If you’ve come around the magical realm of self-improvement you may have come across the fact that you are a slave.
You may have been told that working a 9 to 5 job is the root of all evils. You just have to escape the matrix.
And it all comes from a good place.
Except that trying to escape the matrix is just another chase you’re enslaved by.
Modern slavery is all around us, but it is not defined by having a job, in reality it is defined by living an unintentional life. Letting the external world drive you instead of choosing what you allow into your life to take form. And that, may come in the form of a job. But that’s the low hanging fruit that is usually talked about.
Let’s get to ground truth.
Modern slavery is life left unanalyzed. Moving around the surface of the planet without intentionality. Whatever is served to you you will eat. Whatever you’re told to do you will do. Whatever you’re told to think you will think.
Being told to escape the matrix without truly knowing deep in your bones that that’s what you truly want is just another way of society telling you what to do.
You are outsourcing your desires to what the collective deems to be valuable. A charismatic fellow in a book, in a video, in a podcast taught you how to think, and know you have these new desires.
Similarly on how you’re being trained by marketers to desire their products which you would have lived a killer life without either way. Or how you’ve been trained by peers to drink, to party, to wear these clothes not those clothes, to speak this way not that way, trained to behave like the collective wants you to behave. The catch? None of these are bad, but that’s if they’re done on your true own accord.
Pay attention.
Doing what you’re told does not make you a slave… If that is a choice you’ve made and you’re in agreement with the mental contract you’ve signed. What makes one a modern day slave is the lack of intentional living.
You may absolutely love your job, or love the business you’ve turned into a job. A job outsources all the risks and complexity to an intermediary, your boss. They may reap most of the benefits, but they also take on all the risk. And you may be perfectly fine with that.
You may be a marine biologist, you have a job, but it may not feel like work to you, you’re intentionally doing that job because it looks like play to you and work to others. You’re thrilled by exploring the depths of the unknown waters, you get a kick out of it, and that obsession you have makes you move mountains, but it just so happens that you are on a payroll and there’s this higher up you have to report to. So what.
There is a modern aspect that I want to bring to the surface of your conscious.
Chances are that you’re currently living unintentionally by letting your personality be driven by algorithms, complex data driven systems in an infinite loop of perfecting the ideas to spoon feed you on a daily basis. All displayed on a convenient magical rock with pretty colors and camera inside your pocket.
The news on the TV you own. The Reddit communities you follow. The political parties you chose to go to keyboard war for. The newest team sport around the block is there to drag you to let them outsource your life to their vision of what they deem valuable.
What if you knew none of this gunk?
What if you were born in the jungle, hunting baboons all day with the Hadza tribe, and you knew none of this stuff. What would your life be like then?
Would you be anxious, fearful, angry over things you have been taught to love or hate?
Would your life be intentional when there’s nothing left to be persuaded of?