And why should too
I recently resigned in protest.
I am not protesting my company, per say. I am protesting the type of society I was holding up.
Show up to work. Put on a happy face. Be efficient. Be a good worker bee. Sell some widgets to other widget sellers. Maximize profit. Act like everything is normal.
But everything is not normal.
It’s never been normal, so don’t expect it to go back.
Normal was a concept to keep us placated. To think that we couldn’t ask for more. To keep us from demanding a better society. To feel that we shouldn’t.
Normal feeds the narrative that we’re at the end of history. Abundance achieved; now everyone grab a martini and enjoy.
No.
Now the real work begins.
A few years ago, in the pre-pandemic world, I was holding a glass of champagne at a resort beach with long-time friends. The sun was high in the sky. Electronic music thumped in the background. Money flowed easily, made from start-up equity, big tech pay rates, and finance industry bonuses.
I had a house at home, with a yard, a dog, and a spouse.
Was this the American dream? Was this what we’re all supposed to be trying to achieve?
If so, why did it feel so empty?
None of these things would stop wars, or climate change, or political polarization. It wouldn’t stop the housing crisis, or racism, or mass gun violence. Instead, it’s probably contributing to it.
Most of all, it wouldn’t stop that search within us. You know the one. The search for a truly meaningful life. In achieving individual abundance, we’ve lost the spiritual connection between us. All of us.
Doing nothing is a form of complicity
Lots of people can point to the problems. Critique is the easiest thing in the world. We see it in the news. The fault is in other people. Of that political party, or that nation, or those corporations.
But all those things are just collections of people.
The system only works when no one challenges it. When people keep doing what they’re doing. When we accept things as they are.
It’s normal.
This isn’t about other people. We do not live in a world where other people’s problems are out there. No where is untouched from the destruction of the system we live in.
What if we are the problem? We, the ones who can afford to do something else, and yet stay the course.
You feel it when you’re on a subway train. Packed next to strangers who think they’re better than one another. You notice it driving through a city you hardly recognize, people going about their lives as others suffer in the streets. You see it in the faces of tortured animals on factory farms owned by mega corporations as you drive through a county tapped dry from drought.
How can those of privilege not be compelled to do more?
There is no shortage of real work to be done.
How could I not be complicit, choosing not to do more with 80% of my waking hours?
I was. I am. I am complicit, perhaps worse than many others who supported the system without choice.
I have a choice. I could take a short risk for a short period of time.
I could work for a company that was directly fighting climate change, or soil degradation, or for education access. I could start a non-profit.
I could stop pursuing the easy path.
So I stopped.
We are funneled from a young age to support the system
I remember the last days of university. I was the only one of my nuclear family to finish college. The only one to go somewhere beyond a community college.
Harvard was different.
And not in the idolized way I expected. I was naive.
Bain, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone. By late Junior year, it became apparent everyone seemed to know the secret handshake.
So many smart, talented, individuals who could do whatever they want, funneled into the top of the top banks and consulting groups. This was the system at work.
A self-reinforcing arrangement, and now a world out of balance.
End of days, or beginning of a new era?
It certainly feels like a different sort of end of history these days.
We all sit around and wonder, is this all there is?
Cheap shit on Amazon at your door in hours, acrylic clothes flavoring your water with plastics, digital screaming matches in 180 characters. All for the small, small price of your life, which you’ve spent dedicated to building it all.
Is it any wonder nihilism is at an all time high?
Maybe you’re like me. I was blinded by the narrative I was fed. I climbed the ladder until I got far enough to realize I was going backwards, going nowhere of value.
But I’m not regretful, or guilty. Without a certain level of stability, I couldn’t take the jump I’m now taking. I would’ve been back to a system-supporting job to pay off student loans or afford my own.
So this is for those of you who can help bring a new reality into existence.
It’s an open invitation to join me.
It’s exactly because the economy is in dire straits that those of us who can afford to bunker down and wait it out… shouldn’t.
For those of us who can afford it…
Protesting is no longer just in the streets.
Doing nothing is a form of complicity.
If we want the right to bemoan the burning of the earth, then we should do something about it.
Enough talk.
If more people demand to only work for, or start, or buy from companies that are bettering the world — not as a by-product — but as the primary purpose, we can change society.
Society just is US.
We can recapture what it is to live a meaningful life.
It’s about showing up every day to change the system.
I was the system. I am the problem.
No more.
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