It seems like most of us are working pointless jobs which suck almost all of our time, just to pay for toxic food and never-ending bills and taxes, waiting for that weekend respite where we get told by someone in a polo shirt that we need a licence to catch a fish or pick up sticks from the ground and start a fire. We’re totally dependent on extortionate industries like lawyers, doctors, mechanics and building trades, but also too time-poor to learn these things for ourselves – meanwhile we’re watching our kids being raised by the state and falling into the exact same trap that we did.
We’d like to think that eventually we’ll break free of all this, but it seems like the digital AI surveillance prison is being built around us faster than we can save up our fiat currency fake-notes to buy our way out.
Or is that just me?
Of course some people buy into the narrative that these oppressive dynamics are organic, and that these restrictions are required for the proper functioning of modern society – that they keep everyone safe, and are at worst a ‘necessary evil’. For those people, I’m happy that you’re happy, and this article is not for you.
For everyone else, it appears to boil down to a single choice: do you
- a) suck it up and live in the system as a slave with air-conditioning privileges.. or
- b) walk away from everything, and try to survive in the forest with a pen knife and a solar powered flashlight you bought on amazon.
But is that really the choice?
I would reframe the decision in a different way: How much are you willing to be responsible for your own life, and how much would you rather hand over that responsibility to others?
Wait a second…
But aren’t we being forced? Aren’t they making us do most of this stuff? Isn’t it the law?
Coerced, maybe. Forced? No.
Consent is not the focus of this article, but for now I would ask you to consider one thing: how often you are ‘required’ (instructed) to sign documents? If your explicit contractual consent wasn’t required for the system to operate – for the sake of confirming your ‘agreement’ and off-loading liability from other parties – this would not be the case.
Food for thought. Anyway, moving on for now…
Here is your choice (metaphorically speaking):
OPTION A: Your own small sailing vessel.
Do you want to learn to sail, read maps, interpret the weather, navigate, tie ropes, catch fish, speak foreign languages and negotiate with complete strangers on the other side of the world? Are you willing to be responsible for repairing a diesel engine, storm tactics, refrigeration, carpentry, sewing sails, electrical wiring, emergency plumbing and the lives of everybody on board your vessel?
Because if you’re out on your own, you will be responsible for all of that, and there won’t be anybody around to help you if anything goes wrong. You will be at the mercy of the heat, the cold, the bugs, and whatever else the ocean throws at you.
The good part? You get to sail wherever the wind will take you. Beyond what is required to keep yourself and your crew alive, you have no schedule, no obligations, and nobody telling you what to do.
Sounds a bit tough? In that case let me introduce an alternative..
OPTION B: The cruise of a lifetime.
How would you like air conditioning, buffet-style dining, near-limitless water and electricity, live entertainment, and an attentive hospitality team on speed dial? There are activities for the kids and shopping for the wife, plus a bar and some gaming machines if you feel like a cheeky punt. You don’t need to worry about the weather – the captain and his crew have the engine, navigation, security and any other technical issues already taken care of.
So what’s the catch?
All you have to do, is put in 8-hours-a-day, 5-days-a-week (including a 1-hour lunch) watching a radar screen and some pressure gauges. It’s actually pretty easy – you’ve got air con and once you’ve gotten through a few reports you realise you can basically do them with your eyes closed.
Once 5pm hits, you can stroll down the corridor, put on your dining jacket and suck down a craft beer with crumbed fish and chips. This is the life!
Sure, you’re spending a good chunk of your life staring pointlessly at that radar screen, but there’s always new movies to see at the on-board cinema and we everyone gets to vote on the rotating menu items so that’s nice.
And then one day… there’s an announcement on the intercom.
“…because of some complex economic factors which we won’t go into, now everyone has to work 10 hours a day instead of 8.”
The management
Wow. That kind of sucks. I mean, you’ll still do it, but maybe you have an extra drink or two in the evenings to compensate yourself for the new workload.
Then a few months later there is talk of a 12 hour day.
And then an additional half-day on Saturday for certain special situations.
And then… everyone needs to get a chip in their arm to make sure they’re not taking too many bathroom breaks or eating too much shrimp at the buffet.
Hang on a second – this chip in the arm thing seems a little but much… but who do you complain to? Voting apparently doesn’t work – management doesn’t seem to care. People protest and sign petitions but everyone just gets told it’s mandatory.
What are you gonna do? Apply for a transfer to another cruise ship?
Unfortunately you discover that (bizarrely!) all the other cruise ships have adopted the same policies as your ship – and all around the same time. Some ‘crazy’ people even claim that if you really dig into it – all the ships are actually owned by the same people.
So what then? Jump off?
Good luck. Even if you randomly stumbled upon another boat, what skills do you have to offer? Why would they bother to keep you around?
So you quit fantasising, head back to your post and clock in for another day’s work.
I guess it’s not that bad. I mean, this isn’t slavery – those guys actually had to row.
A third option
What if there was some kind of happy medium here – something between solitary survival and pure dependent servitude?
What if we could all learn practical skills that we actually need, and then exchange specialty services, products and overflow produce with others?
What a crazy concept. Turns out this isn’t actually a new idea and it’s worked for many different groups of people and communities since.. forever.
Perhaps then, rather than appealing to our slave masters to grow a conscience, it’s time we focused our energies on making them irrelevant.
