They built this whole machine on our backs. All we need to do is stand up.
Humanity has been essentially converted into a vast apparatus designed solely to generate profits for corporations.
Within capitalism, people exist primarily to serve corporate agendas. We are akin to livestock, burdened with the task of pushing profit margins upward quarter after quarter. The value of enjoying life is measured only by its ability to increase shareholders’ wealth.
This explains the widespread dissatisfaction. Life lacks true meaning. Instead of collaborating to create a better future, we’re merely operating mechanisms aimed at improving numbers on graphs in boardrooms. Such a lifestyle feels empty and devoid of purpose.
As a result, our entire culture becomes shallow and devoid of spirit.
Music is crafted for maximum profitability, using predictable formulas designed to trigger chemical reactions in as many brains as possible.
Films are produced to maximize box office earnings while minimizing risk, often by recycling previously successful plots or exploiting well-known intellectual properties with built-in audiences.
Food prioritizes speed and addictive qualities over genuine nutrition.
Authentic human connections have been commodified as social media merges with friendships and dating apps influence romantic interactions.
Internet pornography distorts human sexuality, normalizing violence and degradation to achieve maximum engagement.
Our attention has been commercialized, creating an information environment dominated by conflict and gossip that appeals to our baser instincts.
Advertisements invade every part of our sensory experience, flooding available spaces with psychological tactics to compel us to consume. They’ll likely begin advertising in our dreams as soon as the technology allows.
You spend eight hours generating corporate profit at work, then return home to buy into other corporations’ gains. You rely on beer and snacks to relax, streaming and social media to escape stress, online shopping to boost self-esteem, and medication to fall asleep. Many live their entire existence in this cycle.
And that’s just for those fortunate to live in the global north. In the global south, people endure wage slavery and exploitation, with far greater labor demands, less leisure, and no access to inexpensive comfort goods produced by exploited workers elsewhere.
All of humanity is caught in this system—and for what purpose? To inflate numbers in certain bank accounts. To push upward green arrows on stock market displays. To allow a handful of billionaires to purchase islands and influence elections.
Meanwhile, this system ravages the biosphere upon which our survival depends.
We’re told this is the best possible societal model available.
I do not accept that as truth. I believe a better way exists. Those benefiting from the current order will insist it’s unattainable and try everything to prevent change, but we have the power to reclaim the dignity, wealth, and happiness stolen from us.
They constructed this entire system atop our labor. All that is required is for us to rise.
Original article: caitlinjohnstone.com.au
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