Many people complain of being overwhelmed by the news. If you think you ought to prioritise self-care, you are doing exactly what your adversaries want. It is a goal of shock tactics to render you unable to react. Without active resistance, whatever is bothering you shall thereby get stronger. In other words, you cannot help yourself with self-care.
The right response is resistance, to convert that anxious energy into action. Join groups, boycott billionaires, disconnect your life from the system in all practical ways, and learn to live with the inconvenience of being in the resistance.
We live in a society that tries to emphasise the importance of comfort, because this is what justifies socially irrelevant jobs. Nobody works in a department store because of its contribution to society. No one works at an ad agency whose clients are petrol companies because of social responsibility. These jobs pay money, and that money buys comfort.
Naturally, no one wants to suffer, but is is not comfort that people want. It is agency.
Imagine that you were offered the opportunity to live a life of comfort in a hotel room. Food is brought to you. Maids do the laundry. The only catch is that you are not allowed to change anything and you are not allowed to leave.
Or, you may found your own company. These means many missed meals and many nights sleeping in your office. It means stress and insecurity. But these are all things you may do something about.
A comparison like this reveals what people’s preferences really are.
We do not natively want to passively watch television programs provided by billionaires. We do not natively prefer video games to community building. We want to matter; we want to make decisions that have consequences.
There are alternatives to the agency-crushing imperatives of capitalism.
- Join a coöperative super-market instead of shopping at a corporate chain.
- Join a “friendly society” for insurance
- Participate on zoning boards to keep out fast food restaurants
- Recruit seniors for repair cafés
- Using open source software instead of corporate spyware
- Use decentralised social media
- Ditch smart TVs
- Ditch bottled drinks and processed foods
- Instead of a vacation in which you are put on rides offered by tour operators and shuttled between hotels, select a workaway vacation: Build something useful and interact with others who have made that choice.
These decisions are yours to make. You may “vote” on any of these things by participating in them. What you do in the next few years, more than any money you might accumulate, is what you shall bequeath to your children.
