To Pretend It Isn't Broken
on the toxic cultural expectation of pretending everything is fine
Our civilization is a broken mess.
Anyone who lives within our shattered system that isn’t blinded by a perspective of privilege and doesn’t lie to themselves egregiously can see this plainly.
It’s apparent from the micro to the macro.
From the litany of penalties and taxes and tickets we have to pay just moving through the world. To the lives struck down by the police—systematic oppression’s trained soldiers—for not ceding to the authority of ‘the rules’.
From the permissions we need by the government, and fees we pay, to ‘license’ our ability to do the most basic of things. To the state ripping children away from their parents unjustly.
Day in and day out, our system actively jams people deep into the cracks of this sham society, to suffer and rot.
We don’t care about people. We care about money.
Yet, we are prescripted to lie about it.
Every one of us, inherently, simply by taking part in this world and pretending it’s not the stuff of nightmares—is a liar.
We smile and pretend that everything is fine.
I do it. You do it. We all do it. If not always—sometimes.
In fact, we are expected to. If we don’t. If we become aware and vocal about the brokenness of our system. If we become a victim of it who is struggling. If we don’t walk with a false veneer of happiness. Then we become the problem. We are no longer playing along with the contracts with which we are all expected to abide, and we suffer social, financial, or legal ramifications—depending on the level of transgression.
These social contracts say bureaucracy is king, business rules all, and humanity loses every time.
Struggling? Who cares. Society doesn’t.
Need time to breathe and recover. No. Get back to work. The world has money to make off your blood, sweat, and tears.
We see armies of unconscious and blindly hateful people support this system. Standing up for injustice itself. Taking the programming from big business and running with it. Becoming soldiers in psychological warfare for the banks. ‘Othering’ fellow humans who we’ve let down collectively, choosing instead to relate with the faceless mechanisms of oppression.
These people deserve the great shame their soul is taking on during this lifetime, for choosing to be motivated by fear, and being turned against their sisters and brothers. They will carry great weight into the afterlife.
In fact, we all will.
Unless that is, we wake the fuck up. Unless we find a way to rise together and become more. Unless we can finally make a stand from the root to the crown, across this entire magnificent planet, and say enough is enough.
Until we can undo the madness which plagues our ways of living. Until we reconnect with our mother earth and abide by her needs—knowing they are ours as well. Until we grant freedom and serenity to all people, not simply those blessed with lives of financial abundance. When one day, altogether, we say enough is enough. We stop playing along. We stop lying. We stop pretending everything is okay so business can go on.
Let me be clear.
Fuck business. Fuck money. And fuck this broken-ass world so many are desperate to uphold.
It needs to burn.
A new civilization must rise from its ashes.
One that is built from the heart. One built for peace. One that does not require us all to be liars who corrupt our souls just to survive within it.
If this scares you I get it. It scares me too. I have a baby girl to take care of.
Still, we must consider how our fears cause us to grasp so tightly to the creature comforts we’ve been so privileged to withhold for ourselves. We must consider that many others, across the world, would die for their family to have a shred of what we have now. We must consider how our own attitudes of complacency are in fact supporting this system which destroys people on the regular.
We cannot fix this gently from the inside out.
Simply creating positive structures and blindly hoping they will replace the rotten old—when the old structures themselves are built to pulverize and suppress positive creative efforts—is not a viable solution.
We must destroy and create simultaneously.
It will be scary. But it’s the only way our collective human soul will ever escape this trap it’s been in for so long.
Late-stage capitalism is coming to an end. If the state of modern politics doesn’t make you see that, nothing will.
I choose to stop lying today; right now. And I ask you to choose this with me.
Let’s make what comes next magical.
