I wake up. I work. I sleep.
I wake up. I work. I sleep.
I do this every day until my back hurts, my hair grays, and they put me in a wooden box.
A fancy diploma hangs on my wall—reminding me that I once had dreams.
The bank owns my house. The boss owns my time.
The government owns my hope.
And I? I own a subscription to Netflix, a lifetime of debt, and just enough distraction to forget the bars of my cage.
But hey, I’m free.
Right?
The Modern-Day Plantation
There was a time when slavery was simple. They gave you chains, a whip, and a long day in the sun. Your suffering was clear and undeniable. People wrote songs about it. Some revolted.
Now, it’s elegant. Now, it’s clever. Now, it comes with health insurance and a 401(k).
See, real genius isn’t about invention. It’s about rebranding.
They took the plantation, paved it over, added cubicles, and called it “opportunity.”
No need for whips when debt will do. No need for chains when fear of poverty keeps you in line.
And so, here we are—willing, obedient, convinced that we’re in control because we get to pick which master signs our paycheck.
The Great Illusion of Choice
Michel Foucault, the French philosopher who looked like he spent too much time in dimly lit cafés, had this theory.
He called it the Panopticon—a system where people behave not because they’re being watched, but because they think they are.
A prison where the walls don’t matter, because the prisoners build their own.
Modern capitalism took that idea and perfected it.
You don’t need a guard standing over your shoulder when you already fear the consequences of stepping out of line.
You don’t need someone to punish you when your own anxiety about rent and bills does it for them.
They don’t have to force you to work overtime—you’ll do it yourself because the alternative is worse.
The brilliance of the system is that we police ourselves.
We work harder than we need to, stay later than we should, and burn ourselves out before anyone even asks.
And when we collapse, exhausted and broken? They send us an email about “work-life balance.”
Why We Don’t Fight Back
The most impressive trick isn’t that the system exists. It’s that we accept it.
No revolts. No riots. Just tired faces in morning traffic, gripping coffee cups like life preservers. Why?
- Distraction: They flood our brains with just enough entertainment to keep us too numb to think. Sports, TV, celebrity gossip—anything to keep us from noticing the leash around our necks.
- Fear: The abyss of unemployment is always just a few steps away. Miss one rent payment, and you’re on the streets. Nobody wants to test how far they can fall.
- Divide & Conquer: They keep us arguing over sports and politics so we don’t turn our attention to the ones actually in charge.
- Hope & Lies: They tell us that hard work leads to success. That if we just grind a little longer, we’ll make it. That we’re all “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” instead of permanent wage slaves.
- Stockholm Syndrome: We admire the billionaires. We call them “geniuses.” We defend them as if they’d ever defend us.
- Exhaustion: Work, sleep, repeat. Too tired to fight. Too drained to dream.
- No Imagination: We don’t even know what freedom looks like anymore. We think this is as good as it gets.
It’s not that people don’t want a revolution. It’s that they don’t have the energy for one.
The Kings Still Rule—They Just Dress Better
History tells us that kings and emperors ruled the people. They sat in golden halls while the peasants starved in the streets.
People think that era ended. That democracy saved us. That we’re past all that.
But power never disappears. It just learns how to blend in.
Now, the kings wear suits. Now, they don’t need thrones—they have boardrooms.
They don’t need armies—they have lobbyists and politicians in their pockets.
They don’t need swords when they own the companies that set your wages, rent, and cost of living.
You see their faces on magazine covers. You hear them talk about “innovation” and “leadership.”
But behind the charm and the polished words, they’re the same as they’ve always been: the ones who take, while the rest of us give.
And what do we do? We cheer them on. We celebrate them. We dream of being like them.
Even as they squeeze every last drop out of us, we idolize them.
The peasants have grown to love their kings.
The Prison of the Mind
Tolstoy once said:
“The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another’s labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the (privatized) money that he must get to live.”
We laugh at the idea of chains, but we don’t realize we wear them every day.
They let us choose where we work, so we think we’re free.
But what kind of choice is that? Choosing which landlord to pay, which job to suffer in, which debt to drown in?
A hamster on a wheel thinks he’s making progress too.
The Final Illusion
People say, “This isn’t slavery! You can quit your job!”
Sure. And then what? Starve? Watch your family fall apart? Live under a bridge until someone arrests you for loitering?
Freedom is only real when you have options.
When you can walk away without losing everything. But here, in this beautiful, modern, well-lit prison, we can’t walk away.
Because the walls are everywhere.
And worst of all?
We built them ourselves.
Summary Table:
| Reason | How It Works |
|---|---|
| Distraction | Entertainment keeps us numb. |
| Fear | Losing a job = losing everything. |
| Divide & Conquer | We fight each other, not the rich. |
| False Hope | “Hard work pays off” (not really). |
| Stockholm Syndrome | We defend our oppressors. |
| Exhaustion | Too tired to resist. |
| No Imagination | We can’t even dream of escape. |
VIII. The Grand Joke
And now, the big punchline.
You finish reading this. You nod. You agree. “Damn, that’s true,” you say.
Then tomorrow, you wake up. You work. You sleep.
Because that’s how the system works.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.