it doesn’t have to be like this.

I am still extremely unclear on any reasonable justification for why any human being ever thought that a system of capitalism was a good idea. It is reasonably clear that even the authors of the documents that justify capitalism did not support these notions or truly see any logic in the doctrine themselves.

Adam Smith, who brought to popularity the idea of “The Free Hand of The Market”, a concept used to justify early capitalism and modern economic decisions, wrote in his lifetime about the flaws in this logic and how it could not likely uphold itself given the test of time. 

But the reason for why we are here does not matter, at least not so much in this text, so much as does the fact that we do not have to be here. We do not have to live like this. There is no rational explanation for continuing to carry on with a society as such.

The greatest power the capitalist system currently holds is over the minds of a population who believes there is no other alternative. 

Since the idealistic threat to the system began, capitalists have been fighting wars to continue to colonize their reach until every part of the globe falls under a system of exploration for profit. 

To have their own country fully capitalized and most of the population convinced is not enough- they have to continue to press this model around the globe, and continue to rage wars and genocides around the world. 

For the past few years now, as I am writing this in 2025, a year that feels fake to say out loud, the United States has been funding an all out genocide on the Palestinian people, funneling their money through the frontman of Israel to continue the global domination of capitalism, white supremacy and zionism throughout the land. 

For reasons of unknown logic, the politicians continue to kill, brutally, directly, through starvation, through targeted bombs on local populations, through the most evil means imaginable, these people with their highly regimented armies.

And how did they get these armies, shall we ask? 

Let’s start with one thing I know. One thing I know about the United States of America is that they will never actually try to end homelessness. The USA is a war state, and to maintain its number of trainable, disposable bodies at the ready at any given time, it must have a large amount of the population willing to join a force to fight- for what, is, as it has always been, situated on unclear foundations. 

They say they have been fighting for “freedom,” but in reality, the United States has never been a free place. To argue this, we have to understand the true meaning of freedom. We, human beings, animals taking physical form on a gathering of dust and energy and gravity that we call Earth, do not owe labor to anyone but the Earth herself. We are each born with much grace, the privilege to exist, to take shape and space and oxygen on a planet full of green and blue and blooming things. To be a manifested being of Love, on a physical plane that is here, not just for us, but for all of Life on Earth to enjoy and share, is a great privilege, and such existence comes with responsibilities. 

Indigenous wisdom and tradition informs us that we are all part of an interconnected web of being, of existence- and we all play an important role within this network. They also teach us that our existence comes with a set of responsibilities to uphold, that will be part of the flow of reciprocity and help to create a harmonious flow of energy within the world. That our gratitude, as humans, is part of this network. That our ability to move and change things and shape the world around us, is part of this responsibility. Our ability to appreciate and to exist is part of this responsibility. And our ability to do what we each personally can, given our own abilities in this physical manifestation, to take care of others and the world around us, as well as ourselves. But especially to care for the world around us. We must remember we are a communal species that has been isolated from each other for the purpose of dominance. It is much, much, much easier to dominate a disconnected people than to take over a well-connected, self-sufficient community. But capitalists have manufactured a set of conditions that makes it inherently difficult to find and build these communities, and have continued to encourage individualism to spread throughout the world

Our skillsets differ from being to being, each meeting a particular need in the world, the same way that science tells us each pattern on a snowflake is unique and different. While they may all be flakes of frozen water, they each appear in a different, unique pattern, never to be recreated in the exact same way again. We may all be humans, but we all have different unique and important skill sets that allow us to all fit together in the world. This various distribution in ability, taste, and all manner of difference in the things that make us ourselves, is important because it allows us all to have a different operating role in a harmonious larger system, all important, all necessary. 

There is enough abundant energy, in the form of food and water and land and space and light, to share with all not only humans, but all beings on the planet, and to live in harmony with each other. Harmony being used here as an idealistic term, but also realistically. I do believe it is possible, indeed, for the beings of Earth to get along with each other. And I do believe that the people that say it is not true are saying that because they want to keep people afraid, afraid enough to believe, unchallengingly, in their system. Fear is useful to any system that hopes to maintain belief in their own, without providing rationale. Fear is a useful tactic to uphold systems that people would otherwise not willingly participate in. Fear is the main method used to uphold capitalism now, and often the fear is justified by the very real state of material means in the present moment. Fear of standing up to an abusive boss, or quitting a draining job, is reasonable fear in a society that has privatized all means of Life, including water and land and food, and therefore puts people in a place with no option. This is defined as coercive behavior, reproduced by an entire system, coercing entire populations of beings to live within their system, or be arrested otherwise. There is no place you can travel freely to, without pre-existing cash and a passport, without fear of retribution or being legally shot on “private property.” The entire land mass of that the United States currently exists on has been taken, end to end, by this system. We are most likely living in cities or suburbs, with our basic ‘resources’ for life distributed by a mass grid system run by cities that report to states that operate within the United States. We most likely do not have access to water or food without being connected to the city infrastructure. This is not to argue that running water and large-scale plumbing is not a helpful invention- but it is to say that is entirely difficult, not to mention “illegal” to go and live without a city. 

And what is it to live alone “in the woods” anyways? If you haven’t already seen the movie “Into the Wild,” I would recommend at least a quick watch of the trailer online. It is a perfect example of modern propaganda and fear tactics, and the trailer encapsulates this clearly. It cuts from a scene of a nice looking white boy graduating college, and his parents trying to celebrate this, to him announcing he’s leaving and heading to Alaska, that he doesn’t want to be part of society anymore. The next cut- flaming money and ashen legal identification documents. Next cut, he’s on a bus. They glamorize the life “in the wild” for a bit, but, like any good tragic tale of someone trying to leave modern capitalist society, he passes away in the alaskan wilderness, and the drama is clear on the screen. They make sure to emphasize the fact that it is, indeed, based on a true story. In the book, you learn he didn’t have many close friends, but he did have one. Strangely enough, in this small world, that friend of his was my third grade teacher, and while it never came up in conversation, I think of it often, knowing she was a kind and understanding soul, and an incredible teacher, and it makes sense that she might have been friends with a weird kid. 

I was a weird kid too, and this iteration of my writing is not the first time I have published my thoughts to the world. 

I started my first blog when I was ten, and created a website called “Going Green Made Easy” to have a place to put my thoughts, as my evangelizing about this to my peers and door-to-door begging of teachers to let me present to the class was not enough. Before this, I spent months developing a clip art heavy powerpoint presentation about environmentalism to present to classmates and anyone I could get to listen to me. I entered a writing competition, about trees (of course), and won recycling bins for my elementary school, on which I included an incredibly detailed list of things that were recyclable (my elementary school mind did not seem to care that kindergarteners would be reading this list and made sure to include industrial recycling information as well- who’s recycling batteries in third grade?) You can imagine my horror now, as an adult, still doing this with many now-adults in my life, but the recycling system and education surrounding it are abysmal in this country and wish-cycling is all too prevalent. 

I used to go through garbage bins at any given opportunity, diving for plastic bottles while my sister defended her team’s goal in second grade soccer. Imagine being a mother in 2007 and trying to explain why your child won’t stop digging through the trash- makes for an excellent laugh now, but I did keep this up through high school and I certainly didn’t seem to start any trends doing it then either. 

But we continue, and my young efforts at activism now make excellent stories and learning experiences. One thing I have never been too keen on is following rules that I don’t find logical or just. I have always loved math and logic, and it has never been clear to me why we would simply accept a society that does not abide by such principles. There is often no logic besides the “given power of pre-existing authority,” especially in situations of schooling and governmental ruling, and the idea that they cannot be questioned is simply authoritarian and often only to further the existing system of exploitative labor. 

I began my first petition in second grade, with a clipboard, after finding out the terrible news that the “free dress” I had experience during kindergarten and first grade would be over due to a district-wide implementation of a new, exceedingly boring “dress code.” I was quite displeased with this news, and understood that the people might be able to do something about it. I hoped that a petition from a second-grader and a handful of students would be able to change a district wide policy that had been sent down from above. I did not, at the time, understand the large scale nature of the decisions that were being made, but we did mange to win at least one free dress day for the school (or at least free dress passes? my second grade memory is a bit fuzzy, but I certainly remember going out that day after school, with my clipboard and hand-drawn sign up sheet, ready to make some changes around here. 

While I may not have been able to shift the entire district’s dress code policy in that moment, my energy remains the same. While I have been fighting through depression for many years, I still am this person deep down, and I know that I will never give up the fight for liberation. I am on this Earth to help, collectively, make it better for all of us, as so many of us are. We must have true liberation and allow Life and Love to be the driving forces of existence, not credit scores and paycheck to paycheck lifestyles. The capitalist system has been crumbling for a long time now, and it is our turn to birth a new way of life and existing into being. This way has perhaps never been seen before, but it is possible and it will be done. The time is now. 

It is like the discovery of electricity, or perhaps even more radical of a shift. The world is changing now. It is our job to help this happen. We are co-creating the world around us. The seas are not rising and the streets are not full of blood due to “natural forces” or “acts of god,” as some of the most extreme contemporary christians currently believe, they are being influenced by human activity and decisions people have made. People who have the power to make different decisions. People who are only getting away with it because they can. But people, indeed, and things can still change. It is still possible. And if we want to survive, because we will survive, it will. 

And so be it. Let it be so. And so it is.