Dear Ramsey:

It amazes me that you responded to my Feb 7, 2019 post more than 3 years and nine months later… a whole lot happened in these almost 4 years, a whole pandemic, escalated climate change, lots of alarming political events, alarming inflation, and so much more.

Ramsey in his own words: “Hi. I’m a recent college grad. I don’t have a clear idea of what I want to do with my life and I think it’s because I think that capitalism is bullshit. We all have to work on making ourselves attractive on paper so that a potential employer can hire us and bend us to his every whim. We’re supposed to accept being someone’s pawn for forty years and then we die” (July 23, 2018).

“The only thing we control is how we handle being controlled by the corporate West’s obsession with corporate profiteering and prosperity… Maybe if more people felt like me I’d be able to start some kind of movement,  but there aren’t enough people who do, so again, what’s the point?” (Aug 3, 2018).

“I also hate how people like me- who see what human life REALLY has become (a money grab) – are brushed off as depressed and never taken seriously…  I want my time to be under MY control and nobody else’s. I also don’t want money. I just want to be able to craft my own life, and live it by my own terms. No IRS, no bills, no loans, NO EFFING BOSSES… I hope everything falls apart so that humanity can f*ck off and stop shitting all over this beautiful place… Humans disgust me and I don’t want to be one anymore…  the world isn’t a lot of things- fair, and humane being but two of those things…  I feel like enough people share these grievances, but are too afraid to put their voices out there in fear of being labeled too radical… my main, main point is that all of the BS that humans (corporations and governments) do in the world is because of money (Dec 20-24, 2018).

“I didn’t have a plan throughout college because I didn’t know what to study, so I settled for history. Now, I don’t have ANY relevant experience to put on my resume and I’ve been stuck at home for the past 7 months… nobody will hire me, I’m injured so I can’t exercise, I’m getting fat again, I don’t get out and see things, I didn’t make friends in college, I still have yet to even KISS a woman… I’ve never been one to think positively about myself so I don’t know how to not think so pessimistically. (January 3-4, 2019).

“At its very core, employment is slavery..  The way I see it, every institution is bought, and is thus..  brainwashes us into thinking the way that most of us do…  All of us are being exploited- despite level of happiness with work. People who can’t find work and are living on the streets get the sh*t end of everyone’s stick because ‘they didn’t work hard enough,’ or ‘they’re junkies'” (February 7, 2019).

“My point is that we don’t live in a free world, no matter how many people are convinced we are, and will try to convince ME that we are. Exploitation is unavoidable under capitalism because business owners will ALWAYS take most of their employees’ labor. I don’t want to be part of that, nor do I want to change it. I just want to watch it all die from the outside. That’s why I don’t vote” (November 12, 2022).

My input today, Nov 13, 2022: I agree with a lot of what you expressed. It is clear to me, personally, that Big Corporations’ greed knows no bounds. It is destroying people and the environment, making the Earth less and less inhabitable at an alarming rate. Powerful politicians do what big corporations want them to do, not what the average citizen needs. Money Rules and Humanity Suffers. The children of the richest will have to breathe air just like everyone else, and will suffer, get sick and die living on a planet that is fast becoming dangerous to life itself, yet their parents are short sighted, and care only for financial profit here-and-now. Big corporations via advertisement and politics control millions by motivating us to consume and to believe that what the big corporations do is right and beneficial to all (the term trickle-down economics comes to mind).

Although most people are not free in many ways: we have to pay taxes and our taxes are not used the way we want them to be used, and we vote (those of us who do) for people who promise but don’t deliver, and in daily life, we have to wait in lines… and so many things are not the way we’d like them to be, we are still free in some ways, and better appreciate the ways in which we are free, or can be free: it is exhilarating when it happens that we set ourselves fee from something (anything) that previously imprisoned us.

I understand your frustration and lots of what frustrates you, frustrates me to no end. I agree that big-corporations-greed and the greed of powerful politicians is disastrous. What you’ve been doing on your thread, besides making excellent points, seems to me- is to throw temper tantrums and suggest nothing in the way of solutions, or hope. But hopelessness in itself is disastrous, and so is helplessness. Do you think that you’ve been throwing temper tantrums and promoting hopelessness and helplessness in this thread, or is there something that I am missing?

anita