achievement that will change this about your biological wiring.
You understand you cannot make a light bulb eat cheese; if you ask scientists, it’s just as ridiculous an idea to think you can live without people or belonging.
Don’t forget solitary confinement is considered a potent and mind-killing form of torture. If you hear from torture survivors who went through solitary confinement, they report having extremely vivid hallucinations. If you were to truly live without people or social interactions as you “grind” for an extended period of time, you will deprive your brain of something it needs so fundamentally that it will, in all likelihood, start to malfunction.
So why are they selling you a fictional version of your human brain and spirit that somehow would only be completed if you win at capitalism? The answer is in the end of that sentence.
Capitalism, while for long fruitful for a handful of humans, has nowadays morphed into nothing more than vulgar greed. And at the end of capitalism (and the human era?) with no church or state to trust, what good will we do with genetic engineering, the AI singularity staring us down, or the climate catastrophe we have brought to our own door for shareholders?
The observant in the room will call me the pessimist. They might be right; I haven’t felt like much of an optimist since December 2020. Before the pandemic, I looked out at the world and saw nothing more than confusing incompetence in world leadership.
Today I understand the incompetence is part of the game. The plan is not to get better at governance, but to maintain a tyrannical lack of competence that only serves the most privileged, forever.
This plan is comically ambitious given how terrible the current state of the world is. The fire burns ever so brightly and our world leaders keep telling us the winds will tame the fire, as they shut the doors of their bunkers.
When this toxic individualism will have finished poisoning the air, and they start selling you premium air, remember, the incompetence was a planned part of the game.
The problem with our problems is everyone wants an answer and a roadmap, or they hate you for even bringing up the problem. The gag, however, is that even if you come up with a problem and a possible solution, they will be trampling over each other to yell at you that it would never work. I suppose we can be a contrarian social species.
You want the antidote to individualism and its dripping venom? Cut it out in your own life. Fight it when others try to impose it on you. Show others a different way, the only real way to be human, by caring.
Smile at a stranger who seems nice, buy a cup for a friend unprompted, support a cause you believe makes the world better, vote at your local and governmental elections, read about community or create one!
What does it mean to be a modern human on earth? You’re either being exploited or outright oppressed, and all the other humans are told not to care, not to look, not to ask, and not to help.
You want to kill the snake? Cut the head off.
You want to end individualism? Care about other living things.
You want the world to be better? Care about it.
God knows there’s already enough misguided souls hustling themselves into social anxiety. I urge us all to take care of ourselves and each other; after all, we’re all we’ve got.
Carthago servanda est,
Luxnor 💌
