It isn’t you. It’s Capitalism.
It is a strange feeling, felt perhaps most acutely by those on the edges of what is considered productive — the creators, thinkers, artists, builders — that life as it is lived on a by-day or by-minute basis, is experienced as something veiled by a thin film of resistance. Things consumed, intended to satiate or satisfy, instead create hunger and resentment. People serving, ostensibly to ease the strong burdens we have placed upon ourselves in the name of living, become obstacles to enjoyment. Time spent contemplating the thoughts and ideas that matter most, those of existence and inevitable human suffering, is first commodified and then discarded as so much detritus, wasteful in a world of progress. And those who claim to feel none of these disaffections are lauded for their hard work, and patted on the back as so many school children.
The force at play in all of these sensations, these tiny irritating buzzes that don’t leave the minds of people who care about happiness in the lives of others and in their own, is bare before us all. It is given many names and has morphed over centuries to take on viral shapes, but it is essentially unchanged from its creation and still as unsolved as it has ever been. The force is not a failure on the part of any individual born to bear its brunt; it is not a cosmic unbalance decreed by a still-just God who saw fit to favor some over others in the very essence of their humanity, the enjoyment of their limited existence for whatever reason they feel compelled to enjoy it; it is not a magic hand that finds a way to dole out the effects of history to those who genuflect and kiss its glove. It is a force that, unmoved, moves its way to a feather-light touch. It is not your shortcomings, it is not your heartbreak. It is not your stupidity, it is not your race. It’s capitalism.
It will be found in these pages and investigated, handled by limbs and intuitions. The effort is to ask questions of its effects, not on markets or incomes or investments, but on the only places that matter to all of us: our inner minds, our very souls. There have been ample movements in the past, those of religion and nationalism to name only two, that have been equally pernicious and destructive. But this one is that of our time, and whether we be born clutching the genetic lottery-winning ticket of excessive abundance, or fated to endure unspeakable suffering for no reason at all, the effects are the same as those currents that came before. All are injured by the constant injuring we do to one another. Thinking of this, every day by every one, is the path to a place in which we harm less and give more, a place where there will hardly be a need for giving because such is the feeling of camaraderie and love between each and every planetary passenger caught unawares by being here, having made no such request yet unable to reconcile not-enduring against the constant sensation of being. Here we will discuss and walk forward.
