When “sanity” is anything but sane?

When you realize you’re hopelessly trapped?

When your mother is dying and your soul has been stolen?

What to do?

When you think about it, society is really a machine that uses us.  I’m not sure who invented it or who controls it (no one?), but we are mere cogs in this giant machine.  And the reason we don’t respect human rights is because all we care about is the machine.  If it says that these 300 people need to be fired, they get fired. It doesn’t matter what it does to their lives because the interest of the machine is what’s most important.

I guess it is run by people.  Let me clarify that, it’s run by a few people.  Several thousand at most.  And I think the point of the machine is to make their lives better. The lives of the few that run it.  As for everyone else, it’s purpose is to provide us with just enough that we don’t revolt.  That’s right, it gives the people the absolute minimum that it takes to keep us pacified and never an inch more. The selfish bastards who run the show have no interest in us other than as instruments of cheap labor. All they really care about is themselves and their families.  We’re so hopelessly oppressed we’ve forgotten that we are oppressed. But we are, and we’ll never be free as long as we buy into their crap. All this consumerism, and nationalism, and religion, it’s all bullshit. All are modes of oppression. We are not free people, for  ”slavery is determined neither by obedience nor by hardness of labor but by the status of being a mere instrument, and the reduction of man to the state of a thing.”

I’m a human being, not a cog in your goddamn machine.

My life has value. My autonomy matters. I’ll never find what I need in a store.

it is what it is

a weekend in reality

before returning to the madhouse

I wish we lived in a world that produced abundant free food by itself.

I wish we lived in a world where you can litter because everything biodegrades.

I wished we lived in a world of infinite beauty and mystery, and peace.

A world that cleans its own pollution, and where my body heals itself.

A world without factories or weapons of  war.

A world without chains.

Oh wait, we do.

“Whoever can see through all fear
will always be safe.”

You know, religious folk like to talk about faith a lot.  They have faith in God, yadda yadda bs.  Here’s the thing; I don’t think these people have any faith at all.  I think that faith is a tool to use against fear.  So, when something scary is happening you can have faith that you’ll get through it.  But these same faithers also want to control everything.  They want to go to war because they have no faith in other forms of coercion.  They want to legislate morality because they have no faith in people to be good.  When faced with a fear, they always choose the most direct coercive action, they never let things play out.  Sometimes, if you overreact to something you make things worse.  Sometimes your overreaction blinds you to the fact that what you’re afraid of really isn’t as threatening as it first seemed.  So you start walking these paths of fear, and once you do that you have lost control of your own life because anyone can get you to do anything just by eliciting frightening consequences for not listening.  Eg. “We have to invade Iraq or we’re all gonna die”  or “We have to let the govt buy up shitloads of bad debt, or we’re all gonna die.”  And when they put it like that, we always listen. We need to stop being so easy to manipulate.  We need to have faith that we don’t always need to control everything.  Because we can’t control everything.  And taking the scarier rout is what we call a leap of faith.

On a day where we take one step closer to the world of 1984 with the re-branding of TSA headquarters as “the Freedom Center,” no, really, I feel the need to remind the world (or the 20 people who might read this) that the essential freedom America is about, the one we fought that big ‘ol war over, is freedom from tyranny.  I’m sure most of you know what that word means, but, just for the record, tyranny means “A government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power.”  Hmmmm, so it’s not freedom from being blown up by terrorists?  No, not really.  That’s pretty hard to guarantee.  But a government in which a single ruler has absolute power…sound like any government you know?  I mean, sure, George Bush can declare anyone a terrorist for no particular reason and lock them up indefinitely without due cause, but that’s not absolute power right?  Sure he ignores the laws he doesn’t like, and makes up new ones without consulting congress, but that’s not absolute power.  I mean, he still derives his “just powers from the consent of the governed” right?  It’s not like he stole the last two elections.  Nah, tyranny is not even close to being a problem in these United States.  I mean, how could it be with fine institutions like the Freedom Center and the department of Homeland Security guaranteeing our freedom?  Nope, no one in history has ever used the guise of national securty to unjustly seize power, so one must be crazy to think that’s happening now.  I say we all just sit back and relax, I mean, we have a really humble and qualified civil servant running the show.  George Bush loves us, just like God loves George Bush.  And I’m just loving these motherfuckin’ freedom fries!

Let’s start with uninteresting.  I know people get jobs to earn money and stay alive.  I get it; interesting is a luxury.  Maybe it has something to do with my privileged upbringing, but I feel like interesting should not be a luxury.  I feel that I have a limited amount of time to be alive, and it pains me deeply to be spending so much of my time on things that I couldn’t care less about.  My time is precious and limited and it kills me to be selling it for a mere $25 an hour.  With an average American male lifespan of 75.2 years, that means my life is valued at approximately $16.5 million.  Sounds like a lot, but no, compared to the infinite value of a human life I find that to be a paltry number.  Money is a necessity in this society, and so I do it.  I work.  But I can’t help but feel on some fundamental level that I just can’t stand doing something that I don’t care about.  I feel that it’s almost a tragedy: all the millions and billions who toil away merely to survive, and on who’s backs others get rich.

On top of uninteresting, I have a real problem with taking orders…from anyone.  I mean, I can do it, but I absolutely hate it.  It fucks with my sense of freedom.  Every day I have to take whatever they give me, and take it with a smile.  It’s awful.  And I work in the drabbest, most un-beautiful place ever: a floor with minimal walls and rows and rows of gray cubicles, windows that don’t open, corporate propaganda on the walls.  I mean, would it kill these people to have some real art on the walls?  All we see is the soulless work of ad executives.  Why anyone thought this feng shui would be good for productivity, is beyond me.  I’m also coming to realize why fascism is so closely related to corporatism.  A corporation is a fascist enterprise in many ways. With the constant propaganda, the suppression of free will and free speech, taking orders, doing everything for the good of the company, taking queues on morals from up top (read: warrantless wiretapping), and living under fear (of getting fired).  Dissent is not readily tolerated.

The really scary idea is that the whole country could be run like this.  That’s why privatization is so fucking scary.  There’s a reason we have governments that are separate from these profit-seeking entities.  Life in a country is, or should be, about freedom and self-determination.  Those are not good things when profit is the only goal.  What I’m trying to say is that the government should stand up for what’s important but not profitable.  The influence of corporations on the government truly frightens me.  They are scary places that suppress humanity.  And the only people getting any significant benefit from the whole thing are the people at the top.

This has been a bit of a rant, but I hope it made sense to some people.  If anyone has any suggestions out there for making a living without giving over your life to one of these entities I’d love to hear it.  I’m young and still trying to figure out the course of my life, and I know that I want to steer clear of corporate life;  I’m just not sure what that will really mean for me.  I’m not sure I care.  I just want to get far away from this place and all places like it.