35/ TWO WEEKS OF FREEDOM
I recently got back from vacation. It was genuinely great. People were kind, smiling, non-confrontational, and carefree. Plenty of food, plenty to drink, lots of fun and music. Different nations, different nationalities met at a foreign resort and got along together very well, without any problems. A classic thought immediately occurred to me: why can't we be people like that all year round? Where does this everyday frustration, pressure, and stress in us come from?
THE SYSTEM
I noticed that the abundance provided by the hotel's "all inclusive" service relieved people of a great many day-to-day worries, and that this automatically changed their inner tension, their thinking — thinking that is so often shaped and warped by a sense of scarcity. So the question is: if we managed to provide people with comfortable food and provisions all year round, would this measure also secure calm, peace, and tolerance among people?
It won't be that simple, because the system we live in today keeps telling us about scarcity, about how we should save, about how we should tighten our belts; it tells us about various crises, about a climate crisis caused by our overconsumption — while, on the other hand, this Western economy, this invisible hand of the market, destroys, every single day, an unbelievable quantity of produced, unsold food. Why is this done?
THE SLAVE'S PSYCHE
Because we are being blackmailed, deliberately burdened by day-to-day pressure caused by a mass of artificial regulatory measures (taxes, mortgages, service fees that today are almost cost-free to provide), worries, problems, and crises. We are, quite literally, terrorized day after day without ever even noticing this adverse reality. And yet, despite everything, we manage — because our mind, all year long, focuses on two weeks of vacation, two weeks of freedom, which we lean on the whole time, and thanks to which we never rise up against our masters, whom our own servants — the servants of the nation, or the "democrats," as they like to call themselves — are happy to serve.
I don't know exactly what it's called, but there is a technique in psychology that allows a tyrant to instill in his victim the impression that he is, for her, "the Lord God" himself, a role model, a leading figure. It is a simple technique, and it consists of putting the victim into an informational box (selective information exposure), and, from time to time, allowing her some trivial (simple) comfort. I believe Fritzl used this too — he kept his victim locked in a cellar, tormented her, and every so often opened the cellar window so she could feel fresh air and see the beautiful surroundings of her prison. Through long-term repetition, you stop minding that someone is tormenting you; instead, you begin to relish that brief moment, one you spend the whole time looking forward to — a moment that keeps you obedient for a long time, a moment for which you will, in the end, be grateful to your tormentor.
So why isn't ensuring food security for the planet's population a priority? Because we are kept in the cellar, we are being extorted, we are being exploited; we devote our energy to those who enslave us, to whom we pay interest. But, paradoxically, this doesn't bother us — on the contrary, it suits us, and we can no longer even imagine any other possibility than the one we're currently living through; we can't imagine how, in the twenty-first century, things could look any different.
NAIVE SUBMISSIVENESS
This inhumane way of treating people cultivates in us what I call naive submissiveness. On the one hand, we become naive — after all, our masters surely wouldn't wish us harm, seeing as they grant us, every year, enough means for one or two vacations away from our daily work — and on the other hand, we become submissive, because we pour ashes on our own heads at every one of our failures, and we voluntarily allow ourselves to be tormented for the rest of the year. Once we've successfully achieved a personal state of naive submissiveness, we no longer even mind when our masters suddenly tighten our belts, reduce our comfort, hike up energy prices without justification, or line all of us up to be tested.
THE SLAVE-MASTERS ARE CALLING ON US TO DEFEND THE SYSTEM
Today, in today's global conflict, many influential people are calling on us to defend our world, our system, our civilization from "Mordor," from "orcs," from I-don't-know-what-all else, who are supposedly trying to destroy our world order. They keep urging us to keep supplying Ukraine with weapons, no matter how many people die in the conflict, because if Ukraine falls, our entire world order falls with it.
What world order are we even talking about? The one that lets us save up enough for two weeks of vacation a year? Two weeks of freedom? Many people don't even get that... An order that exploits us the whole time and drains us of the energy we pour into work that's become almost constant? We keep on working, in the twenty-first century, an age in which a great many production processes are already capable of full automation! Why don't we, as human beings, try to cooperate at the international level, help one another, instead of constantly wanting to compete with each other? Why do we keep trying to seize control of all resources and centralize all governance under a single master, into a single center, a single system, a single order? Are we even a civilized world? We let people camp and starve on the streets, and we publicly muse about our overpopulation — all while we exist, the entire time, within an infinite universe, surrounded by an infinite quantity of energy!
Personally, I couldn't care less about such a system, and I feel sorry for everyone who defends it. They will not manage to defend it — not against the very nature of being itself. "The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine."
CONCLUSION
There is nothing humane to be found in the capitalist system; it is nothing but the exploitation of people, dressed up to look very shiny, very progressive, very cool, granting the majority a few days of vacation over the course of a year. For the rest of the days, however, we are burdened with work, just so that we're even able to save up for a few days of freedom, a few brief glimpses out through the cellar window.
Selective information exposure, combined with the strain placed on our psyche, cultivates in us a naive submissiveness — thanks to which we remain obedient, we do not rebel, and thanks to which we manage to be content even in hell.
Let us become aware of this technique of tyranny. If there were the will for it, there would, after all, be more than enough resources for everything we can imagine, for everyone — but there is no will for it, and so today we are forced to live our entire lives in a sense of scarcity, in keeping with the techniques of our masters, our slave-masters.
Juraj Tušš
