I feel enslaved pretty much all the time. Whether you’re watching TV, listening to the radio, surfing the web, or simply existing somewhere that other people exist, like going to work, there’s so much hidden oppression that goes unnoticed.
Sure, the internet is a haven of free speech, but free speech isn’t free, and I don’t mean in the way that people have fought and died for it, though they absolutely have. Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences. So if you go on the internet, and talk about doing the illegal, and the police come and arrest you for plotting to do the illegal (eg, murder, or any number of traitorous acts), you had the freedom to say those things, but not the freedom from being held accountable for saying them.
On top of that, you’re constantly bombarded with information, especially on the internet about what products to buy to “improve” your life. Buy buy buy. Be a good consumer of goods and services. Don’t learn to do things yourself, you’ll get hurt or die, just… Pay someone else to do it, so they can do it “right”. Anything from plumbing to automotive repair, to cleaning your own house, just pay someone. The electronification of everything adds DRM to most everything so now you need to spend thousands of dollars on training and tools just to fix your own damn tractor, and companies like John Deere want us to believe it’s for the best to do it this way, so only certified experts do the work so it’s done correctly. But who said it needs to be done how they want it done, or that their way is better?
At work, if you start speaking your mind, you’ll find yourself in front of HR very quickly. You have to restrict your impulses, movements and speech to only what your co-workers will allow for, and what management wants you to be able to do, you’ll get paid what they want to pay you, and be happy about it, or you’ll find yourself destitute.
Yeah, we’re “free” to select from a hundred horrible options of how we want to be oppressed, and slave away until we die, bombarded with “experts” who charge a small fortune just to see if that pain you have is indigestion, or pancreatitis, which will kill you in a matter of hours, or not.
We’re free to live how others are willing to accept that we can. Buying our way to a mediocre existence, filled with existential dread, suffering, and little more than robbery, but because we have the illusion of choice we think that’s freedom.
Everything is a system of control. Whether you buy a house, get a job, or simply look at the TV, or the world around you, you’re bombarded with information on what you should do, what you should say, how you should dress, what to think, where to go, and exactly how to enslave yourself to a system you didn’t create, that wasn’t made for you to succeed in, that will never stop holding you down, and takes everything from you. That includes, and is not limited to, drivers licensing, billboards, advertisements, employment, bank accounts, religion, consumerism, malls, shops, the news/media, the music you listen to, and yes, especially the internet.
If you can’t see that this is the case, you’re probably too blind to realize it. You’re being dazzled by the flowery language and rhetoric of the situation, thinking you know things, when all you know is what they want you to know. Companies are the root of the problem, deeply engrained in the capitalist dream and consumerist culture.
But hey, the weather is kinda nice today, so let’s enjoy that while we can and not think about the hell that is a life in today’s society.