… hey don’t throw us in hell, telling us that this planet is only a means to an end, so it’s okay if we destroy it. In fact, they have chapters about it in that book they gave you for Christmas (which, by the way, is a holiday they created with the name of their Savior to represent months of fervent shopping, greed, and stress, which can all be taken away with eggnog, which they will give to you for the low, low price of $4. 95 plus tax, plus CRV, plus the income tax you paid to make the money in the first place), that clearly gives you permission to abuse your children, commit ridiculous acts of violence ‘in the name of God,’ and kill anything that doesn’t look like you since you were created in His image. This too, they shove down your throat from childhood, when they know you ” re most easily influenced, describing graphically the details of Hell, and threatening you into submission, all of which you ” ll find in the pretty little name of ‘Sunday School.’s o I finally looked around me and realized that these people didn’t just waste 12 years of my life.
They wasted 23 years of my life, and were fixing to waste the whole thing, because all along I’ve been going with it, thinking that I must be the one in the wrong, slowly watching myself conform, enslaving myself with credit cards and toys which amounted to little more than junk, begging for their petty wages just to pay the bills and buy time, deferring my problems for another day, doing just as they wanted me to, because my suffering brings them great wealth. I was hoping that some day I will wake up happy. Some day, when I make friends of these psycho-paths, make one of them my girlfriend (a concept which they also created in this complex scheme they call ‘dating’ that keeps people scared of each other and puts money in their pockets by telling them to buy flowers, candy, dinners, and movies), get a ‘real job’ in the ‘real world,’ and make enough money to pay for a dynamically expanding list of expenses that grows as my income grows. Some day, I will be able to live in their world in peace and not have all these problems, until I finally realized that these problems were all given to me, handed to me as a part of my citizenship to their crappy society.
Some day, I will be free, and be able to make my own choices, until I finally realized that it’s their jail. Don’t you see? It’s financial slavery! We ” re all living in captivity. We rebel and fight the system when we ” re younger, but eventually, they break us. Do you really think it took you 12 years just to learn how to read books and do algebra? ! Most of your education is dedicated to breaking your spirit, forcing you to conform, and wrapping you up in a neat package for society to process. This is the jail in which I’ve been born, and I’m convinced that this can’t be the only way. I’m convinced that it’s possible for me to escape the clutches of this society and to break free.
There’s got to be another way. But there’s no way to find it while I’m in chains. We live in a society that calls itself free, yet measures freedom in dollars. With money, you can do anything. You can read and study and learn. You can volunteer your time to any organization you wish.
You can start your own organizations. Who needs organizations? You could simply spend your time doing what you find valuable, help anyone you want, hurt anyone you want. You could stay or leave. You could go anywhere you want. You could begin any career you want, work any job you want, start your own business, or not even work at all and slack off all you want.
That’s what I call freedom. Without money, you have one choice: work. A noble pursuit in and of itself, but it loses its nobility when one has no choice. What is the distinction between work and play besides the freedom with which one has to do it? More specifically, there seems to be a distinction between fun work, play, and just plain drudgery. For most people, their jobs fall under the latter category. They agonize every morning to get out of bed, groan over a giant mug of coffee, throw on their clothes, try to make themselves impressionable, and race to work, fighting miles of traffic.
They spend hours slacking off and passing time, trying to avoid the boss as much as possible. They justify it at the end of the month with their paycheck, much of which is spent on trying to forget about it all. Television, sports, bars, Vegas, dance clubs, exotic dancers, marijuana, cocaine. Most of it, though, is spent on toys, which we see every day flashed across the television. Fast cars, big houses, cute little computers, boats, jet skis, motor homes, yachts, mansions. Some of the biggest expenses are the ones we don’t even see: income tax, sales tax, retirement plans that never pay off, interest, insurance, repairs, CRV, registration fees, bank fees, storage fees, parking fees, dumping fees.
They ” re all there. We pay them and their only purpose is to sustain the lifestyle that they told us to lead. It’s bad enough that we spend money on junk we don’t need, but it’s unforgivable that we end up spending more just to earn the money to buy the junk, pay taxes just to purchase the junk, pay interest just to buy more junk than we can afford, pay insurance just to protect the junk, pay mechanics and repairmen just to fix the junk, pay registration fees just to let society know that we have the junk, pay bank fees just to have the money around to pay for the junk, pay parking or storage fees just to put the junk somewhere, and then when we ” re all done with it, pay dumping fees to get rid of the junk. When we ” re done buying their junk, and dishing out even more just to sustain it, we ” re broke. Paycheck’s all spent. Time for another unbearable month of work.
Months go by, years go by, all the dreams are brushed aside, and we wonder where our lives went. The only thing we have to show for years of hard work and misery is a garage-full of junk that doesn’t work, is out-dated, is no longer useful, or is no longer as exciting as it used to look on the TV. On top of all of that, we have thousands of dollars in debts. Our paychecks are no longer spent on junk as much as it is just keeping up with the interest on their debts. Now we have a job we hate, junk we have to find a way to get rid of, bill collectors nagging at us, and all of our time and money goes into keeping up with it all; by this time, we ” re beginning to feel that all we really ever needed was love.
That’s what I call slavery. Why are we so easily captivated by it? Simple. We accept the reality which we ” re presented. People spend their lives working fervently to keep us from thinking, they themselves a captive.
What can we do about it? Again, simple. Stop buying junk. You don’t need to waste time at a job you hate earning money if you don’t spend it on anything. Instead, you can waste your time at a job you hate earning money undoing the whole mess. Not a very attractive option, but, hey, that’s why I call it slavery. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do — work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers.
Henry David Thoreau What options are available when the world’s values are either strictly American, or nothing more than a bad replica of American? Is there any better society? I don’t know; I’m too busy working to study up on it. What are the social economic options? I don’t know; I’m too busy working to study up on it. Marxism, capitalism, socialism, communism, feudalism. I know all about what I’ve been told is the wrong way to live, but you ” ve seen how I feel about what I’ve been told. I wish I could spend time learning these things for myself, getting all the perspectives, and making my own decision instead of letting society do my thinking for me. But I can’t.
I’m too busy working to study up on it. Gee, too busy doing their crap to think for myself. Coincidence? I think not. Lucky for us, they have a convenient little system set up so that we don’t have to think for ourselves. They give us a fake dualism between liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, so as to not overwhelm us with options. Two choices, which are so similar as to be only one option, but different enough to make us think we actually have a choice.
Each camp has their platform and their suggested votes because they know we ” re too busy oiling their Machine to actually study it in-depth. And in case anyone is actually dedicated enough to study it that well, they expend the rest of their effort snowing us with corporate-owned media that entertains more than it informs. With money comes time, and with time comes freedom. I know this is a catch-22. In order to get money, you need to have money.
In order to get freedom, you have to work and sacrifice. All of this used to scare me because I’m still stuck doing the same thing. I’m deferring my happiness until the day when I will no longer have to defer my happiness, which is absurd if you think about it, but I realized that given my confined situation I might as well give myself hope that someday I will actually be free from it. Hey, I’m not the one who made the society; I’m the one fighting it.
Call me paranoid. Call me pessimistic. Call me a rebel. But you ” re enslaved nevertheless.
I may be paranoid, but you ” re miserable. I no longer see the value in keeping people from prejudge ing me. People who are quick to prejudge won’t hear my message anyway, and those that are open-minded enough to hear it will hear it loudest.