the denaturing effect of american society.
list all the reasons you are free:
it's a conditioning that we have all been forced into, the abstract notion of freedom, concepts of freedom.
the president of the united states is so paranoid of freedom that you can't go and touch a reflecting pool in the nation's capital. is he going to shut down every fountain and pool in the city next? that point is moot.
on the heels of the celebration of 250+ years of legalized oppression, i'm wondering about when we will all finally wake up to the fact that we still live in a deeply constructed slave state.
nationalism has conditioned many of us to reduce ourselves to a point that we have no identity beyond wage worker in a capitalist imperialist society. rugged individualism keeps us in perpetual bubbles of delusion that get marketed back to us through grind and hustle culture, and self-care marketed back through wellness influencer rhetoric.
there is nothing good and free about the system that we currently live in.
you can't have free will in an economy that treats your attention like a product to sell.
your actual daily life. every scroll, every click, every pause —tracked, studied, turned into currency. Your attention isn't yours. it's inventory on a shelf, transacted on a ledger.
capitalism steals your space, your power to choose, your freedom, and your ability to control your own life so you can't think freely or create. this isn't by accident. the system needs you too tired, too distracted, too broke to imagine anything beyond just surviving. because the moment you have space to think, to create, to connect outside of buying and selling —you become the enemy.
feeding a machine you don't even believe in, hoping it will feed you back. that's a toxic relationship. you know it's taking more than it gives. abandoning yourself is mandatory. that's the tax for living in american society.
tt's hard to exist in this space if you are counterculture. not impossible —damn hard. you have to actively refuse to participate in ways that cost you dearly. perceived opportunity and ease. and still. do you ever stop to think about how good you feel when you're not talking about some capitalist construct? when you're not worried about productivity or optimization or monetizing your hobbies? those moments when you're just being. that's what is being stolen from us. that's what we have to take back.