A thought-provoking exploration of how the ramifications of industrialism have evolved to a point of no return.
There is one universal fact that we cannot contend to, regardless of how we feel about our lives now:
We did not ask to be born. Yet, we were.
Humans were blessed with incredible capacity and talent for a multitude of complex things— compassion, growth, the ability to adapt and evolve quickly. But with our gift comes a darker side to the coin, which is those who seek to manipulate and prey upon those things. As such, systems were created — social contracts to uphold peace and individual prosperity among individuals, without disruptions of their way of life. Those who violated the social contracts were subject to consequences. Nobody was forcing them to live in society.
Except, that as humans evolved, our presence grew in different ways. As we grew in numbers, we grew in knowledge. We razed forests once to simply sustain a growing population and meet a demand for resources and space. In the modern age, entire ecosystems are plundered in the name of consumerism. Ruling governments, some worse than others, have defined and laid claim to almost every single piece of the planet. Some, hungry for more but out of unclaimed spaces, push into those others have claimed. N only do they destroy nature in their quest for power, but they rain bloodshed on cities and tear apart families, wreaking havoc on homes and leaving immeasurable trauma in their wake. All in the name of bureaucracy.
For some leaders, leading society is truly about taking care of them and meeting their needs. No society is free from corruption, but some are quicker to put out the flames rather than fan them. For others, leading society is about subjecting other people to your perspective and making their choices for them. They don’t allow their people to communicate their needs and hoard resources away from them. Of course, the world is not that black and white. Some societies claim to exist in the name of justice and liberty, some to exist for prestige and culture. Yet, under their carefully manicured surfaces lie desolate cities full of starving people. Everyone is starving for something. Powerful people starve for more power. The middle class starves for comfort and balance. The people on the bottom starve to be like the people on the top, literally and figuratively. Consumerist society has forced people into boxes. Even in the modern age, it is a fight to just let people express themselves freely or even just exist in their own skin.
There is a plethora of reasons why all of this links to consumerism, capitalism, and industrialism — so let me start at the beginning. Humans began as simple agriculturalists, living off the land. We hunted and we foraged, we traded resources for the purpose of benefitting each other, and natural consequences were posed to those that defied that balance. But as time passed, humans continued to invade the environment around them. This drove a need to sustain territory, to hoard and protect resources. A trading system was born — currency, a universal trading tool that could be traded for anything. As discoveries were made, so were inventions. The creators of these inventions would trade them or lease them for currency with no regulation. People who had ideas but no resources, sought help from the more established, thus giving them a stake in new creations — usually at a great cost to the less fortunate. This fueled the need for capitalism — a system in which consumers could trade capital for the ability to take a claim in someone else’s work. The problem wasn’t that humans were simply hoarding resources they needed to sustain themselves. They were hoarding things they didn’t need. “Leaders” would hoard things that were arbitrarily decided to be valuable based upon their beauty and rarity. They weren’t trading for anything that benefitted the people they were charged with but rather themselves and the lineage to come, the legacies they hoped to pass on.
The regulations of capitalism meant to aid the wage laborers from being taken advantage by preying businessmen. Originally, it was a failsafe system meant to channel important business decisions up through the local government and ensure that working people had a real opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their labors. It gave consequences to those who stole ideas from other people. It allowed people to work off of others’ ideas without being advantageous. This system was meant to bring fairness and stability to a quickly developing economy, as the growth of mankind brought along unprecedented ramifications with it. Consumers developed bias and with that, business owners gained leverage. This leverage was used to infiltrate the high society, the government, and propagate singular perspectives to the working class. With the rise of industrialism, greed was now well fueled. People began to realize that the more they gained, the more they could manipulate the world around them and force others into living for them. They didn’t necessarily need to be elected by the people in that position, either.
By the mid twentieth century, capitalism was an untamed wildfire. Oligarchies moved silently in governments, forging partnerships with them to benefit each other — but not the people below. They gave scraps to the people below and told them to be grateful. Maybe, if they collected enough scraps, they could turn it into riches. Otherwise, they’d better hope they were lucky enough to discover something new or have the capacity to create beyond the wildest scope of the average persons’ imagination. The oligarchies didn’t do this out of kindness, though they’d hope for you to think otherwise. Without the fragile capitalist regulations in place, they’d be free to steal ideas and discoveries and everything else from the people under them. But in order for the oligarchies to keep their power and remain intact, they needed to appease the people and make it seem as if they respected and valued the system. Their scraps were another man’s treasure, and they pushed that agenda, allowing people to believe they were gaining something from digging through the remains of other peoples’ wealth.
Some people scoff at the idea of oligarchies existing in the modern, western world. Yet, in every place in the world bearing a centuries old name or title brings reverence and fervor to a room. Though the owners of those names and titles have done nothing to earn it, people submit power over their lives to these people, sometimes without realizing it. Some modern-day examples would be how people scramble to know everything about celebrities, dedicating their lives to supporting their careers and paying for their lifestyles without having ever met them. People buy everything from their merchandise to objects they’ve touched or signed. Other examples include how people continue to rush to corporations to meet their needs out of conveniency — these businesses have such a grip on the industry that they control a supply chain for almost anything you can think of, because they have the ability to acquire large quantities of things cost-effectively due to their platform and reach.
This hurts small businesses, because they can’t forge partnerships to cut deals with government organizations on their taxes and importation costs. They have to charge more and even then, it’s sometimes not enough to survive. They can’t afford to pay employees fair wages, so working people turn to corporations for that too, needing the extra three or four dollars per hour to be able to just pay rent. We give control to banks, acquisition companies, and politicians that are funded by, and even sometimes apart of, corporations, which in turn are fueled by consumerism. It’s a maddening wheel that crushes the working class, who are then manipulated into believing they aren’t working hard enough. Ninety-hour work weeks, thousand-dollar paychecks with two-thousand-dollar rent. Work harder, says the oligarchy. You don’t get things in life without earning them.
Except, then they go to expand off into new territory, paying off terrorists and officials to abuse their own people until they accept the corporations into their lives. Did people earn death just because of corporate greed? Did they earn a life lived in starvation or in hiding? Despite their supposed legal limitations that they pretend to live in to pander to the lower class, the powerful people have no limitations or boundaries to their manipulations. Their accumulated wealth gives them the power to trade for anything they want. They can bribe elected officials to vote for things that benefit corporate interest and police investigators to keep them from looking for the truth. They can buy their way out of almost any legal situation and live in massive houses as far away from the trenches of a society they created as they can. Corporate interest, before people even recognized capitalism as a system, always existed — monarchs manipulated people to continue acquiring wealth, of which they mostly kept for themselves.
It was western and European propaganda that convinced people that skin colors, religions, sexualities, and more defined who they were. This created loyalism through emotional manipulation, inflicting shame and guilt on the societies thought to be less civilized — typically in tribal countries in Africa, South America, and the New World. Indigenous brown people pushed out of their own homes and forced into churches and employment or forced servitude, told they needed to labor to reap the benefits of society, but also told that their DNA would prevent them from ever really reaching the top. If they wanted to make it up the ladder, they would have to work twice as hard. Now these governments had control of these peoples’ livelihoods, thus enabling more power to them. It was the very seed that created the living oligarchies today.
Though in the modern world, we’d like to think these actions are undone. It’s comfortable to believe the world has become a better place and that such egregious actions would never be accepted today, just because they’re slaughtered by the court of public opinion. Yet, oligarchies remain intact almost everywhere. I’m not saying the Illuminati exists, although I have my passing thoughts. But organizations do exist to control political interest, thus rendering the court of public opinion null. As long as the organizations can continue holding up the bare minimum expectation of not violating the written contracts that bind them, they are safe. It is not a coincidence that the corporations that keep the world in a gridlock are able to co-exist peacefully with each other. There is real life evidence of what happens when the oligarchies feel betrayed — they take everything, even lives. I’m not saying they work in tandem with each other, but they work from opposite ends of the playing field, keeping everyone on the middle ground surrounded and in check. This is the why and the how they are able to co-exist peacefully. They can’t risk public bias leaning too far in one direction and bringing about their downfall. They need the public opinion to benefit both of them equally or they risk being victims to their own greed.
So what is the solution now? Many people would argue that this is the world we live in now. They’re comfortable to live in a world ruled by screens and electricity, being hurtled into a magnitude of propaganda meant to take their money so that they are again, forced to rely on institutions. These institutions offer small benefits to ease their chagrin, making the mundane and repetitively dull society easier to swallow. Thus, they don’t resist and are confused why other people would. They fully believe we need these institutions to survive and that social contracts need to be intensely complex when it should really be as simple as creating an ethical and equitable moral compass that prevent people from obstructing others’ lives.
There’s only one real way to ‘reset’ society and take back the power granted to the few. That is political anarchy. I would love to talk the semantics of how polite society could continue to exist if we just tried a little harder. Except, even if you have the best intentions and want to create a society that is harmonious and benefits everyone, you’re still feeding into the idea that we haven’t already tried enough. When will you be fed up? When humans have evolved to the point of implanting microchips in each other and using every memory or emotion or lie you’ve ever told against you? When someone goes unhinged and decides to start a nuclear war? The ball has been in the upper class’s court for a very long time. They’ve been allowed to hold the power for too long, as activists hope they will miraculously give up their way of life to give back to people. The lower class holds the upper class to certain social expectations. Yet, the upper class are often forgiven for their violations of these standards, because they still have enough money to generate transactional loyalty.
Believe me, I’m aware anarchy has serious ramifications — what would people do in a world where they weren’t bound by rules and definitions? How would they exist in a world that trades freedom for convenience? Think to yourself — how would you exist in that world? Freedom from laws is not freedom from moral efficacy. You know what is right and wrong. Of course, right and wrong is subjective. But we are all capable of understanding the weight our actions can put on others and are advanced enough to find alternatives without burdening other people for own self-interest. In therapy, we are taught to look at other people objectively, rather than subjectively. Instead of finding reasons to fuel your perspective of another person, accept that they are human who makes choices based off their own lived experiences and perception of the world around them. While there are people out there who truly seem to exist for the misery of others, most people are just trying to work through the things they’ve been taught or lied to about. They’re trying to repair devasting trauma that marred their ability to communicate effectively. Alternatively, they’ve been comfortable their entire life and seek to preserve that comfort, which sounds selfish but realistically — we should all be striving to find a place that is genuinely safe and comfortable in our lives.
Anarchy gives power back to every single person individually. All actions have natural consequences and while the rush of having limitless bounds may do its’ damage, people will come to learn in their own way how to exist for themselves and live freely. There will always be bad people in the world, but if more people held them to a moral compass instead of a rigid code, those people won’t win. Don’t give them the ability to control your life and your choices simply because they threaten you or seem to hold all the cards. Stand firm in your moral convictions. As we were taught in childhood to not feed into our bullies, this applies as adults. By giving in, all you’re doing is giving them the upper hand. I’m not saying that bad people shouldn’t illicit a response from you — they absolutely should, particularly if they actually do hold all the cards. But choose your response carefully. Never give them what they want, which is the emotional vulnerability from your frustration with them that gives them power to manipulate you.
Now, I am firm in my anarchy theory because I personally lend credibility to karmic consequence, soul cycles, and the multiverse. I’m not stupid, nor a conspiracy theorist. But I don’t believe the unseen is unfounded just because we aren’t gifted with the ability to see it or harness it. Some things are truly meant to be out of man’s scope of control. While people try to explain away bizarre happenings and the curiosities of the world, and retrospectively, the universe, as coincidences, the world is existing as it did before us. The world is not forgiving. It traps the very chemicals we humans release into the atmosphere, it grows hotter every day. As humans continue to make rash decisions, the earth warns them not to tempt fate. I can go far deeper into my perspective on this unknown factors, but let me explain how it connects to everything else I’ve said.
As I stated previously, for every action there are natural consequences. For example, when you show empathy to someone, and they give you gratitude. Your brain is wired to feel validated by gratitude; it’s a reward for your kindness. If someone were to make a choice that instilled fear into those surrounding them, you are subject to your natural instinct to fight or run. So the natural consequence of that person making a harmful choice is that they risk their karma coming for them in a rather immediate manner. Granted, people can kill other people and get away with it. From a logical standpoint, the natural consequence is to be held accountable by other people, thus rendering natural consequence useless in those situations. Except — what if that isn’t the case? The natural consequence is for them to be forced to blend into natural society, unable to forge genuine connection and bonds with other people. They lack the presence of love and fulfillment in their lives. Forced by their own nature to live alone, in secrecy. This does nothing for the victims of course, but the victims are gone.
This would only truly be a valid argument in favor of anarchist society if people were willing to be communicative in an anarchist society, however. If humans, rather than focusing on fiscal gain and advancing for the purpose of being better than each other, focused on turning inward and having truly raw, thorough, honest conversations about perspective and how we can harm other people as a consequence of our own actions and what steps we can take to find balance in ourselves with the world around us. We’ve focused on forcing society to move as a unit for so long that we’ve forgotten what it means to be individuals and you see it every day in the stories of models starving themselves and gang rivalries. True unity is not being surrounded by like-minded individuals but being surrounded by individuals who can respect your choices as long as you respect theirs and no law can really force people to do that. That is something that needs to be taught and thanks to capitalism, consumerism, industrialism, and expansion humans have not been able to really learn that because there was nobody at the top setting that example. All humans have learned for a millennium is to force their ideology onto other people and manipulate them for gain, under the premise that they are good people because they weren’t holding the knife.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. In this society, the mundane capitalist society born out of the world’s evils, we are insane. Every day, we wake up to work for people who shame us for taking their scraps. We unionize, we protest, we push for legislative changes. These are band-aids. Not long ago, the Supreme Court ruled that human rights were up for debate. The president signed an order that is meant to protect some of those rights for up to a decade. This is not a permanent solution and there won’t be one. Even if they write it into the most revered, authoritative legal document in the country, is something safe forever. A joint that is repaired will always be weaker than the rest and therefore, more prone to breaking again.
We can agree to disagree on whether anarchy is really a solution. I can only speak for myself when I say, I’d rather be able to live to make choices freely, unmanipulated by fear. Even if my choices were to result in my eventual self-destruction, at least without someone’s foot on my neck it’s easier to decipher if I truly put myself in that situation. At least I’ll be making choices not subject to the judgement of another human being, but to the judgement of natural consequence. Without fear of other people holding, you back in any way, the world is yours for the taking. We were born into this earth, we inherited it. It is ours for the taking. The northern lights, the Mediterranean coast, hidden caves and pockets of the world should not be held out of reach by people seeking to hold all the cards, granting permission to those who can only give them what they want. Fuck the cards. Stop giving them power.
In a world where corporations track our every movement and survey the different tactics, they can employ to keep us hooked on their Kool-Aid, we should be seeking true individual independence. If the last thousand years of humanity has proved anything, it’s that no one group of people can be trusted with the care of millions of people. A massive responsibility that should be revered as a privilege is tossed from one powerful person to another with little regard for the consequences. People need to learn to be truly responsible for themselves, for that reason alone. Consumerism has nailed the coffin shut for co-existing peacefully together under the protection of an institution. The institutions were infiltrated centuries ago by people pushing consumerist ideology.
Anarchy does not mean the loss of society. It’s a rebirth of society, forming communities with like-minded individuals who strive to take care of each other in conditions that benefit their community — or the option of being able to live on your own, subject to no rules but your own, surrounded by nothing but nature. No, the world is not and will never be a perfect place, nor is there an escape from the realities that lurk in the shadows. But humans are more advanced now than we were a thousand years ago. We are smart enough to make a lawless world work. In the loss of traditional society, we create new ones on a much smaller scale, truly allowing for a growth in balance. After all, the only family that really matters is the one you choose, not the one you were born into. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
