It is so easy to imagine a much better world. If we had put all our efforts and energy towards making life better for everyone, instead of only for some - capitalism could never have existed. And this uncertainty and struggle to survive many of us take for granted and have normalized, could have been ended centuries ago.

What we concentrate our energy upon, is what becomes. And we have mismanaged our energy.

Capitalism isn’t evil because it’s greedy in a cartoon sense. It’s corrosive because it makes insecurity structural. It trains people to live in a constant low-grade threat state and then calls that motivation. When uncertainty is built into the system, fear becomes the fuel, and fear is incredibly easy to steer.

That’s mismanagement. Mismanagement not just of money, but of human attention, imagination, and care. Our energy.

What we collectively attend to, measure, reward, and fear becomes real. Inexorably. We built systems that is optimized for extraction, then act surprised when people feel hollow and exhausted. We built systems that punish rest and cooperation, then wonder why anxiety and burnout is everywhere.

These systems that govern the world today is not made for human life. In them, we are resources that must be managed. They have a name for us. "Human capital". The correct amount of fear, the correct amount of reward.
Like a donkey with a carrot in front, and a whip at the back. Livestock.

Optimized. Efficient.

But not good.

Capitalism could not have arisen in a world that prioritized universal well-being over accumulation and control.

But if you are honest with yourself. Radically honest. That place you long for when you long for retirement.. That place that feels like home.. that homesickness for a place you have never been.

Is that not the same place I am also dreaming of? A world of universal well-being and cooperation?

There is a longing in me for home. And the only way home, is to create it. I only know this: it is not here now.