It is not a question of independence, for there are too many people for that today. The coasts are so full of people, and the supply chains so meager and rationed according not most of all to your benefit but least of all. All the things exist at the level at which society can extract the most Man-hours from you. That's it. You aren't even tax-cattle anymore, you're a work animal for capital and at the rate that the whole world wrestles you for your job. For that benefits our current elites. Those that deserve to be there as much and no more than the feudal overlord did back into the darkness of history.
But maybe there will come a point when you sacrifice enough for your people, your nation, or your civilization when you can then hold your head up high? Not if Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, or any of the other elites have anything to say about it. They won't make money if you're not a work animal. Can we instead, at this population level retool our civilization away from the late-stage capitalism which intrudes so thoroughly and yet so easily more and more now each year? If you try to make a collective effort socially and politically and change doesn't come, do you continue the struggle on a smaller scale? If you try individually, and fail does that imply that we can only make it work collectively? How to you struggle to get more, on your own or politically? That is the fight for agency.
When we get a moment to look back at the last few years, how can we be happy with our lot? Its not a choice of really living, its just selecting from bad choices to immediately exist slightly better at the cost of the future. But you can see why the libertarian meekly desires it, like a wounded animal crawls away to die from a predator. Hell, is the shortcut that costs you more and more as time goes on. Heaven, is the hard road that pays off in the end all of the effort you put into it. If those two truths be real, then what is America today? That is agency, hyperindividualism is obscene. Having a house, spouse, 2. 5 kids and something that makes the neighbors think that you put effort into your life. That is what we want, and we are so far from getting it that we struggle against each other for scraps and listen to Elon Musk tell us how much better the Asian is for their deeper commitments to living like a bug.
We don't even get to decide how our week is spent. We have so little, we make so little, and we still don't have time agency. Do you know, for certain, if you'll be free 4 Tuesdays from now at 6:30, maybe not even this Friday at 7:30? You picked the least bad job, the one which harassed you the least. Everyone does so. How many of us today, as a percentage, enjoy our jobs? Most of us have no ability to form a career, something we are good at, and we certainly cannot build towards anything today. We don't like our society anymore. We are so divided in this struggle, atomized into feuding piles of labor, that we aren't anything but a part, and you didn't choose to be so. That, that is the problem.
Do you work as much as you need to, or are you stuck giving more time and it's not fucking up to you when? That's what I mean, I mean are you closer to owning enough to live from a position of Fuck You?
Family is a choice, and I made my mind up on who I'm having breakfast with, but I schedule my days around other people, and its not voluntary. Time, time most of all is how life has been fucking us. We want to own something, to have it be yours and that is simply that. And You can't. There is no way out of the labor pool we find ourselves in. We cannot individually succeed from this hell. What I want is far simpler than agency. I find I don't actually want complete agency in the way of generating Food, Water, and Shelter. No, civilization is something we are collectively fatalistically addicted to. There are some things like clean drinking water where the private method is too inefficient to scale it for individuals, never mind the horror of dealing with waste water on your own. I find it's doable to an extent, and then you just have to let the civilization win.
Its a tough one.
