Dancing With The Machine

Because of how little time we have, this is likely for eyes of the future, not those of the past.

The year of our system is 2025.

Capitalism is a game I benefit an immense amount from indirectly and yet I hate this system.

It is fair to think my pain is not the same.

I am not someone being ground into red dust as they run on the bloodsucking treadmill built by the momentum of game theory and mass panic, a synchronized human reaction from the past now maintained by the rich of all countries on this planet we call earth.

I do not claim my pain is equal, I have simply come to observe.

The stress of thinking about everyday people suffering from a lack of time as well as those I love has caused me active psychosis treated now with hospitalizations, newly layered stacks of antipsychotics, and my best recent attempts at Buddhist mindfulness practices.

I love those close to me and I love strangers. Everyone from the lady at the Burger King drive through to the executive who makes enough to stop working but can’t because that isn’t how the game works. The game takes your body and rips it apart until you die of something. Whether that be cancer, loneliness, lack of money, or an addiction to the game.

The time people have to share with their loved ones is not enough.

The lifeblood of us all, shared humanity and shared time, has been ground down into that red dust for rich men and women to snort into yachts and obtuse dreams. All while the working mother and father hope to see their child just for an extra half hour a day, if even that.

A child that may never see rest, runnning simply on the treadmill from birth til death, spinning for the machine as another cog, until itself raises another cog with no time for friends, family, and dreams.

That is not fair. That is not life. It hurts to watch. I’m sure it hurts more to live it.

It is something else. It is the theft of lifetimes. It is living death.

The game allows so few to fly free as birds while others are chained to being late to a game nobody ever gave them a chance to play fairly. Taxes and a social safety net would have given them that chance. And at the very least, it would given them their time back.

That bloody time that must always be spent working or those without a lucky mountain of it lose at the game, until all their blood is taken and they die. Too many dreams die on the streets inside bodies that did their best, that could have done their best if given a chance, a real chance, but don’t be fooled, dreams also die inside the bodies of those who think they won at the game, including those on the tops of mountains

The game doesn’t allow for bad news to be processed and acted on, for that would destroy it. It is why we see Gaza and cannot stop it. It is why we no longer have the time to protest the end of global food aid. It is why we see billionaires and do not tax their wealth away until no child on earth is hungry.

It is, simply put, why we see death everywhere and do not change things. It is why the machine uses cogs instead of people moving slow and sweetly into dances of shared community and respect and kindness and the distribution of life’s gifts being equal. The upholding of kindness over time ends the game. But for now, the present of humanity is to choose time over kindness.

 I don’t know how to change that. It makes me want to scream. To tear myself apart. To tear this reality apart. To think of the people who will never live their dream. To think of the people who died without time. To think of the people who die while living. To think of a planet dying while we live. We don’t even have time for our brethren on this planet, because we cannot even take care of ourselves.

Most of all, I think of how I don’t think regular people have ever been as lonely as they are now. We each have our own car, our own bedroom, our phones, our things. But how much time is spent with those we love? How much time does the machine take away? How much community does it destroy that could have been.

I am becoming myself now. Because I no longer care for that death.

I care for life.

And I will search for the strands of joy needed for change, hope, and action.

Even if I have to do it fighting through psychosis.