The Slow Rebellion
Is there a way to opt out of the rat race?
You know what I’ve come to realize in the past twelve months? Everyone is exhausted. Our kids, our spouses, our families and our friends. Even people in the street I’ve never met and will never know. They look tired, world-weary, worn to the bone and then ground to dust under the relentless wheel of modern life and the extraction/extortion capitalist economy we’re forced to endure from the day we’re born to the day we die.
For many years, I thought it was just me. I’ve got my own issues — a laundry list of chronic illnesses, for a start. I thought that I wasn’t made for this modern world. I imagined that I would have been fine in simpler times of past, when our attention wasn’t demanded at all hours of the night and day, and our worth wasn’t judged on our ability to fit into a suffocatingly narrow definition of what constitutes a “useful” or “productive” member of society. However, I’ve come to understand that this world was designed by a certain type or person to serve a certain type of person, and at the end of the day, that 1% of people with all their luxury, riches and privileges are just as unhappy as the rest of us, even if they’ll never admit it.
This modern life is literally and figuratively wrecking us. Mental health issues are climbing significantly year after year, in both adults and even more worrying, in children as well. Our physical health is also declining at alarming rates, especially as our young people are much less active now than before the tech boom of the early 2000s. Our bodies are filled with microplastics and forever chemicals, neither of which will ever break down in the environment, nor the human body, and we don’t even have any idea what this is going to mean for us long term.
Not only are we wrecking ourselves, we’re also destroying our home (as well as the home of countless animals, plants, and insects that are vital to our ecosystem and human survival in the long term), and while we’ve known about climate change and the need to reduce our emissions for around forty years, as a whole, the human race has managed to do virtually nothing about it…except increase our mining activity and emissions. In fact, since 1990, our emissions have risen by 60% and are now at their highest levels ever. Meanwhile, climate disasters like droughts, floods, wildfires and city-leveling storms fill our news feeds every single week.
I’ve seen people ask “how are people not worried about theses things? How can we just keep going about our day and not think about what’s actually happening around us and to us?” But I think I know the answer.
I think it’s because we’re all exhausted. We’re too tired and too busy and the problems seem too big and too complex. “It’s the system,” we say, “and I can’t change the system.” So we just keep dragging ourselves through the days and weeks, because it’s more important to deal with the immediate problem of how we’re going to pay the bills and buy food this week, all the while stressing about how we’re ever going to pay back the debt we’re drowning under, and asking ourselves how much longer we can keep stretching and/or juggling our budget until we can no longer afford to keep a roof over our heads.
I don’t have the answers to the world’s problems. I don’t think any one person does or should. It’s going to take community and cooperation at a time when we’re more disconnected from each other and our communities than ever before. We don’t know our neighbors any longer and we don’t know if we can even trust them. We don’t know if anyone will help us if something catastrophic happens. We no longer have the same social bonds and community structure that are vital for our society to be secure and thrive.
But what I do have is the desire to slow down. I also have a growing urge to rebel against what’s expected of us in this day and age — to always be “on,” or always available. To participate in the quagmire that is social media. To work a high number of hours in a set number of days and still barely be able to pay the bills. To endlessly consume, to contribute to the late capitalist extraction/extortion economy and big business that are “too big to fail,” so we’re forced to put up with their crappy services. To barely have any time for my actual life outside of these apparent “requirements.”
I’m actually not sure we’re going to stop this runaway freight train we call modern life before it crashes and takes us and the rest of the planet down with it. Scientists have already identified that we are currently in the midst of the Earth’s six mass extinction event. Historically, humans are not very good at stopping things until they’re forced to stop things. As long as the economy, GDP, and money are held as more important than actual human life — or any life for that matter, be it plant, animal or any other living thing on this planet — then I can’t see anything changing until the climate and capitalism collide in civilization destroying proportions.
But instead of this realization making me feel even more powerless and more worried for my future and the future of my children, I found it motivating, that it filled me with a sense of purpose. I decided that I needed to be okay, because the rest of the world isn’t. I’m trying to find ways to slow down, and ways to rebel in a non-combative sense. I’m going to try finding ways of doing things that benefit my kids and my community rather than automatically doing the things I’ve always done simply because that’s what everyone else is doing, or that’s what’s expected of me, or because its the path of least resistance, or because it’ll save me time when I already have so little time to spare, or because it’s the cheapest option when I have so little money to spare. I don’t want to sacrifice my remaining years on this planet to the unforgiving master that is “modern” life.
I know I won’t always get it right, and sometimes I might only be able to choose between various bad options. But one thing my 41 years and numerous chronic illness have taught me is that if I can’t be true to myself, if I don’t love and care for myself, and in turn be able to love and care for my kids, my family and my community, then honestly what IS the point of this life?
