A Requiem for Serotonin
I have this horrible inkling that has been growing stronger and stronger as I observe the world around me that we exist in a society, a culture, a market, designed for the sole purpose of profiting off of our addictions. It does not matter what combination of them is utilized, as any good tobacco cash crop farmer from the 1700s will tell you, grow things people compulsively need. It is not a coincidence that there is most likely a liquor store as close if not closer to you than a supermarket, that you can walk out and buy a carton of cigarettes (regardless of any warning labels, taxes, education programs, etc) for a little more than the average price of a gallon of milk. The problem with this system is profit is more motivating than humanitarian interest, we have created a society and business more comfortable with exploiting our weaknesses than building our strengths. It is much more cost effective to scrape the hard earned dollars away from a population ignorant to the larger structure and as we are learning first hand from a wide selection of thinly veiled cult leaders, fear mongering and outright lying will not negatively affect the amount of money you can scam away from the uneducated. If you control the narrative, control their attention, and put them in an idea silo where growth, challenging the status quo, and meaningful debate are as foreign as a healthy portion of vegetables is to your average American, you can effectively create a cash cow of the most reliable nature.
We do not talk at large of a way to solve or approach the alcoholism rampant in our society in the same way we cannot control the dopamine factories being put in front of our children by way of phone games (a gambling simulation for children), social media (a training platform for homogeneity and intellectual isolation), and the sorry fact that our education system is so horrifically lacking that the upper crust of our society doesn’t deem it fit for their offspring. This isn’t even talking about our blatant peddling as a medical industry of pills to fix every ailment (for a cost), and many other topics we all seem to know but nobody wants a meaningful discourse of. Our books come pre-stamped with “best seller” on the cover, our products come with celebrity endorsements, even our ideas it would seem are not our own. They are the product of your algorithm and the 100 clone copy thoughts being smashed into your cerebral cortex as you trick yourself that this is the pinnacle of entertainment. It does not make you healthy to watch someone else’s daily health routine, it does not make your brain more adept at independent and progressive thought to have them come as prepackaged perspectives from your favorite internet persona, it does not make you adventurous to watch your favorite influencer barrel down a couloir or constantly wondering how your adventure is going to look on the ‘gram. Please do not see me as an elitist, or someone who believes I am above the cancer that is our current world, I scroll, I consume, I engage. I do however limit this behavior, preferring the slow burn of real life to the hot flash of instant gratification, and I think if you look deep down, you do too. These thoughts are a call not for others to adopt my opinions as their own, not to let me think for you, instead they are an imploration from someone who cares and sees you as an individual to challenge the world around you. No matter what it is, religion, politics, nutrition I don’t care, just challenge the status quo, do not go quietly, remain fiercely independent and belligerently skeptical of the norms, because a fate worse than death in my opinion, is to be coddled into a comfortable demise.
Love,
Fitz
