Although the human population is rapidly approaching 8 billion, Homo sapiens is rapidly becoming extinct. Very few are left. They have been replaced by a competitor species, an invasive non-indigenous species that consumes Homo sapiens’ habitat—and preemptively kills all potential competition. This new species has yet to be given an official name. I suggest “Homo corporatum,” corporate man.
Imagine what it must have been like—and what it must still be like for the remaining few authentic humans—to wake up embedded within an intimate community of fellow beings, to greet the day and take in the sunrise as communion, to walk on legs that know the shape of the local terrain as muscle memory, to feast on the scent of pine or prairie or sunbaked sand, and bathe in the caress of birdcall and perpetual insect chatter, to slake your thirst with sweet spring water.
How different that was (and is) when compared to the life of Homo coporatum, who gets slapped out of fitful sleep by a shrill electronic screech and pushed into the day by weighty commitment underwritten my fear and anxiety, who’s first sights are images of death and distraction flitting across a glossy palm-held screen, who’s first thoughts are of the crushing emptiness that will fill her day, the treadmill that she must mount for a tedious day-long walk to nowhere at all, the whip of debt that stings her back. There is comradery in the trenches, but comradery is not community. It is a desperate mutual attempt to administer a brief social analgesic, a momentary distraction from the perpetual torment of a life wasted in the service of a machine designed to destroy all life in a million different and exceedingly painful ways.
And lest you think I am merely waxing darkly poetic, here is a thought experiment that might help to put things into perspective. Pick a typical day, one that does not stand out in any way from the day that preceded it or the one you expect to follow, pick a typical Tuesday, for example. In your mind, quickly map out a timeline that includes the mundane details of your schedule, what it is that you actually do, your moment-to-moment activity from the time you wake up until you fall back into bed. Now, go back through the timeline you have just mapped out and identify those moments in which you are actually in control of what you do. Are there any? Is there a single place, anywhere, a tiny slice of time when you have something that even remotely approaches free choice, where you can, with all honestly, say that you would choose to do exactly this if you could choose among all possible things to do? If so, where is that place on your timeline? It is not on your morning commute. It is not at your desk or worksite or delivery route. It is not during your restricted lunchbreak or your commute home. It is not when you collapse into the couch with a drink and the remote control.
And I know that it may be tempting to run this thought experiment and pretend that it is all good, that you like your job—and that you are thankful to have a job! But this is simple rationalization driven by cognitive dissonance, identical in form to the rationalization of a slave who has given up dreaming of freedom.
