Skip to main content

Disillusionment and Devaluation

Distant.

That is the first word I think of when I imagine my place in this world. It's also the first word I think of when I imagine how we may relate to our own deeply rooted humanity. It seems that as time has gone on, our humanity has been reduced to near-nothingness. No longer are we considered creators. No longer are we intimately acquainted with meaningful work. No longer do we know our neighbors well, or consider the strength of our communities. Humans, in the lens of our supposedly grand society, have become nothing more than numbers in a writhing mass of profit and utility.

Replaceable. 

Disposable. 

Worthless.

How often are we expected to feel human in a society that doesn't seem to value us as such? There are submarines in the ocean right now carrying several missiles with nuclear warheads, each one having up to ~20x the power of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, which murdered 70,000 - 126,000 civilians. War is waged remotely via drones, laying waste to the lives of people whose thoughts, dreams, and aspirations are reduced to nothing more than visuals on a screen. Children are being enslaved to harvest ingredients for chocolate that does nothing for the world but sate a luxurious craving. And on a less morbid and more relatable level, many of us work for large corporations that seek to bleed everything out of us until our numbers are no longer convenient to them. There is nothing stopping any of us from being victims of nuclear warfare, of environmental terror, or the subjugation by corporations that seek to turn us into glorified serfs. Every single one of us, to an interested enough party, can be eliminated or replaced without mercy, without empathy, and with great prejudice.

Where then, are we to find our worth and value? In what job we work? In how much money we make? In how much we produce? Assigning value to oneself seems to be of limited utility to offset the effects of a society that makes it feel so incredibly arbitrary. A comforting lie that we hold close to keep our shaky foundations from crumbling under the weight of the great violence that keeps us here.

The air constantly feels thick and oppressive, and I feel as if there's very little I can do to breathe.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Notes on Culture and Primitive Man

Primitive humans, through their lived experience, lived lives that were wholly satisfying: they engaged in work that was meaningful and personal, they had constant challenges and mental stimulation, an unrestricted sense of autonomy, and a sense of adventure belying the entire thing. Humans had no choice but to derive meaning from a life that was exhilarating at every moment. Every choice was meaningful and required an unparalleled trust in one’s ability to overcome the next obstacle. It was an enduring but highly satisfying test to see if you had what it took to have mastery over life.  And in our chase toward rapid industrialization, we have lost the personal touch of what it means to be human. Many of the activities we engage in are indeed surrogates for that which were once accomplished and deemed satisfying by primitive man. Take video games or movies, for example. One engages in adventurous, dramatic, action-packed, or otherwise exhilarating genres to induce pleasure in onese...
1 comment
Read more

A Common Enemy

Many works of art in history have demonstrated an idea of human unity: the idea that, if faced with a disaster that seeks to destroy humanity, we will all forget all of our minor transgressions and band together as one race to fight the enemy head-on. Whether the media presents it as an alien invasion, a meteor, a great evil wizard, or some other seemingly insurmountable threat, the core concept remains, which is that through our collective power, we can stand up to any enemy, no matter how terrifying or powerful. This is especially useful in the act of warfare. The way Americans united against the Japanese threat by interning Japanese-Americans in camps on their own soil. The way the profiling of Muslims increased after 9/11, as Americans were thoroughly convinced that Muslims are far more dangerous than other people. The amount of civilians and innocent people that have been eliminated from the face of the Earth for no other reason than in the name of “freedom” and “democracy,” which...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reflections on the Mind and the Heart

Life has been, to say the least, very interesting to me recently. A healthy dose of happiness, a substantial offering of stress, and a hell of a cocktail of unpredictability. But these life experiences have led me to where I am today, and by experiencing them I have grown stronger than I ever thought I had the capability to. For a long time, I was convinced that reason was the solution to life. And for another time, I was convinced that pure feeling was the solution. But neither of these are entirely true, and I keep coming back to this idea, present in almost every religion and spiritual practice: moderation. I once believed that the heart and the mind were bound to battle one another, engaging in an endless, confusing, and completely fruitless war. But this is not the case at all. In fact, the mind and heart are not enemies, but rather two partners that may dance together beautifully if you allow them to. If you allow both your mind and heart to find synthesis, and you make a balance...
Post a Comment
Read more