Living In A System That Takes More Than Gives

If we wish to grow in the current system, we ought to give up many of our core principles and values in life. That is the cost we must bear, if we are to survive the current times. Victor Frankl famously expressed that, "If we cannot change someone, then it means we ought to change ourselves". In this case, we are being forced to change to adapt, which is how it has always been. But to be forced to change, when deep down there is clearly something wrong and unsettling about it all, means there is a resistance so strong that not even you can contain for too long. And so, we are forced to decide for ourselves, what ought to be done to keep moving on. And it is in such circumstances that we are obliged to think beyond ourselves and think of those around and beyond us. That thinking would propel us to get deeply involved within our imaginations and knowledge spans and look for novel ways to establish alternate scenarios that would ensure our feelings, desires, and consciousness is not cast away in vain for the sake of lesser and the more mundane and plain.

We have to take matters into our own hands and find ways to stir up solutions that would help foster a more coherent and balanced system that would adhere to all, without casting out or overshadowing the views of those that wish to think outside the box or beyond the norm. Our current system that has capitalism, consumerism, democracy and globalization mashed up together, has left a lot of blanks and questions marks around integral notions such as meaning, purpose, fulfilment, a sense of one's true place, honour, integrity, empathy, and real ambition that actually provides for others rather than simply for one's self. These may seem outdated concepts, but they are integral for creating a system that is based on virtues and principles that keeps it steady and not simply a system run on incentives and goals to achieve particular matters that do not define or help establish a perception of who we are and where we are heading, such as the need for gaining profit. As Montesquieu made clear that, "the deterioration of a nation begins almost always by the decay of its principles".

Our current system measures how much we can provide to corporations or how much we can fill up our bank accounts, in terms of money, and not on how much value or meaning we can provide to enhance our overall wellbeing. True, the word value is redundant in the business world, but that word is meaningless when it is sugar-coated for another underlying reason that is solely fixated on people generating means in any way to just become richer or to survive the world by getting by in servitude of the other one percent that get away with anything. Our intelligence is measured by how obedient and determined we can be to help strengthen this current system of unfair barter, where we give more than we ought to and are given incentives and rewards as compensation for instead of being truly free to think, say and do what we wish, which are very alluring but all too meaningless and not useful. And as Epictetus once said, "Intelligence cannot be measured by height or length, but only by our thoughts". And our thoughts are held captive against our will, as to reveal what we harbour inside is to expose ourselves in a world that has become superficial and far too mechanical for any real creativity or madness to unfold take shape and create beauty. But what has become more likely is, to survive in the world and in this particular system, we ought to give up on most of our values, principles and core beliefs and give way to a more colder and brutal side to our animalistic natures that serves such a system of digits and code and not flesh and blood.

Therefore, a few important questions remain, such as how do we evolve or progress from here? What measures are ought to be taken to survive in a way that we find right and appropriate? If we are given a chance or opportunity to change the system at hand, how do we go about it and to what are we ultimately striving for?