The New Trap of White-Collar Degeneracy
“The three biggest addictions are Heroin, the Carbohydrates and a Monthly Salary.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Living with thier bi-weekly air-conditioned gym sessions, weekend visits to cinema and dinners at trendy restaurants with thier small-talk hangout buddies(who they call thier ‘friend’ circle), they use sanitary gels after touching anything unknown and are scared shit of uncertainty. They have Instagram #vacationgoals and are loyal to the coolest brands in the market, on the condition of those been approved by thier cool ‘friends’. They have unavoidable urge to follow this week-to-week cycle as they are afraid of isolation or of standing out of thier colleagues’ crowd or what if something goes wrong and something unexpected happens. They are so scared of uncertainty, they take solace in the fluffy blanket of their weekly cycle of doing the same things over and over, satisfying thier indulgences, blocking all the randomness and shutting all the possible unexpected experiences out of thier comfort-cave.
This isn’t easy as they need to fill all the tiny randomness gaps in their 24*7 template calendar routine with the high dose of entertainment feed to constantly stay entertained. Unlimited channels of entertainment on their screens, in the chatter with their hangout ‘friends’, they buy all kinds of entertainment that keeps them busy from uncertain thoughts or experiences and if that’s not enough, they drown themselves in ‘escape-partying’ with the help of drinks & smokes. They will wake up on their first alarm on Monday morning, to work their asses off on their 9 to 5 corporate job (a ‘respectable’ one, mind you!) devoutly to pay for this lifestyle, dumbing themselves down every day and making the corporate owners and investors richer by the hour.
Spiralling down the quicksand of addiction to monthly salary, I see people unrealisingly start to become the same kind of person they staunchly detested while they were setting thier #AdulthoodGoals. The appetite of taking risk for long-term good is eaten out by the termite of complacency of fluffy and week-to-week template life. They lose the sense of curiosity and forget how adventurous they were not too long ago. If you try to remind them how free-flying they were and still can be if they don’t surrender thier spontaneity and be bold to stand for what they have always wanted thier life to be, they will fire up taking it as an insult, will defend themselves agressively by forcefully ignoring the bigger picture of the living model they got sucked into. They close thier eyes and block thier ears to anything that can make them connect the dots between thier repetitive ‘planned’ days and evenings full of complacent activities they partake in with thier ego-massaging buddies(almost all of these are hypocrites but they would never want a real friendship test to expose this) they surrounded themselves with. Once they are in the quicksand, it becomes so difficult, they start giving up on their ‘impractical’ dreams and thier ‘adventurous’ relationships. They mentally masturbate to the certainty of their coming weeks and months every night before they doze off exhausted, with alarms all set for the next cycle of 24 hours template.
What happens to them after? Are they already half-dead zombies or AI-enabled bots surviving around with the regular injection dose of entertainment and complacency to feel ‘good and certain’?
The truth: Tucking themselves in the shell of ‘feeling certain and stable’ makes them more vulnerable to uncertainty when it comes as they are not prepared for it. Oh, the irony.
