Originally published on Facebook Thursday, November 12th 2009
The depressing thing about life is once you really dig into it, it's nowhere near as glamorous as people make it out to be. I mean- think about high school: really, really think about it. Hell, think about college: really, really think about it. We seem to be raised with the notion that we're always just around the corner from something fantabulous- a charmed life where all ones dreams will come true. Unfortunately, what people don't tell you is that your dreams hardly ever come true and carving out, piece by piece, fragment by tortuous fragment a life for yourself is nowhere near as glamorous as people would have you believe.
Whenever I start to worry about my life being eaten by my job, I start to wonder about the America we live in today. Lives- whole lives are built around paying bills. Life isn't free- that, I get, but we live solely to pay our bills, get old, die. It's the old live to work versus work to live debate. It's socialism versus capitalism. It's the deeper question about who we are and what the hell we want to do with our lives? What does it mean to live? What is a life? Is fame and money the pinnacle of one's existence? Or is it just genuinely doing something you love and doing it well, even if what you love is being a sanitation engineer or garbage person?
The problem, when you get right down to it, might just be capitalism. Our society is built around money. Earning money, going into debt, earning more money to pay off your debts. It's a vicious cycle that never ends for people and is played out at the national and state level in the fiscal disasters of the various governments we set up. But is that really the sum of human existence? Accruing and paying off debts we collect over a lifetime? We are, each and every one of us an evolutionary miracle. It's somewhat miraculous that I'm sitting at a desk typing these words right now. I can breathe. I can sing. I can dance. I can do so many things and I'm staring down the barrell of a society that's built around the notion of getting stuff we can't afford and working too much so we can all afford the stuff we can't afford.
That's a pretty convuluted sentiment, but that's pretty much what we all look at. That is, we are told, life. But why does it have to be that way? Why are we doomed to this crappy society and a country that feels like it's dying by degrees? Why are people so bumfuddled and so willing to put up with shit? Is that life too? A noted British science fiction author, Ken Macleod said that with the fall of the Iron Curtain, he was left wondering if socialism doesn't work and capitalism didn't work, what does work? Sometimes I think that's a question more people need to devote themselves to answering. What kind of a society should we live in? If capitalism doesn't work, what does?
Libertarianism, anarchism, individuality above group think and collectivism- what the hell works? Really and truly what the hell works? Do we even need a philosophy to underpin our new, uplifting society? What's the word for 'complete lack of philosophy'? Ayn Rand and company seemed to think that capitalism was the ultimate form of human freedom, but I don't see that anymore. It may be the ultimate form of human freedom for the rich, but the rest of us are pretty much slaves to the never-ending cycle of debts and work. I'm not saying people shouldn't work or everything should be totally free- but what feeds the human soul? What enriches the deepest part of us? Can it be described in a philosophy? Can we even build a society around that idea?
Thomas More wrote 'Utopia' trying to describe just that- but the quick hits: no private ownership, everyone has to work, no fancy clothes, premarital sex is out- it's punished by a lifetime of enforced celibacy, oh and there's slavery too-- every household gets two preemo slaves to help them out, atheism is banned, but every other religion gets along just fine... in other words, even though it was written in 1516, I'll take a pass on Mr. More's idea of 'Utopia' thank you very much.
Maybe the problem is that the idea of utopia is subjective. Everyone has their own little version stashed away in their heads and thus utopia for everyone is completely out of reach on a societal level. But then, that turns us back to the debate between the collective 'good' versus the rights of the individual. People like Robert Putnam author of 'Bowling Alone' and Hillary Clinton who wrote 'It Takes A Village' point out that in society today, the bonds of community are confined to churches and elsewhere are just whithering away. But how much community do we really need? When do the needs of the many infringe upon the right of people to be surly bastards and just to be left alone?
I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but this, kids, is what keeps me up at night sometimes. That quest, that everlasting desire for something more out of life is what drives me, but then again, it should drive everyone. We are more than just our jobs. We are more than just the endless cycle of accruing debts and paying bills. We should ask for more from our country and ourselves... there's got to be something more than this. Maybe that's just a futile hope of mine and I should just accept that life really is as meaningless as it seems sometimes. Maybe I should just find comfort in the things that bring me joy in life as best I can and hack my way forward, metaphorical machete in hand.
So, whatever the answer to the everlasting question of just what the hell it all means, I have concluded the following: life needs an instructional manual. And a machete. (Metaphorical or otherwise...)
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