A short comment on Capitalism and Existence

We live brief lives, mostly just training really for the early part, ready to occupy some job and become another ball bearing in the conveyor belt of the machinery of capitalist society. That is, service industry (run by the few), service the economy, pay taxes, be consumers, meet a partner, raise a family and then the cycle begins again. Everything is industry, even time feels somehow privatised: work, earn money, spend money, work some more, seventy years gone, and the vacancy will be filled.

The home you have worked hard for and paid off will become someone else’s home, the children you raised will, in turn, work their fingers to the bone, albeit in some other type of job somehow seemingly better and cleaner than yours. The masses do not succeed or get rich or get famous. They bleed on battlefields, their feet hurt after walking the shop floor, their heads ache with demanding bank statements and cost of living, they get dirty cleaning streets, get stressed trying to heal the sick, tired after a hard days teaching the next workforce.

Rooms fill with possessions, on every wall and shelf, in every draw or cupboard there is some item acquired, it is of some significance to you, it captures the zeitgeist or defines your personality in some way. Books that you have no time to read, photographs unframed, notebooks left blank. You must know that existence is not guaranteed, and is short. You will not be entombed in your semi-detached house and go on to the afterlife with your DVD collection. And when the time comes, it’ll all go; what the relatives don’t want to keep for themselves will go to charity shops or the car boot market event…dead people’s stuff for sale.